Natalia

Here’s a image from my first fashion shoot with the Russian supermodel Natalia Vodianova that I did last week. She was very nice and easy to work with.

Haha, enough with that. Yes, this is a photo of Natalia Vodianova taken by me, but it’s was taken during a Nick Knight shoot for Vogue that took place at the Fashion Revolution exhibition at the Somerset House last week. At the exhibition you sometimes have the opportunity to follow a live photo shoot by the best fashion photographers and I happened to be in the right place in the right time! I highly recommend this exhibition for anyone with the slightest interest in fashion.

I also took some snap shots of Lady Gaga, but they didn’t come out well…

Salt and Albumen Print

This is a test shot and test print (and a rather bad scan) of my exhibition work (yes, we are having an exhibition in Rochester on December 2nd and 3rd, if I haven’t mentioned it yet) that I did during a salt and albumen print workshop on Monday. I’m really excited about alternative printing methods and salt and albumen is great, because you don’t need a darkroom! 

My initial plan was to do some self-portraits for the exhibition but realized I can’t do them here, because I have absolutely no relationship to this place (well, except the fact that I study here). Instead I turned the concept over and now I’m taking pictures of objects that make me feel at home in this strange place called England. I’d really like to do salt and albumen prints for the exhibition, but so far I haven’t shot anything else than my sewing kit. 

I’ll write more about the exhibition later.

The Panama Hat

I was watching A Room With a View today, and all the men in the movie wore white straw hats. That reminded me of my father’s panama hat that my sister and I wore during the sunny summer days.

Dungeness

We hade a lith print workshop on monday, and I absolutely loved it. You just can’t achieve the same texture with digital. These images are from a place called Dungeness that our tutor took us to a few weeks ago.  It was one of the most fascinating and eerie places I’ve visited. The artist and film director Derek Jarman used to live there. I loved his last movie (if you can call a blue screen a movie), Blue.

The prints don’t look as good on screen as on paper, but here they are anyway. I’ll probably post more images of Dungeness later.

The Beauty of Error

My dad’s old Canon thought it would be really fun to shoot 33 out of 36 images in the same frame. I wasn’t so happy about it because I lost almost all my images from my trip to Stockholm, but at the same time I think this multiexposed image is very pretty. So I guess this goes under the category of lucky accidents.

Mom, What’s Architecture?

Yesterday when I came home from London, there was a pink envelope waiting for me. Pink envelopes always remind me of the movie Broken Flowers (if you haven’t seen it, do it now), but also of my cousin Pinja. She sent me many pink letters last year, so I immediatley knew this was from her.

The letter reminded me that this picture of Pinja (and me!) that I took for Auvo’s web pages last summer was still unposted. I really like it. Pinja studies art history and is specialised in architecture, hence the text in the background (that we accidentaly stumbled on!).

I love my friends for making the effort and writing me letters. Thank you.

Sunbeam

Today I was in the darkroom for the first time this autumn. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to print more than this image. I really should spend more time in the darkroom.

Honkaniemi

It’s raining again and it makes me feel nostalgic about summer. Oh, those summer days… In August I went to Honkaniemi, our summer cottage in Central Finland, after a break of three or four years. I’ve spent so many summers there as a kid, but I just never have the time to go there anymore. I love this place, it’s so beautiful, but none of us really  has the time to take care of it. It’s falling apart and it makes me sad.

I’d love to go there with proper equipment and take more pictures. There’s so much to photograph. These pictures are from the old barn.

Dog Days

My cousins lovely dachshunds, Ginny and Vilja, taking a break on a warm summer day. I already miss the summer. It’s cold, windy and gray outside.

 

Grace (and a Lack of It)

I’m back on my favourite subject: British guys and pee (more about the subject here). Last August I went to Flow Festival in Helsinki (probably the best festival ever) and saw some amazing preformances by Fever Ray, Vampire Weekend, Les Corps Mince de Francoise, Frida Hyvönen, Jenny Wilson, Grace Jones and others. During Grace Jones’ fantastic gig a British man peed on me, which kind of ruined it for me. It’s not nice to notice that it only rains on your feet… Someone please tell me, why do British guys like to pee on living creatures?

Anyway, here’s a picture of Grace in her body, fishnets and one of all her hats. She was so awesome, I almost forgot why my shoes were wet.