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~ Selections from Tim Bird's travel photography archives

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Tag Archives: helsinki

When Santa’s presence made me mad

17 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by Tim Bird in Christmas, Finland, Uncategorized

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Arctic Circle, Christmas, christmas in finland, christmas in helsinki, finland, helsinki, Rovaniemi, santa claus, Santapark

Christmas 1994, the first in our house, and the first with two little Finnish stepdaughters who still viewed their new foreign stepfather with more than a little suspicion. What better way to break the ice than buy myself a red gown and some cotton wool and dress up as Santa? Pity my wife didn’t tell me she had ordered a similarly attired visitor who rang the door bell before I had time to change into my festive kit. The little girls were happy, but I am annually reminded that, if looks could have killed, the Father Christmas who delivered the presents in our lounge that day wouldn’t be delivering presents anywhere else ever again. Thanks, Santa, for stealing my thunder.

Nothing else this time, just a taste of Christmas in Finland:

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Father Christmas’ one true home is in Lapland on the Arctic Circle near the Finnish city of Rovaniemi. The ferocity with which Finns defend their faith in this truth is almost scary. Woe betide anyone who dares to suggest that the old fella comes from Norway or Sweden or Greenland.

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Christmas porridge in Helsinki’s Senate Square. Find an almond in your porridge and you’ll soon find a spouse, if you haven’t already got one. Really.

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Woolen socks and mittens at the Three Smiths Square Christmas market in Helsinki.

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‘Elves’ choir lets off steam on the steps of the Lutheran Cathedral in Helsinki.

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Women’s Christmas Market, Vanha Satama, Helsinki.

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Helsinki’s Esplanade Park in snow and Christmas lights.

Above: Christmas in Helsinki, quickly.

Have a good one, everyone.

 

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Celebrating a century of Finland

05 Tuesday Dec 2017

Posted by Tim Bird in celebration, Finland, Independence

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

celebrations, centenary, centennial, December 6, finland, Finnish Independence, flagwaving, helsinki, Independence Day, sauna, tradition

December 6 is Independence Day in Finland and this time around it marks a century of independence, snatched from Russia in 1917 while that country was distracted with the small matter of a revolution. Usually the occasion is marked with a sedate and rather tedious queue of dignitaries at the President’s Palace in Helsinki and the lighting of candles in windows. I’m hoping that this time things might get a little wilder, in view of the significance of the event.

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This is what Finns do when they win the Ice Hockey World Championships.

It dawned on me today that I have been living in Finland for more than a third of its independent existence, having arrived laden down with luggage, a wide-eyed and innocent 26-year-old, on the Viking Line ship from Stockholm in late August 1982.

Fitting, then, that I’m writing this on the Viking Line ship from Tallinn, not quite so wide-eyed or innocent. Narrow-eyed, in fact, after a trip through the Baltics that included one or two samples of various national beverages.

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Guaranteed to break the ice: the state-of-the-art Polaris icebreaker went into service in 2017, adorned with the Finland 100 logo.

Like all expats, and in spite of having lived here for my entire adult life (which didn’t really start until about 1990 and which some might say has still to get going) I moan about Finland. I moan about the price of beer. I moan about how Finns, in spite of the price of beer and other drinks, go out of their way to get legless. I moan about the endless roadworks and construction sites, about how nobody says ‘thanks’ when I hold the door open for them. I moan about the length of the winter and how the guys with the snow ploughs pile up the snow in front of my gate. Probably unfair these days, since the guys with the ploughs are quite likely to be Estonian. About how the neighbours pile on the peer pressure by cutting their hedges immaculately while I let mine grow ragged. Nothing to do with the fact that they are Finnish, of course, and more to do with the fact that I am lazy.

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The Finnish winter – beautiful, but on the long side. A view from Lapland.

Since I have also spent a large part of my professional life singing Finland’s praises in books and articles and radio interviews, I feel entitled to have a go at it sometimes. Of course, if this Brexit nonsense goes through I might have to think about being a Finn myself before too long. In which case, I suppose I’ll have to review my moaning strategy.

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A typically healthy blue-and-white Finnish complexion.

But this week Finns are rightly taking the opportunity to celebrate all the good things about their country, and I have to own up to the fact that Finland has been pretty good to me when all is said and done. It lets me speak English most of the time for one thing. So I’m adding my voice to the chorus of congratulatory celebrations.

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The Finnish sauna. Had to be mentioned.

