STRAP

IMPORTANT: The WORK blog is now combined with the regular blog. Click here for last year's WORK.

Lapin Ylioppilaslehti out! 22 Oct 2007 Posted by Jussi Leinonen.

Latest issue of Lapin Ylioppilaslehti (local student paper) just came out and it has an article about Kemijärvi, a town about 85 kilometers from Rovaniemi. I was the photographer for the story, written by Jenina Pyhäjärvi. Time spent in Kemijärvi was short and this was Jenina's first assignment as a writer for the paper, so I think we did pretty good. I'm not totally happy with the pictures, I wanted to do some street photography but couldn't do it because of the time spent there was so limited and I wasn't able to observe and capture anything good. Which in other words means I suck balls.
Anyway, check out the pictures by clicking this link with the left button on your mouse or if your mouse is manufactured by Apple, click the whole damn thing. Hit me up with comments if you dig this shiat-su, or if you don't.

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Picture of the day. 21 Oct 2007 Posted by Petri Uutela.

Nothing special going on at the moment... I have been spending a lot of time in the darkroom doing some proofs and prints and I will post something later on. Here's one street image from Helsinki taken with Mamiya 7. If you have an extra Mamiya 6 or 7 in your camerabag, please donate it to me, I'll take good care of it. And that is a promise.

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Changing servers.. 19 Oct 2007 Posted by Jussi Leinonen.

We just changed servers, so if something is working slow or not at all, it's because of that.
On story related news.. I'm pretty much done with my project for the summer, I'm waiting if I could get some pictures involving fresh snow to it. It would be a fresh touch and a great conclusion to the whole deal, for now atleast.
On Strap related news.. Petri has bought a scarf. It's one of those scarfs you see artists wear. I've now reserved a train ticket to Lahti in effort to beat the living shit out of him. I never saw him as the scarf type, but I guess I was wrong.

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Do the Hassel. 13 Oct 2007 Posted by Petri Uutela.

OK, boys and girls! Sorry, this is sort of tech-talk once again from me, but I am really excited about my recent adventure into the amazing world of middle format cameras, Hasselblad and especially Mamiya 7 rangefinder camera, so I have to share this with you. We have to do this "own project" thing with middle format cameras (school projects that is) and at the beginning I was totally unhappy with the whole thing because I had Mamiya RZ to work with...oh man, horrible camera to use in my kind of shooting. Luckily enough I got Mamiya 7 the last minute and it changed the whole thing: I believe this is the closest thing to Leica you can get in middle format. Absolutely fantastic results and fantastic camera. And about the results I have to say that ISO400 pushed to 1600 looks just fantastic...wow. Another camera I used was superwide Hasselblad 6x6. Image here is taken with that.

Deliberate motion blur, camera shake etc...sort of random shooting, that was the idea and I have to say that I am excited about the results... And I have to say that I am not really surprised that I got images I myself am happy with, because I was in very bad mood before taking these images...when I am in crappy mood I do the best photography I can. I have noticed this way back... So, for example if women related human relatioship issues don't go the way I would like = bad mood = better photos, haha. But I'm not joking, that is how I feel. Pain and misery are the best friends of an "artist" IMO.

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The decisive yawn. 12 Oct 2007 Posted by Jussi Leinonen.

Yadda yadda, yadda. Today's picture has nothing to do with the following text. I went to a photography exhibit today and I thought it was fullshit (my own word to describe something that is full of bullshit). It had a few of these modern photography pieces where all the picture gives us is the information, centered in a medium format frame. All you get is the people photographed, and that is a lot, but for me.. not enough. Some pictures had funny absurd feel to them, others had nothing. I wonder how it feels like to photograph with a style identical to thousands of others.

To me photography has the capacity to strike the nerve, stick to your head, no matter the subject matter. A photograph can distinguish a moment powerfully, even when the moment is of no significance. To strip a photograph down to nothing but the information is like telling a bad joke. It can be fun but when you hear the same shit for 20 times, you begin to understand how much bullshit it is.
Another thing I mentioned earlier and always have discussed this with my friend Petri from strap photos sex gods, is style. I strongly think that if one's work has no style, or desire for progress to develop style, it's worth nothing. Basically when your work is equilevant to the next man's work, it's bullshit. Many of the pictures I saw today reminded me of some work I had seen earlier, and in a way that disturbed me. I'm glad I didn't pay for what I saw today. I hope no-one will.
End of the absolute truth.

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Traditional B&W printing. 09 Oct 2007 Posted by Petri Uutela.

I have been doing some traditional black and white printing the past few days and once again I have to say I am totally and utterly amazed how much I prefer 35mm analog images compared to anything else. We have this middle format B&W course going on at our school and I have to say that I can't change my mind about me not liking the grainless and "too good" look of middle format images. At least they do not work on anything I shoot, I need to have this rugged 35mm look, I need to have grain in my images. And being in that darkroom made me once again realize how much I like this traditional stuff. The difference with working methods and results with digital vs. analog world...wow, they are so brilliantly different that I can't put it to words. I just looked at my prints made with my scanned images and oh boy, what a difference. Are you guessing which I prefer¿

This street scene is one of those prints made today (scanned with my cheap flatbed). And yes, I prefer the look of scanned prints over scanned and photoshopped negatives. I feel like stupid because I noticed this same thing over 1œ years ago...why did I go back to scanning negatives and not working in a darkroom¿ Please remind me.

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Littering buttholes. 08 Oct 2007 Posted by Jussi Leinonen.

I've written about the constant, drastic change in the city of Rovaniemi previously. Recently they put up these huge blocks of marble, and I think they're planning on putting lamps in them. The progress got stuck and these things are used as trash cans instead. Oh how I love human beings, how hard is it to drop your trash in the real trash can 5 meters further¿ Or should I give credit for their inventiveness (is that a word).

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What's wrong with the google people. 03 Oct 2007 Posted by Jussi Leinonen.

This picture is from the legendary Rovaniemi market, but that's not why I'm writing to you today.
We have Google Analytics running on this site, and it shows what search keywords people use to end up at strap-photos dot com. I know our name isn't the best when it comes to pornographic references, but we like it that way. Here's a list of some of the weird keywords people used to end up something around strap site, I'll put them in a fancy order type of thing because we now have this cool wysiwyg editor in our blog.

pictures of people getting thrown out a window
images of people that have had the strap
automatic nude image
naked winemaking pics
naked lady walking dog
strap on gods
girls age 12 to 14 nude with there brothers pic
guy taking a strap on
teenpussies
nude strap shoes photos

Some pretty nasty stuff there, some sad, some fun and some just make you go "what.." I mean naked winemaking pics, thrown out a window.. Sheeesh.

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Bad mood. 02 Oct 2007 Posted by Petri Uutela.

Oh, joy. I have been in a very bad and depressed mood for the past few days. Really frustrating, fu*k.

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Just an update. 30 Sep 2007 Posted by Petri Uutela.

I forgot to mention earlier that I found a writer who will to do the text to go with that long term project of mine I have mentioned you a couple of times. The goal is still to get the images and story published in some fine magazine before uploading the set to our website.

Earlier today I actually had something on my mind to write about, but I couldn't find a decent image to go with the text... Couldn't find a image dark and depressing enough. It seems that all my material is too happy and uplifting...
So today's image is a street image from Helsinki, the city I am learning to dislike more and more. When I took this shot I got into an sort of debate with some youngsters if it was OK or not to take this picture. You know, that man lying there didn't notice me taking the photo even if I took several frames and was very close. Well, I can't see any harm here, you can't even recognize the man...

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