"Positions of responsibility"

Since I don't seem to have the time to REALLY sit down and write about my trips to London and Stockholm, I'll tell you a little bit about me. For the past three years I've been in the board of a photo club called Pictura vid Åbo Akademi (our homepage is under construction). 


Pictura is a small, but intensely growing club and it's for the students and workers at the (Swedish University=) Åbo Akademi University in Turku (which is 'Åbo' in Swedish:). I've had the honor to be their Excursions Manager 2009-2011. The longer trips I've organized (for 8-20 persons) are:

- Utö lighthouse (in the Achipelago) 2009
- Copenhagen 2010
- Stockholm 2010
- Tallinn 2011
- Stockholm 2011
(also involved in the upcoming: Oslo 2012) 


I've found it extremely interesting to organize trips with Pictura! This last one to STHM had the largest amount of participants we've had so far: we were in total 19 photo enthusiasts going to STHM photo fair!

Pictura "Photo of the year 2010" exhibition
and my photo of my other passion, argentine tango :
Gotan Project@Pori Jazz 2010!

Now my time with Pictura has come to an end, it's time to give away my position to someone younger. THANK YOU PICTURA FOR EVERYTHING! <3

Took part in a competition!

Being the last-minute-person that I am, I just now sent in a photo to a Nordic photo competition, due date today;)  The winner gets tickets to Copenhagen, that would be awesome! It was a photo that I've had in my blog, too. It was taken in August (although posted later), you can see the photos in this link. Can you guess which one I sent?!

**EDIT: You can see the competition and the photos in this link! :)

Photo Blog With Music :)

Although this is meant to be a photo blog I just have to post this, I totally fell in love with this song -thanks to my cousin who linked it on Facebook! Hope you like it too, enjoy!

Planning: London and Stockholm

On my autumn break I went to London and that story and those nice pictures will still have to wait a while... I'm pretty busy with work these days, hoping it will get a bit easier in the next few weeks (when exam week number II is done).

Tomorrow I'm leaving to Stockholm with Pictura! Awesome! We're going to the Stockholm Photo Fair and doing some other cool stuff, too. The fair is not my favorite thing, but I'm looking forward to seeing some nice photos and presentations - and the museums, coffee shops, shopping, etc... Excited! Take a look how it looked and what we did last year, you can find the story here!

And PS: can't believe it's been a year already! :/  
Yikes. Time really does fly...

Pirates of the Archipelago :)

Here are some photos that were taken on my small sailing trip with the Swedish brig "Tre Kronor". Princess Victoria of Sweden and her spouse prince Daniel were in Turku for an official meet n' greet in September. They faked their "sailing" to Turku, but I guess it was a fancier way to arrive... Read more about it in my previous post.

So, me and my colleague took the opportunity to sail on Princess Victoria's ship. It was the last perfect day of autumn, take a look!

We were met with a happy Swedish flag!

BW photo of Turku's most important industry: ship building.

Wärtsilä is a big Finnish company. They build ships and engines and stuff:)

Ship's bell, detail. Learn more about it here.

It was cold outside so it was nice to have hot coffee and treats.
(Princess crown was napkin accessory on the table;)

One photoshopped test photo.

Hard working sailors!

This is what they're supposed to look like.

Photo-au-naturel aka no editing.

Sneak photo. I like it a lot! Man and daughter looking at cruise ship going to Turku harbor.

Me and some of the crew. Can't remember the boys' names, but the girl was Amanda.

Detail.

Ruissalo (where they have Finland's oldest music festival) looked like it was on fire!

The sky is hostile. The geese flee.

An old ship, now transformed to a hostel. Bore.
Love the nostalgic, vintage soft lines of the ship!

The pride of the Finnish Navy, Swan of Finland (Suomen Joutsen). 

Learning nerdy stuff

I don't know what I would do without Internet! I've learnt so much on my own. This proves that if you're motivated, you will search for information and try your best at applying this knowledge. Live and learn, baby!

Just recently I've learnt how to take screenshots with my MacBook Pro. I love my Mac!

