Tomorrow!!

Today I'm going to Helsinki!!

There's a big event that is going to last for four days related to the Russian Orthodox church in Nordic countries, but we'll stay only until tomorrow evening. Tomorrow morning there'll be a big church service in the Uspenski Cathedral and there will be a Cossack choir from Russian singing. So... I kind of hope to shoot some awesome photos that day. :)

Brighton

Against the Past

On the bottom of an old money case

I found two shells and a stone;

They smell like candy and chalk,

They sound like footsteps on the shore.

I found them by accident,

Found, although did not search for,

At the bottom of a yellow-old purse.

They are magical, they contain a mirage;

A circus on wooden feet in the sea,

Too far away for book-blinded eyes to see,

Against ice-thin skies, against

Rosy tortilla clouds, against the world:

A travelling music that springs from a shell.

Photos&Poem: © Lina Sinenko

A Winter Day

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, on Saturday 30th of January I went out to shoot some photos of the lovely old wrecks of a house. Today I finally found the time to construct a more or less decent combination of them to publish here.

So, here's the outcome of my freezing little journey. (In order not to let my camera freeze I held it in my pocket with my bare hand in order to keep it warm... Can a digital camera freeze?! Can it? Oh well....)

Vähäjoki Valley.

On the way to the 'site'. Wading in 30 cm thick snow. <3

An ancient barn or something like that. Basically it stands in the middle of a field. Purpose - unknown.

This house is would be more or less decent and inhabitable if not the broken windows and cracked plaster.... and wrecked roof... well, maybe it's not that inhabitable.

First I thought of climbing in and getting some awesome shots with sunlight pouring in through broken windows and snow on the floor, but I had to give up on that idea, because the snow around the house was at least half a meter thick. I'm not kidding.

Another poor old house. There was a fire, I think. Long ago. But no one has bothered repairing it, and so it just stands there, windows broken, walls black with soot...

Photos: © Lina Sinenko 2010

One month of childhood

In exactly one month I will turn 18.....................

This is my little sister's (the older one's) birthday cake. She had her 10th birthday on 29th of January.

P.S. I received a double CD of Terry Lin from my friend from Hong Kong yesterday!!! The best early birthday present ever!!!!

Photos: © Lina Sinenko 2010

I draw, too....

I like drawing, honestly.

And painting, too. In fact, I love art. All art. And it feels really nice to make art yourself.

That's why I've been thinking that maybe I should upload pictures of some of my drawings sometimes. For a change.

I genuinely like photography, but let's face it: what one does if she's dead bored during, let's say, math class? Right. Draw. You just can't start taking photos in the middle of a math class.

This is a watercolour painting I painted on the day I learner that Michael Jackson had died. It was on the next day from his death.

My dad said this doesn't look like him, but oh well. Whatever, say I. At least I had fun for some two hours. And this is it.

Picture: © Lina Sinenko

Winter Sun

On Saturday January 30th I headed out with my camera despite almost 20 degrees of cold outside. My aim was to walk about half a kilometer along the abandoned country road from our house to the 'shooting site' I had chosen: a bunch of abandoned, wrecked houses overpowered by the mother nature on a narrow stripe of something like a forest in the middle of the fields.

I found the country road under the heaps of fluffy, sparkling stuff that reached the knee and at some point I even considered turning back...

The results of that little adventure coming soon :)

Experimental photography

This is an edited shot of a reflection in a window with a mosquito net.
I think it's pretty cool, especially with these colours. The funny thing is, that the original was more than horrifying.

Sunrise in a concrete box

My Little Sister

The Light of the Night

I don't live in a fancy, old part of the town, but I'm okay with that. One can find beauty anywhere, it's not even necessary to look very hard. However, it is necessary to see. That's a skill, too.

I wonder what it might be like to live in a huge city, in a real concrete jungle... I'm used to having the colour green around me. Well... there are parks in big cities, too. And in the end there always is the green traffic light!

Black-and-White

Lately I've been very much into black-and-white photography.

Here's the list of the photographers I like:

• Sebastião Salgado
• Henri Cartier-Bresson
• Don McCullin
• Manuel Alvarez Bravo
• Berenice Abbot
• Araki
• Walker Evans
• Man Ray
• Edward Steichen

I especially like Salgado, particularly this photograph of his:

Bati refugee camp, Ethiopia, 1984. ©Sebastião Salgado

For some reason I simply cannot get enough of this photograph. The light is absolutely amazing!

Self-portrait

This self-portrait is designed to show my true nature. :)

Jerusalem

Today, exactly 60 years ago Jerusalem became the capital of Israel.

Tripoddddd

I wants something liek this, srsly :3

...a tripod for my Canon would be nice.

It just cannot be helped that my hands shake sometimes when I take photos.

Trippppoooooodddddd!!!! :3

I wants it. =^w^=

A bit on the future projects...

I think it'd be nice to work on some real photo projects as soon as I get through all the schoolwork that is currently keeping me and my camera apart, which explains why the majority of the photos I have published in my blog so far are from the archives.

During the Winter Holiday in February I'm thinking of 'recruiting' my kid sis as a model and trying something vintage. It the weather will be good, I'd like to have some countryside winter photos taken.

As for future-future projects, I'm planning on shooting a some sort of 'jewelry ad' series of photos just for fun during the summer holiday. Something like 'Pearls in the Woods'. :D

Well, and I think I could also use child labour and have a session with my kid sis (again) and my cousin together out in the nature. 'The Spirits of the Forests' sort of thing. I'm very fond of magical, fairy tale -like photos. And GIMPing them to look old is a huge part of all the fun.

Memories

Old memories, old photos...

Like the snowflakes that the spring warmth melts, but which come back every November in shapes and sizes different from before, but just as recognizable and precious. Almost unchanged, just adapted to who you have become during the past sunny months.

And so you miss the times when you could ride a giraffe whenever you want to. Maybe it's my approaching 18th birthday that makes me turn back for a moment and stare in amazement at things I thought I didn't have.

...and the present is slipping into the past too. Although the time is just like Tiziano Terzani wrote: a river, where the past, the present and the future coexist simultaneously.

Missing the spring delusion of London

It's been 9 months since I visited London. Such a long time, it's almost unbelievable.

Now it feels like it all was just a beautiful, beautiful, surreal dream. Me? In London? Makes a good joke.

I miss London. It stole my heart. The best thing about a city that big is that there you don't have to belong anywhere at all or you can belong everywhere if you want to. That's how I felt.

The memory is like a fragile spring flower in the middle of winter.

Night in Turku

White sky, pink sky

White sky in the winter looks particularly depressing. There in no contrast and everything looks like a black-and-white image without black in it. A thick, white blanket of cloud falls on the earth and brings the sky too close. It makes the sky loose its magic.

That's why at a time like this I prefer to look at it through colour filter and see it, let's say, this way:

Because there is almost no direct light, it becomes hard to make photos look 'alive', the light that comes through the clouds flattens them.

This looks much better. :)

Even though the blue colour is very pale, it's enough to create a contrast with the white snow on the twigs. This makes the image more complete and satisfying at least from the point of view of the colour balance.

(Someone's trying to act all professional.)