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

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!

Self-portrait

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

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.)

Autumn Sun

Soft morning colours are the most beautiful. I never get tired of photographing the sky. No one seems to get. And I know why. That's all because we see ourselves in the sky, it is very similar to humans in the way it changes moods, the way it looks different every single day.

Last Warm Days

I went hunting for some beautiful local sceneries one afternoon in mid-autumn. Unlike planned, I didn't reach the brightly coloured birch and hawthorne islands, but instead got stuck in a fine pine wood just a few paces away from our house.

I like autumn. The sky is wonderfully photogenic - very very thin, watery-blue like when the snow just starts melting.