Photo evidence: This is what leads people to my blog!
"Top search results" are still quite modest, but yeah. Anyways.
Why did you come here!? 

Not enough distance

I sometimes 
              too often I believe
torture myself with 
strange old pain
  hurt and 
     with what some call memories


I see over my shoulder
                                           it's all very far away now 
vaguely reachable
    can't remember what I thought
but almost instantly I  ---




            not enough distance.

Testing...

Working on "how to" -tutorials...
Searched the web and found that a better (?) version
 of this quote could be "Ire necesse est" 
(=(to) travel is necessary) Comments?:)

I like this!

Found this in my friend's Facebook, totally stealing it! ;)
(Hoping not to offend anyone, I do not own the rights to this picture)

In september Princess Victoria of Sweden and her spouse, Prince Daniel, came for an official visit to Turku. They arrived by boat ("Tre Kronor"), and I thought that they actually had sailed from Stockholm to Turku. But alas! They had not. They came by plane, jumped onboard the ship outside Turku and then graciously sailed into the city harbor - waving in a very royal manner!:)

As the school where I work is close by the harbor, I took my students to see Her Majesty. Here are a few pictures!

Children sang a Moomin song for the Princess. Here in her red costume, Little My.

Press people were there, of course.

First glimpses at the Princess!

Royal wave! :)

The little girl that was to be the flower girl.
Later she threw a temper tantrum! :D
Oh boy, will she hear that story when she grows up! :D

Meeting and greeting Turku representatives.

She is so sweet! Daniel was by her side at all times.

The Princess gets her own seal!
The seal is a symbol for the environmental work that is been done for the Baltic Sea.

Her Majesty points out the place where her name plate is going to be.

Paying close attention...

"I wonder if they can do the work properly?"

Tall Ships' Regatta 2011, Turku

Because of the European Culture Capital year, Turku also had the big ships visit this autumn. This event is usually during the summer and it's (usually) called Tall Ships' Race. So, to avoid any misunderstanding, this event was called Tall Ships' Regatta 2011...

Whether the name was a good choice or not, I leave it up to you to decide, but here are a few photos from when the ships were leaving (28/8/2011)... It was such a grey day, so it's only appropriate that the photos are B/W.

Russian "Akela" leaving (click name!:)

Decorative (Russian "Shtandart").

Russian "Shtandart" behind the pier on the left leaving (click links on the names:).
Right ahead/in the middle, Russian "Sedov".

Sails down.

Curious people with a view to the river Aura.

Note to self: Remember Alice!

I've been doing quite a lot of blogg surfing recently and I've found a lot of inspiring and beautiful blogs. I like reading diary-like entries, but I'm mostly fascinated by different photo blogs. Maybe I'll make a list of them once I've established which I really like - like for a longer period of time :)

So. Just now I found this wonderful photo blog, and I want to share it with you. This particular entry is about Jessica/Silversaga having an "Alice in wonderland" theme party (I love theme parties!). The best pert is that it's from HERRÄNG (Sweden) where they have these legendary dance camps (I love dancing!), mostly for lindy hop dancers, but maybe even other rock n' swing dancers go there? My friends from Turku have been there, and if this is the result (dancing AND photographic inspiration), then I MUST go there next summer! Take a look at this beautiful blog called "Once upon a time"!

World of Tango, Tampere (17-18/9/2011)

Quite awesome to have tango dancing friends!
A car full of tango dancers (aka 4 people:) took off to Tampere for the World of Tango Festival main weekend. We had a lot of fun!

I stayed with a friend, and what a good thing that led into: Riikka talked me into going to London with her and her friends! On Saturday we ate tasty burgers at restaurant New York, on Sunday we had coffee at café Runo.

As usual, here are a few photos!

Putting on some contact lenses and tango shoes and we were good to go!

Silla & Jere, Saturday day milonga at Telakka.

Charming lamp and ceiling at Runo.
Upstairs on the balcony more seats.

Runo café.

Rikkaa having coffee, chocolate treat and fashion :)

Me at Runo.