Category Archives: travel photography

Six picks: Suomenlinna sea fortress photo workshops

04 Sunday Jun 2017

Posted by in Finland, photography, travel photography

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With award winning travel photographer and author Tim Bird. That’s me. Explore Suomenlinna, Helsinki’s fabulous Baltic sea fortress, the top highlight of Finland’s capital, through the lens of your camera!

Spend a summer day exploring the limitless visual attractions of Suomenlinna, discovering new views and comparing notes with fellow photo enthusiasts of this beautiful UNESCO World Heritage-listed destination. I’ll be your English-language workshop tutor, not least as photographer and author of “Suomenlinna – Islands of Light” (Docendo 2017), a celebration in photographs and encounters with some of the islands’ most colourful residents.

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The emphasis will be on creativity and ways of seeing rather than technical issues, so this is not a “how to use your camera” course, although we’ll discuss and compare techniques where appropriate.

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Choose a date that suits you best from three separate workshops:

  • July 8 from 10 to 17
  • July 29 from 10 to 17
  • August 19 from 10 to 17
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Your tutor – me, i.e. Tim Bird

Workshop fee of €165 includes:

  • Tutoring, assignments and experienced advice in a compact group (maximum 8-10 per group, 7.5 hours)
  • With the group, use of a secure and cosy meeting room with all facilities in one of Suomenlinna’s historic buildings
  • Coffee/tea and fresh Finnish pulla
  • Buffet lunch at Suomenlinna’s Chapman restaurant
  • A signed copy of my book “Suomenlinna – Islands of Light” (Helsinki retail price €35-39)
  • Entry to the museum at Suomenlinna Centre to view my exhibition “Islands of Light”
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Fee does not include:

  • City ferry transport to and from the island (9.20 a.m. departure from Helsinki Market Square)
  • Meals and refreshments not included above

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You need:

  • a camera (preferably a digital DSLR with a formatted memory card), a versatile zoom lens or favourite prime lenses, your favourite kit, including tripods and filters
  • enthusiasm, open eyes and a sense of adventure!
  • Suitable clothing for the weather (wind and waterproof clothes, protection from sun, good shoes)

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How to guarantee your place at the workshop

  • be quick and confirm your place by replying to timothy.bird@kolumbus.fi
  • Please include your name, phone number, e-mail address, special diets and information about your experience of and aspirations for your photography

Six picks: Face to face with an Indian tiger

12 Wednesday Apr 2017

Posted by in travel photography, wildlife, wildlife

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I’ve just returned from India where I visited the Bandhavgarh National Park Tiger Reserve, as a guest of the delightful Junglemantra resort, right on the edge of the park’s buffer zone and close to the core area. The park is home to a great deal of wildlife including what is probably India’s highest concentration of wild tigers.

Hosts Sheilin and Rhea are effusively enthusiastic and very well-informed about the abundant wildlife – all sorts of birds, jackals, wild boar, leopards, spotted deer, sambar deer, monkeys, peacocks – on their doorstep. Sheilin is a keen wildlife photographer himself and was great company on the drives I took in the park.

The couple also do a lot of good NGO work in the nearby villages, where they arrange health clinics at the local school, for example. In their own words: “It is our policy to provide training and employment opportunities to local villages thereby reducing the dependence on the forest resources. We also support the local village school with books and teaching aids. At Junglemantra, we believe in sustainable eco-tourism, where tourism is for the forest and its denizens.”

My first evening started with a frenetic but exciting search in the dark for a tiger that had been feeding on a ‘kill’ a few hundred metres from the resort entrance! We didn’t find the tiger then, but I had some great sightings over the next few days of a mother and her three cubs. I was there during the pre-monsoon hot season, when the vegetation is dry and the animals make frequent visits to the watering holes in the park.

If you want to see tigers in India – and there are only a couple of thousand left – Bandhavgarh should be top of your list, and Junglemantra is hard to beat as a base – good food, comfortable bamboo huts, a nice lounge area, and expansive grounds that include a small lake frequented by lots of birds. Here are a few tiger shots to whet your appetite. .

If you’ve enjoyed your visit, do follow me and come back for more! Please remember, no reproduction of my photos without permission, but feel free to share the blog!

Thanks for dropping by!

Six Picks: highlights from India

21 Saturday Jan 2017

Posted by in Golden Triangle, India, photography, travel photography

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I travel a lot but I find myself returning to India more and more. For a photographer there is nowhere more rewarding. There are surprises, some small and quirky, some funny or tragic, some vast and majestic, around every corner.