This is a country that still has a fantastic health service which has come to the rescue of myself, my family and my friends on many occasions, at little cost, for example. It seems like a much more confident and outward-looking country than it was when I first came here. Not always as perfect as it would like to think, in spite of all those world surveys that say it’s best at everything. But pretty good when you compare it to various other countries. And anyway, any country that really was perfect would have to be pretty boring.

So happy birthday, Finland, and thanks for all the opportunities you’ve put my way. And talking of opportunities, before the next century is up, just try to get the hang of the difference between opportunity and possibility.

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New Year’s Eve at midnight, December 31, 2016 – celebrations marked the beginning of the centenary year

Onneksi olkoon, Suomi, ja kippis!

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Singing the praises of the beautiful book

26 Sunday Nov 2017

Posted by Tim Bird in books, bookshops, helsinki, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

awards, Baltic, book, design, graphic design, helsinki, islands, photography, suomenlinna, travel photography, UNESCO World Heritage

It’s probably hopelessly old fashioned of me but I love books and bookshops. Books in covers, made of paper, lovingly conceived, designed, produced and edited. I feel protected, safe and at home walled-in by them in a bookshop. Especially proper bookshops, where the books are piled high in apparent disorder but whose shopkeepers know exactly where to find the book you might be looking for.

I took to reading novels and guidebooks with Kindle on my iPad for a while, and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. The most important thing is that people write and people read, and to some extent the format is irrelevant as long as that continues. I would say that the digital format is less conducive to concentration, however. And rumours of the death of the book are premature.

In any case, to my mind the physical, tactile, artifact book is in the top tier of creative production. Books are to keep or, at worst, to resell. Unlike newspapers and magazines, books are rarely thrown out for recycling. Opening a box of new books fresh from the printers (as long as the printers have done their job properly) and inhaling that fresh print aroma is one of the great joys of life.

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In the running for Finland’s Most Beautiful Book of the Year, with text in English and Finnish

So I was thrilled this week to learn that my latest book, Suomenlinna – Islands of Light, is being entered in the Most Beautiful Books of the Year awards in Finland by the publisher, Docendo. This is the kind of book that wouldn’t work well on an iPad. It’s a book for browsing at leisure in a way you couldn’t really do on a digital screen. Bear in mind too that Finland was rated as the World’s Most Literate Nation in 2016, so it should know a thing or two about what makes a good book.

The honorary awards (no cash or other prizes are handed out) are judged by the Finnish Book Art Committee, whose aim is…

…to draw attention to the book as an artistic whole. When choosing the Most Beautiful Books of the Year the Committee tries to find works in which form and content support each other as well as possible. The starting point for evaluating works is the overall graphic design, beginning with the typography and ending with the finished printed product. As well as classical printing skills, the Committee values fresh and new creative solutions.

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Back cover shot from Islands of Light. Suomenlinna feels a world apart from Helsinki, although it’s only a 15-minute ferry ride away.

The beauty of book, which is a collection of photographs of Helsinki’s most atmospheric and historic quarter, its UNESCO World Heritage-listed sea fortress, is largely thanks to its designer, my friend Ea Söderberg. She also designed my eBook, Motion Pictures – a travel photographer’s companion. OK, so I’ll snatch some of the credit for the contents. Especially since I’ve spent countless hours out there in all weather. But I can’t design books. That is a different talent with which Ea is blessed. The shots here are from the book.

View of Suomenlinna from Vallisaari island, Helsinki

View of Suomenlinna from Vallisaari island, Helsinki. Vallisaari is one of several islands that used to be restricted to the military for many years but which are now opening up to the public. A good thing too: why should the military get all the best islands?

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As well as showing view of the islands throughout the year, the book introduces some members of the community who live and/or work in the fortress – artists, musicians, craftspeople, museum curators, naval officers, all sorts of interesting people. This is traditional boat builder Mikael Holmström.

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If you get the chance to visit Suomenlinna on a really cold winter’s day, when the steam is rising from the sea as the mercury plummets, you might be rewarded with scenes like this. Your fingers might also drop off if you’re not wearing gloves. Then how will you turn the pages of my book when you’ve bought it?

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The view of Helsinki looking north across the South Harbour from Suomenlinna. I wish I had a euro for every time I’ve made the ferry crossing over this little stretch of water in the last few years. 

Obviously I’m not going to wind up without urging you to consider Islands of Light for your Christmas shopping list. Not as a stocking filler, unless you want big book-shaped stockings, but as a full-blown gesture-of-love top-class gift! You can order it online at this link or contact me directly if you have any trouble getting your hands on a copy! And wish me luck in those awards.

