Flowers

The weather was gorgeous yesterday, hot and sunny. I decided to take a walk in the evening and visit my son who lives close by and to ask my daughter in law to join me for a visit to a garden colony with cameras on the way home. I didn't feel like taking photography too serious so I chose a light combo: EOS-M with the EF 100mm  f2,8 Macro lens attached with the adapter.

The garden colonies in Helsinki are places were local people can rent a spot for growing flowers and veggies. As a visiting photographer you are better of if you follow the ground rules of the colony, one is allowed to walk on the paths around the area and take pictures of plants but not to step into the gardens if not invited by the gardener. By following the rules and showing respect for the work of others, you are mostly met with friendly smiles. Sometimes of course the most wonderful plant is out of your reach but there are plenty of plants so close to the paths that you get very close.

 The EOS-M is a really nice camera in many ways, it is really light with a censor that performs really well. It has no mirror and the only way to see what you are doing is the live view option. In terms of camera shake  and framing this is a good thing, but when it comes to focusing it takes a while to figure out how to work with the cameras intelligence so that it doesn't override your own. The auto focus of EOS-M is very intelligent and strong minded, it works by touching the screen on the selected area and then it can follow that spot until it has it sharp. The challenge is to get the auto focus to understand what particular part you want it to focus on. Especially challenging when shooting against the source of light, when you don't really see what you are doing.

 So most of the time the auto focus is about luck anyway, there will always be things you cannot control like wind gusts. So I focus on framing, light and finding the best settings. Then I just hope the auto focus will behave nicely.

 One trick that I've found making it easier is to choose to focus on something with contrast, like in the picture below where I asked the camera to focus on the closest spot between light and shadow.

 
About 50% of the shots came out nice, the other half was clearly about the cameras idea of were to focus.

Then the battery went dead, just when a butterfly sat down to feast on an Echinacea purpurea! Well, my daughter in law still had battery and she was thrilled, lucky her. 

Tall Ship Race Parade

On Saturday July 20th the Tall Ship Race of 2013 was heading out of Helsinki in a parade. My plan A was to go to the fortress island Suomenlinna as the best view of the ships would have been from Western cliffs of the island. Then the news said they feared too many people would rush to the island to get a view and that the delicate sand barriers above the cliffs are already suffering from the increased tourism this year. Thus I decided on plan B, Pihlajasaari, two islands right outside the opening to the harbor.

Many others had the same plan but we got out in time before the rush. There was plenty of space on the ferry and we had the time to walk bare foot across the island to get a cup of coffee at the restaurant. With the cups to go we headed to the Eastern cliffs for a view over the waterway. Slowly the shore was getting more and more crowded. People with and without various camera gear all over the place. The water was getting crowded by small boats.

Then finally the first ship came out. It was hard to get a clean shot of the boats for all the small boats following the parade close to the waterway. A good place to practice the golden quality of patience...wait...wait...wait...NOW! So I got one! Well a couple of others too but this is the best.

   And when it is impossible to leave out disturbing objects, the other option is to include them and make them a part of the picture as in the picture below. The small boats are giving a sense of proportion to the handsome Tall Ship Göteborg.

But the the best shot of the day came in a surprising way. We headed of the island before the parade was over to avoid getting stuck in the rush. Not always the best way of doing things, but my ability to be patient is good when waiting for a good shot but not when waiting an hour to get on a ferry when the event is over. This time I go lucky though. The ferry crossed the waterway very close to one tall ship, too close for the 70-200mm lens. So I pulled out my cell phone to see what it could do:  

 

Later I noticed it could have been worth it to stay longer on the island as the biggest Mexican tall ship left later on.

Tall Ship Race 2013 Helsinki in B&W

Continuing on my post from yesterday. As I worked through the pictures I took at the Tall Ship Race, I first had the feeling I'll just toss them all into the garbage bin. But after a little while I was indeed seeing the beauty I originally saw when taking the pictures. They just needed a little work to come out as my inner vision had seen them. Some pictures came out great by converting to B&W in Lightroom 5 and using a little Lens Effects to solve the problem of beautiful ships and details being absorbed by a detailed background. This actually brought a slight feeling of old times ti the old ships. What do you think?

 A sailor dressed up in old fashion standing on the dock beside the gorgeous Göteborg.

 The ship wheel of Albanus. Albanus is a traditional Finnish sailing vessel built of local pine tree at the Åland Islands.

 Astrid and a few other ships.

 A ship wheel.

The Gulden Leeuw.

Göteborg seen from across the harbor.

More ships coming in on wednesday morning

A lfeboat of the Mexican ship Cuauhtemoc

The difference between photography and painting

 Yesterday was a beautiful day visit the happening of  Tall Ship Race 2013 in Helsinki. It was mostly sunny with enough clouds to give the sky a little variation. I set out with the awareness that it was going to be challenging to get any clean shots of the ships and most of them had all ready arrived at the time I'd get there. There was going to be so many ships around the harbor, palced close to each other, a lot of people obscuring the view from shore but mainly because of all the enormous port cranes around the Western Harbor of Helsinki.

The happening was all in all enjoyable, good food and well organized except from the point of view of a photographer...food tents, speaker towers, trash cans, portable toilet boots and other stuff stuff all over the place and too close to the bigger boats so there was always something in the way to get shots from the side.

So I decided to focus more on details and overviews instead. That turned out to be a very good decision as I got a good deal of nice details and these two pictures to illustrate the point of this blog post.     

A woman painting a very nice picture of two boats. When painting you are free to leave out things like crossing ropes, parts of boats in the way and other disturbing objects. It turned out it was impossible to get those two boats in a picture without things crossing over from one side or another.  

Shot with EOS Mark II, EF-70-200 f4

Shot with EOS M, 22mm

But after walking a little bit more, I found I could get a clear shot  these two boats. They are not the same and there was not that clear water to include in the frame.