Recently I have been organizing some of my best material, compiling a single gallery of highlights from the many visits I have made over the last decade or so. It made me appreciate the distances I have covered and the variety contained in this extraordinary continent, in which the mountainous regions of the north, for example, are as different from the tropical jungles of the south as Norway is from Spain. There are common threads running through India, of history and culture, but the landscapes and traditions vary immensely from one area to another.

So far I have added well over 1,000 images to my India gallery, which is on my website at this link:

http://timbirdphotography.photoshelter.com/gallery/India/G0000irlXmGr5Dyg/

I still have to add several hundred more images, from places like Varanasi, Srinagar in Kashmir, Haridwar and Mumbai, and complete the inclusion of key words and other info, so it’s a work in progress. I’m well on my way to making it one of the most comprehensive single galleries of photographs from India available anywhere.

Meanwhile, here are a few samples:

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The peak of Kanchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world, illuminated at sunrise as seen from Darjeeling in Assam. The peak itself is across the border in Nepal but the mountain is a precious cultural icon to Indians, too. 

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Fishermen on the beach at Mamallapuram. This small town, on the coast of the Bay of Bengal between Chennai and Pondicherry, is famous for its ancient temple carvings, but I spent more time photographing the fishermen early in the morning and in the evening than looking at the carvings.

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The Jama Masjid mosque in Old Delhi is reckoned to be the biggest place of Muslim worship in South Asia and was built under the rule of the 17th century Mughul emperor, Shah Jahan.

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At its most colourful, there is no more dazzling country on the planet than India. This is my friend Subrata at her wedding in the state of Assam in the northeast. I wanted to photograph her all day, she looked so stunning. Sorry, Subrata!

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A Sikh pilgrim at the Golden Temple in Amritsar. 

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Like the Golden Temple, the Taj Mahal at Agra lives up to the hype. The cool marble changes shade and mood during the day and is especially mysterious in early morning mist and dazzling in the late afternoon.

I hope you enjoyed this quick tour of India and introduction to my photos. If you are interested in taking advantage of my considerable photo resources from India, please get in touch through my website at www.timbirdphotography.com  And of course, I would be delighted if you follow this occasional blog. Thanks for dropping in!

Six Picks: highlights of 2016 – my Christmas gift to you!

25 Sunday Dec 2016

Posted by in Finland, India, lapland, photography, tourism, Travel, travel photography, Uncategorized

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It’s Christmas Day 2016 and I’m in a generous gift-giving mood, so for my review blog for the year I’m giving you not six, not seven, but EIGHT pictures. Well, that includes the header above, taken one November morning as the sun’s rays spread across the third highest mountain in the world, Kanchenjunga, from the West Bengal hill station of Darjeeling.

It’s been another exciting year with some amazing assignments and adventures. Here are a few highlights – well, seven to be exact:

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Reijo Jääskeläinen runs the Levi Husky Park near Levi in Finnish Lapland. In January I visited Lapland to write a story about how this part of Finland is becoming popular with film makers – with animals among the acting casts.

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In May I went to the one-time Finnish military island of Örö. It’s a spring tradition for myself and a group of friends to ‘conquer’ a different Baltic island. Because access was limited to the military for many years, Örö’s environment is especially pristine.

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My visit to Japan included a tour of the mountainous region north of Nagoya, where I went behind the scenes at a Kabuki theatre.

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Northern Kerala in India is the exclusive location of the weird and wonderful Theyyam ritual, a colourful spectacle involving several hours of make-up and an attempt by participants to become  inhabited or possessed by the deities they impersonate. Extraordinary.

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In the summer I found myself in Belfast in Northern Ireland for the first time, taking a tour in Billy Scott’s black cab around the city. This stop was at the Peace Wall which separates the Republican Falls Road and Loyalist Shankill Road communities.

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Capturing this shot of the Stromboli volcano erupting  in October was something a ‘bucket list’ moment. I’ve seen volcanoes smoking and steaming in Asia and all over Central America but I’d never seen or shot a full scale eruption before.

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I was honoured to attend the wedding of friends Drahkya and Subrata in the town of Nagaon in Assam, India in November. The hospitality of my hosts was overwhelming and the occasion was touching and colourful, and an opportunity to make new friends.

So where next? Lapland again, a voyage on a working icebreaker in the Baltic, and another India adventure are planned so far, but new years always bring new surprises. Watch this space…! And best wishes to all ‘visitors’ for a happy and peaceful Christmas.

Six picks: spring 2017, photo tour to Kerala

14 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by in India, photo tours, photography, Travel, travel photography

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Announcing an exciting opportunity to explore many of the highlights of this most photogenic of Indian States, brimming with exotic tropical colour and visual surprises. Join our compact group of photo enthusiasts in March 2017 for workshops, photo-shoots and inspiring photo chat as we explore a variety of cultural and scenic wonders.