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The Northern Lights are in my mind

19 Sunday Nov 2017

Posted by Tim Bird in Arctic travel, aurora borealis, lapland, northern lights, Uncategorized

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

arctic, Arctic Circle, astronomy, aurora borealis, finland, helsinki, Lapland, northern lights, sky, travel photography

It’s a glum wet day in Helsinki and I intend to brighten up your virtual inner sky by sharing some photos of the Northern Lights, or aurora borealis. The techies among you will know that this wondrously surreal phenomenon – for my money the most profoundly moving, beautiful and enchanting on or around the planet – is the result of collisions between charged particles released from the sun with gaseous particles in the Earth’s atmosphere. I don’t really care what causes them, but I thought I’d better let you know that. While you’re watching them, you won’t care either, you’ll just gawp in wonder. You’ll feel like laughing. It’s too ridiculously amazing to be true.

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Minus 25, but worth crawling out of my lakeside glass igloo in Finnish Lapland just after midnight. Wrap up warm if you intend to indulge in this kind of madness: jumping around just isn’t enough.

I first heard about the Northern Lights in a song by the 1970s band Renaissance. “The Northern Lights are in my mind, they guide me back to you,” their beautiful woman singer sang, to an irresistibly catchy tune. I had no idea what she was on about then. I thought she might be singing about the nighttime attractions of Blackpool or some other northern English city. Now I know what they were on about, I wonder why there aren’t more songs about it.

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This was one result of a spectacular night that I spent entirely alone at the Joulukka Christmas theme lodge near the Arctic Circle in Lapland. It was September, so the lake wasn’t yet frozen. It is often assumed that the aurora can only be seen on cold winter nights, but autumn and spring are also good times.

The first time I actually witnessed this awesome – and I really do mean awesome – natural phenomenon was on a frozen lake in Finnish Lapland in about 1984, when I jumped around in the company of two other more-than-slightly intoxicated Englishmen, like children on a sugar rush at a magic show, shouting and pointing at the sky in mesmerized disbelief, wondering if our drinks had been spiked.

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Appearances of the Northern Lights in Helsinki in southern Finland, which is on the same latitude as Lerwick in Shetland, are not quite as unusual as people think, but sightings this spectacular, with this corona effect, are rare. I shot this from the top of my road in March 2015. I’m not sure I’ll ever see it this powerful again in Helsinki.

You can’t just see the Northern Lights and tick them off your list. Once you’ve seen them, you have to see them again. And again. It becomes an obsession. I’ve got three Apps on my phone and another one on my iPad telling me when a ‘performance’ might be possible. I’ve flown to Lapland and travelled to remote locations to freeze under starlit skies with the sole intention of watching the aurora. I wander around bumping into trees by the river near my Helsinki home, staring at the sky, in the often vain hope of photographing, or just catching a glimpse of the curtains of colour being shifted around the sky by some giant unseen hand.

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Not my best aurora shot but one that illustrates that you can see the Northern Lights as far south as Helsinki – and even in August. This is on the edge of Helsinki’s Central Park and the artificial light is from Helsinki Airport.

So that’s another confession off my chest. If you’d like to share my obsession, assuming you don’t already, you need to be a long way north, the sky needs to be clear, and it helps to get away from urban light pollution. And although it’s great fun to photograph them, try to remember not to get too obsessed with photographing them. Submit to the spectacle. Be transfixed!

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In the Norwegian mountains. My host was a fish factory manager who offered to take me for a drive into the mountains in case we could see the aurora. We waited in this spot for two hours until just after midnight to get this show. Some people in ‘aurora countries’ are inexplicably blase about the phenomenon. This fellow shared my excitement, even though he’d probably seen it a thousand times.

The Alaska Geophysical Institute has quite a good site here, with regional maps giving predictive information: http://www.gi.alaska.edu/AuroraForecast  But unlike some of the tourists who flock to northern Finland with a sighting at the top of their list, don’t assume that you can flick a switch on any given winter’s evening to make the aurora appear.

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Another rare Helsinki sighting, from the island of Harakka. I was shooting the frozen Baltic in the afternoon and started getting aurora alerts on my phone. I hung around until after dark and this was my reward.

Oh and that song by Renaissance – you’ll find it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvFPlWh1yQY

 

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Six picks: join my workshop for a photographer’s day out in Helsinki’s sea fortress!

04 Sunday Jun 2017

Posted by Tim Bird in Finland, photography, travel photography

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

finland, helsinki, suomenlinna, travel photography, UNESCO World Heritage, workshop

There are still places available on all three of my summer photo workshops on Suomenlinna, Helsinki’s fabulous Baltic sea fortress, the top highlight of Finland’s capital.  Workshops are on July 8, July 29 and August 19.