Highlights include

  • The picturesque and emblematic Chinese fishing nets of Fort Cochin, Kerala’s bustling colonial port city
  • A private showing and photo-shoot of the enchanting Kathakali traditional dance
  • Visits to the Kadar, Malayar, Muthuvar and Mannaan tribal villages
  • Hiking in the spectacular tea plantations of the upland Munnar hill station area
  • A backwaters overnight voyage on a traditional wooden Kettuvallam boat
  • A visit to the colourful backwaters town of Kottayam

The ten-day tour has been planned in expert cooperation with the highly experienced UK-based adventure travel operator Intrepid. The itinerary is devised with special attention to the best photo opportunities and with time available for informal workshops, comparing notes and discussion. A local travel guide accompanies us, while Yours Truly, an award-winning English travel photographer and writer who has visited Kerala on several occasions and traveled extensively throughout India, supervises the photography. I’ve earned a few prizes for my work, including British Guild of Travel Writers’ Photographer of the Year in both 2012 and 2015.

INTERESTED? VISIT MY WEBSITE FOR CONTACT DETAILS

I will advise about the kind of camera gear that will be useful to have with you on the tour and I am available before and during the tour to discuss other photography-related aspects of the tour. My eBook, Motion Pictures – a travel photographer’s companion, is packed full of tips and anecdotes about his travels and photography experiences and is available for purchase through Amazon, Kobo, and for Apple iPads from iTunes. Tour participants will be offered a free PDF download of the eBook.

Accommodation will be in a range of exciting hotels of four-star standard, a secluded rainforest resort and on board a fabulous wooden Kettuvallam backwaters boat.

To get you in the mood, here are six photos from Kerala, giving you a taste of what to expect and the photographic riches on offer.

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The backwaters and traditional fishing nets of Kerala are a gift for photographers, especially in the subtle light of early morning or late afternoon.

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A dredging sand boat: the backwaters are a parallel world along the coast of Kerala, India’s southernmost state.

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A fisherman on the beach at Fort Cochin, where colonial Portuguese architecture and a rich trading history offer plentiful material for photo-shoots.

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The colourful traditional Kathakali performance. A special show will be arranged for our tour group, ensuring some unique photography.

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Tea plantations contrast with rugged landscapes in the mountainous Munnar area.

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Kerala is rich in wildlife, and if we’re lucky we’ll have a chance to photograph some of the wild elephants that inhabit the forests and nature reserves.

KEEN TO COMBINE YOUR LOVE OF TRAVEL WITH YOUR PASSION FOR PHOTOGRAPHY, IN THE COMPANY OF LIKE-MINDED, ADVENTUROUS PEOPLE? CONTACT ME FOR MORE INFORMATION.

 

Six picks: the Theyyam in northern Kerala

22 Saturday Oct 2016

Posted by in India, photography, travel photography

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A lamentably occasional photo blog in which I share some samples from my archives at www.timbirdphotography.com .

Did you miss me? I’ve been away from here for far too long but I’ve had lots of adventures with my camera while I’ve been away. I don’t have a good excuse for not posting for a while apart from other creative distractions going on – more news of those to come. I shall try to make up for lost time in the coming weeks with some photo selections that I hope you’ll enjoy.

I’ve been sifting through my archives and amazing myself at all the extraordinary things I’ve seen and the places I’ve visited since the last time I posted anything. Top of my list is the Theyyam ritual ‘performance’, for want of a better word, which you’ll only find in the northern part of the Indian state of Kerala. This is very much a living tradition, a ritual of great significance to local people, not just staged for tourists. There are often several Theyyams being performed each night during the winter season at shrines, many of them in remote villages. Theyyams can continue through the course of a night from dusk to dawn, and sometimes even longer.

An important part of the ritual is the preparation, in which intricate make-up and elaborate costumes are applied to the ‘actors’, whose aim over the course of the enactment is to actually become the deity that they represent, not just play its part. The trance into which they attempt to enter is induced to the accompaniment of frenetic drumming. Only men and boys are permitted to represent the characters, and only members of the Dalit or low-caste community are allowed to serve as actors. It is a rare case of Dalits being held traditionally in great respect by members of higher castes.

I stayed near the small fishing town of Kannur and attended three different Theyyams during my visit.

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Making up is very hard to do: face and body decorations preceding the Theyyam can take several hours and is a highly skilled art form in itself.

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After make-up, dressing up. Costumes are very colourful, and very heavy.

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A Theyyam character (there are hundreds of them) ready to ‘perform’.

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The character ‘actors’ need plenty of stamina.

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Some Theyyams involve dancing and the acting out of ritual scenes.

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Assistants provide support as the characters ‘become’ the deities they represent.

If you’d like to see more of my Theyyam photos, click here to visit a gallery on my website.

All photos produced with Fujifilm X-Series cameras and Fujinon lenses.

Please follow this blog and watch out for the next edition!

Six Picks: Suomenlinna, fabulous in winter

15 Friday Jan 2016

Posted by in tourism, Travel, travel photography, Uncategorized, winter

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A shamefully occasional photo blog presenting six-at-a-time appetizers of the delights in my photographic larder. Sneak in for a midnight feast at www.timbirdphotography.com

The most exotic and exciting venue for photography for me in the locality of my home in Helsinki, Finland, has always been the historic island fortress of Suomenlinna (literally, Finland’s fortress). Helsinki is a vibrantly modern city but that means it’s short of truly old historic districts. Suomenlinna’s ramparts and defences are built across a small archipelago of rugged islands, a mere 20 minute ferry ride from the city’s main market square. A UNESCO listed World Heritage site, it’s a wonderful place to visit at any time of the year, romantic and windswept and with wide sea views.

For myself, winter has always been the best time to visit, especially when (or in these days of unpredictable climate, if) the sea freezes. This winter has been the coldest for some years and that means dramatic sea ‘smoke’, the effect of very cold air sweeping across not-yet freezing water. There has been a fair amount of snow, too, with more to come, it seems.

And it also seems that my fondness for Suomenlinna in the winter is being increasingly shared. Today I got a press release recording the fact that the numbers of winter visitors have soared. There was an increase of 14 per cent in the total number of visitors in the winter months in 2015, and the total of over 200,000 was a new record.

Since this means I might not have the place to myself in coming years, I don’t know if celebrations are called for, but in any case I’ll mark the news by showing six of my best shots from the dramatic afternoon on January 5 when the the entire archipelago and South Harbour were enveloped in that extraordinary ‘sea smoke’. Here goes:

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Visiting Suomenlinna while in Helsinki is easy – just jump on the ferry. Helsinki city transport tickets are transferable. Click here to find the timetable from the Kauppatori (Market Square). More information about Suomenlinna and its museums and restaurants: click here.

If you’ve enjoyed your visit to Six Picks, come back and let me distract you again some time, or visit previous blogs in the series. And feel free to Tweet toot, hoot, share and anything else that social media well let you do – but remember copyright is MINE! If you’d like to use the photos for any other purpose please get in touch.

Six Picks: the Estonian island of Hiiumaa

20 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by in Estonia, Travel, travel photography

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A lamentably irregular photo blog, presenting half-dozen selections from my archives and/or recent travels. Find more at www.timbirdphotography.com

Apologies for absence. I haven’t been blogging for a while, but a long weekend of cycling and hiking on the lovely island of Hiiumaa off the Estonian Baltic coast has moved me to share some shots.

We reached Hiiumaa by bus from Tallinn, the capital. The bus ticket includes the hour-long ferry ride from Haapsalu on the mainland – itself worth an exploration, with its old wooden quarter, intimate local bars and castle. In the island ‘capital’ Kärdla, we stayed at the Kaptenite Villa (their website seems to be under maintenance currently, and it was formerly known as Villa Loona), a very hospitable guesthouse run by mother and daughter Maria and Sigrid, whose breakfasts lived up to their ‘luxurious’ billing. Highly recommended as a base for a visit.

Like its bigger and better known neighbour island Saaremaa, Hiiumaa was a ‘closed’ island during Estonia’s Soviet era, with military bases dotted around the coastline. This ‘closed’ status, which forbade visits by foreigners and most Estonians, means that the natural environment is especially well preserved.

My friends and I rented bicycles and braved the elements (Estonia in the spring can be cold and blustery). Here are a few highlights:

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Tahkuna Lighthouse, one of several lighthouses on the island and the site of a memorial to the wreck of the MS Estonia in September 1994.

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The entrance to a military museum near Tahkuna is marked by a Soviet tank with flowers placed in its barrel.

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The shingle spit at Sääre tirp, with millpond calm to the east and angry seas to the west.

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Barrel chalet accommodation in the community of Kassari.

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Grazing sheep at Orjaku

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Wild spring flowers – cowslips and forget-me-nots – in a meadow close to Kärdla, Hiiumaa’s main town.