Contact me by email at timothy.bird@kolumbus.fi !

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. Enthusiasm is more important than your knowledge of photography!

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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, although point-and-shooters are also welcome, with a formatted memory card)
  • enthusiasm, open eyes and a sense of adventure!
  • Suitable clothing for the weather (wind and waterproof clothes, protection from sun, good shoes)
  • Suomenlinna’s streets are often cobbled and other surfaces are rocky and uneven, so do bear this in mind

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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

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Six Picks: Suomenlinna, fabulous in winter

15 Friday Jan 2016

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

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

finland, helsinki, ice, suomenlinna, travel, travel photography, winter

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.

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Six Picks: the Cathedral of Tampere in central Finland

26 Thursday Mar 2015

Posted by Tim Bird in architecture, art, culture, travel photography

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Cathedral, finland, helsinki, Hugo Simberg, Hvitträsk, Jugendstil, Lars Sonck, National Romantic, Tampere

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

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Six Picks: New life for Söderskär Lighthouse

02 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by Tim Bird in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Baltic, finland, helsinki, lighthouse, Moomins, Söderskär Lighthouse, Tove Jansson

Six images in a (fairly) regular photo blog chosen from my archives and latest assignments: www.timbirdphotography.com

The Söderskär Lighthouse is a couple of hours by tourist launch from central Helsinki and half an hour by faster motor boat from the Vuosaari district. The 150-year old lighthouse is unused these days for its original purpose, but it’s popular with day-trip tourist groups who head out here from late June to mid August from both Helsinki and nearby Porvoo, avoiding the early summer bird nesting season. The lighthouse gave inspiration to the creator of the Moomins, Tove Jansson, in her Moominpapa at Sea, in which the Moomintroll family take up residence in… a lighthouse. Jansson knew these waters and islands well and spent summers on another nearby island.

There are a few basic rooms in one of the renovated outhouses for those who want to stay the night (for a fee, naturally), and overnight packages include an evening meal, breakfast and lunch the next day. The place can be booked for special functions too. There’s a good old fashioned wood burning sauna too. You’ll find all the contacts and details for tours and visits at the link above.

Luckily no other visitors were there during my late summer visit with three friends, just the friendly warden and the boatman. Standing on top of a lighthouse on a pretty much deserted Baltic island under a starry sky is a surreal and wonderful experience. Here are a few shots to prove it:

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Light from the town of Porvoo beams across to the Söderskär Lighthouse.

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A light in the lighthouse keeper’s house still shines.

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Tourists can visit the lighthouse for day trips – or to spend the night. It’s popular with birdwatchers but its status as a nesting area means part of the area is off limits during the nesting season.

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A hanging bridge adds an element of adventure when crossing from one island to another – especially in the dark. Three people at a time only!

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The view from the lantern chamber. Estonia is to the south across the Baltic.

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When it was functioning, Söderskär marked the south-eastern approach to Helsinki. It stands on one of a small archipelago of typically rugged Baltic islands.

Thanks for dropping in and please do follow future blogs. Also please feel free to share, tweet, twot, google, gaggle and toot the actual blog to all and sundry… but please remember that copyright rests with the photographer, that is, me, Tim Bird, and you need to get permission for any other use. Thanks!

 

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Six Picks: Finalists and winners

13 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by Tim Bird in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Blue Wings, competitions, final, finland, helsinki, India, Kensington, London, Royal Geographical Society, Taj Mahal, Thailand, Timothy Allen, TPOTY, Travel Photographer of the Year, travel photography, triumph, Udaipur, Vappu, World Cup Final

Six images in a weekly photo blog from my constantly expanding archives at www.timbirdphotography.com and bulging hard drives.

It’s World Cup Final day, and this week I’m taking the opportunity to recall some of my own photographic triumphs and near-misses.

Last week I was in London for the opening of the Travel Photographer of the Year 2013 competition exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington. The creator of the competition, Chris Coe, and his wife Karen have developed this contest to be among the world’s top showcases for travel photography, encouraging amateurs as well as professionals to enter their work and giving a boost to young aspiring enthusiasts. I’ve entered the competition every year for at least seven of the ten competitions judged so far – number 11 is open for entries right now until October 1 – and I’ve had varying degrees of success. I’ve entered again this year, so keep your fingers crossed.

I like entering competitions, partly as a way of increasing my confidence as a photographer and partly to match myself against other photographers. You can always learn something new in photography and you can do that by seeing what other people are doing. Being able to tag “Award Winning” to my description also helps to convince editors that I can shoot as well as write, not something that everyone can do. At the TPOTY opening I had another chance to meet and compare notes with photographers from all over the world. The deserving overall winner this year was Timothy Allen (bad move on my part, this – now I’ve linked you up to his page, you’ll probably never come back to mine!), an intrepid and talented photographer whose professional credits include the stills for the BBC TV series Human Planet.

So in this week’s Six Picks forgive me if I take the opportunity to indulge in some celebration of some of the prizes I have won in recent years.

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Planet Ant, a highly commended entry from the Digital Photographer of the Year competition a few years back. Taken in Koh Chang in Thailand in 2009

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The Travel Photographer of the Year competition celebrated its tenth anniversary last year with a separate “10 for 10” contest. My Splash of Colour shot won the overall prize and it’s on show at the exhibition in Kensington until August 17 (see below). It was shot in Udaipur in India in 2013. I won a handy and versatile Fujifilm X20 compact camera for this one.

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May Day (Vappu) band in Helsinki. This shot earned me a Highly Commended in the TPOTY competition, single image Festivals category, in 2006.

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A young cricketer in Agra, India, with the Taj Mahal looming through the mist. This won the Famous Places category in the AA Holiday Photographer of the Year 2008 – and earned me a cruise for two in the Canary Islands.

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Buddhist monk novices in Bodh Gaya, Bihar, India, the site of the original Tree of Enlightenment. This was one of four images published in the Finnair inflight magazine Blue Wings that earned me the title of British Guild of Travel Writers Photographer of the Year for 2012 – and a commission to shoot for the Sarawak Tourist Board in Borneo.

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Ghost ship to Stockholm: third prize in the Finnish Readers’ Digest / Matkaopas magazine / Kamera magazine Travel Photographer 2009 competition. Taken on the island of Suomenlinna in Helsinki with the help of the Silja Line ferry. The prize for this was a Canon Powershot camera.

If you are in London, drop in to the TPOTY exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington. It’s free of charge and runs until August 17. Many of the pictures are displayed outside in the courtyard, with the pervading and exotic perfume of jasmine flowers lending an appropriate sense of far-off places. The exhibition shop includes postcards, prints and posters from the competition Collection, soon to include another of my own short-listed entries, as well as the Journey series of compilations of previous competitions. The shot from Udaipur above is included in the latest volume, Journey Six.

Please feel free to share this weekly photo blog and to follow future issues. But please request permission before re-using this photos in any other context, including commercially – copyright remains with the photographer, that is, me, Tim Bird.

You’ll find more of my photos at www.timbirdphotography.com.

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Six Picks: Helsinki – world’s best summer city

06 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by Tim Bird in Uncategorized

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Tags

Baltic, finland, helsinki, Lutheran Cathedral, Market Square, Sibelius, summer, Vantaa

Six themed images from the archives at www.timbirdphotography.com.

This week I wish it was 12 picks, not just six. The summer in Helsinki – when it finally arrives in earnest – is, well, more summery than just about any other city I know. The sun barely sets, there are mountains of berries in the market places, there’s a continentally European feel to the cafes and bars spilling out onto the pavements, and the Baltic horizon is dotted with sails, cruise ships and tourist boats. This week we’re in holiday mood, so here is a quick photo tour – almost as quick as the summer itself – on this magical July evening in the Finnish capital. Not just a run-through of the main tourist sights.

New potatoes in the market places are a sure sign that the Helsinki summer has arrived.

New potatoes in the market places are a sure sign that the Helsinki summer has arrived.

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Get on your bike and cycle around the Helsinki shoreline and you’ll come across plenty of small, sometimes quirky cafes and ice cream kiosks. This one, Regatta, isn’t far from the Sibelius monument but thankfully off the itinerary for the bus loads of Japanese tourists that make a beeline for this tribute to Finland’s most famous composer.

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The classic harbour view of the Neo-Classical centre of Helsinki, dominated by the Lutheran cathedral. The quayside market square is in the foreground.

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The summer climaxes with the Helsinki Festival in August. The 2013 festival included the Harmonic Fields installation along the shore front close to Eira and Hernesaari – literally, wind instruments.

summerblog2

If I could do it all again… Helsinki is a great place to be young.

summerblog0

Traditional hay making in full swing in the fields near the manor at Tapaninvainio, close to the Vantaa River. Anyone can join in.

If you’ve enjoyed these quick glimpses from my photo archives, please share and follow this weekly blog. And take a look at my substantial photo galleries from Finland and around the world at www.timbirdphotography.com

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