I strongly recommend a visit to Hiiumaa. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoyed this brief introduction to an Estonian treasure. Welcome back, and please share, shout, tweet, hoot and Google Plus as much as you like – but please give credit where it’s due and remember copyright is MINE, ALL MINE!

Six Picks: the Cathedral of Tampere in central Finland

26 Thursday Mar 2015

Posted by in architecture, art, culture, travel photography

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A regular themed photo blog selected from images either in or on their into my website archive at www.timbirdphotography.com

I just paid a flying visit to Tampere, a city on the confluence of two big lakes in central Finland, and dropped in to what is one of my favourite buildings in the whole country, the city’s cathedral. It was designed by Lars Sonck, a prime exponent of the Finnish National Romantic architectural style at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, a kind of cultural expression of national identity when Finland was still governed as a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire.

Much of the best and most distinctive architecture and art in Finland dates to this period; the National Museum and National Theatre in Helsinki are other examples, as is Hvitträsk, a wonderful lakeside Tolkienesque fantasy in wood and granite close to the capital, the former home and collective studio-cum-drinking den of three architects, Gesellius, Lindgren and Saarinen, and now a museum. The cathedral’s materials of wood and granite, as well as evocative symbolic frescoes, paintings and stained glass, are typical of what I think is a very appealing style.

Tampere Cathedral contradicts the idea that all Lutheran churches are restrained and sombre. In fact when it opened in 1907 the cathedral was controversial with worshippers who wondered, for example, why a symbol of the devil, a snake fresco, was featured in its interior.

Here, then, are six picks from my visit.

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Tampere Cathedral – straight out of Tolkien. Greatness in granite.

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The ceiling of the Cathedral bears the image of a snake by Hugo Simberg.

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View towards the altar, showing the vaulted ceilings, a kind of romantic Gothic, with the altarpiece and stained glass window designed by Magnus Enckell.

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The Burning Bush is one of six stained glass windows by Hugo Simberg.

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Twelve boys hold the Garland of Life, a fresco running around the gallery, painted by Simberg.

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The main door of the Cathedral. You can see many heavy wooden doors and whimsical granite arches like this in the Jugendstil districts of Helsinki, such as Katajanokka and Eira.

 

 

If you’ve enjoyed this glimpse of my photography, please follow and come back for more next time, as well as Tweet, Hoot, Shout and Share. And do visit my website at www.timbirdphotography.com

http://visittampere.fi/

Read an essay by Elisa Valtonen about the Cathedral here:

http://www15.uta.fi/FAST/FIN/REL/ev-cathe.html

For info about Hvitträsk:

http://www.nba.fi/en/museums/hvittrask

Six Picks: Arctic Snow Hotel, Rovaniemi, Lapland

02 Monday Mar 2015

Posted by in Arctic travel, hotels, lapland, Travel, travel photography, winter

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An occasional photo blog presenting six themed shots from Tim Bird’s travel photo archives – visit www.timbirdphotography.com

It’s a drab and relatively snowless winter in southern Finland and skiers and skaters, of which there are many in this part of the world, are lamenting the lack of the white stuff. Up in Lapland, a thousand or so kilometres, it’s a different story – there’s always lots of snow up there. I was there myself a few weeks ago, and one of the highlights of the trip was a visit to the Arctic Snow Hotel, just above the Arctic Circle and close to the provincial Lapp capital of Rovaniemi.

This isn’t the only architecture of snow and ice in the northern Nordic area, of course. There’s an annual Snow Castle at Kemi on Finland’s north-west coast celebrating its 20th year in 2015 (I’ve stayed at that one too) and igloos full of Auorora-hunting Japanese couples at Kakslauttanen near Finland’s Saariselkä ski resort, where I also spent one icy night. They’re wonderful creations which usually start to thaw at the end of March and whose inside temperatures soar to minus five – compared with minus 20 to 30 outside. Being an honorary Finn, I can’t bring myself to name those impostors on the Swedish side of the border.

So to deliver a taste of winter to snow-free zones, here are six images from the Arctic Snow Hotel. If you want to stay there, you’ve got one month left – they’re taking bookings until ‘around’ March 31!

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Snow sculptures on the walls, the work of local art students.

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Reindeer pelts on beds of ice, and a fire place made of ice! Real fires not recommended.

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A ghost in the ice chapel. Weddings are held here.

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Gothic lighting in the ice restaurant.

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Cool suite in the Arctic Snow Hotel.

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The Ice Bar, always on the rocks.

Visit the Arctic Snow Hotel web site at http://www.arcticsnowhotel.fi/

If you’ve enjoyed this little pictorial distraction please Share, Tweet, Like, and watch this space for more Six Picks photo blogs.