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Olavi Uusivirta, Tavastia 02.12.2010
Risto, Tavastia 02.12.2010

Woops! Took me a while to update again. I just can’t seem to find my inner enthusiastic blogger anymore. I’ve done this for years and years and at some point I actually had to keep myself from updating several times a day. What was going on back then? I don’t think I had anymore exciting thoughts and trips and gigs and stuff going on in my life than I have now. Or maybe I did. Maybe I’m just living in this fantasy world now, thinking I’ve got sooo many things going on I just don’t have the time to write about them.

Right.

But yes. Stuff has been going on. Aside from my usual animal-abuse-worrying, desperate-future-planning, insane-vampire-related-book-devouring home life I’ve actually gone out too. I spent a weekend with Jutta at Fiskars, photographing stuff for the village itself and to a lovely restaurant. Imagine! How perfect is this: they make a delicious dish of heavenly food, I take a few shots of it AND get to eat it! I think that’s awesome. (I think I’m going to start photographing vodka bottles next, and beautiful houses in California, some silkie chickens and Adrien Brody. You know. To get to keep them afterwards.)

Ok, so just visit Fiskars if you have the chance. It’s just a wonderful, beautiful place that not enough people know of.

Last week I went to see this artist I really like (he’s called Olavi Uusivirta – very Finnish), to take some live photos. Bumped into some guys I was working with this summer, one thing led to another, and soon I realized I was suffering a 2-day hangover. Outrageous! Not fair! After all, we were just singing and dancing until 9am next morning..

I really don’t like getting old. It sucks! My mind’s still 16. Why is my body twice the age?! Grrr.

Yesterday was fun too! Me and Satu, we went to see Green Day play “live” in a movie theatre, on the big big screen. Well, as we learned afterwards, the gig wasn’t actually a live broadcast from Germany, but we might have thought so.. It was so very odd to watch a band on stage without dancing, singing (well I did some yodling along), clapping, shouting “YEAH!!”, stagediving (honestly, we do that a lot – not), rushing into the first row (that we sometimes do). Instead of all that usual stuff we ate popcorn and did some happy giggling.

It was all very NOT rock’n'roll, but as I said earlier, also very comfortable for the elderly such as us.

After coming home from the “gig” I went out to take some photos, and later had to update my Facebook status with the following message:

After spending more than an hour photographing up-to-my-knees-SNOW in the dark, for fun, fingers toes frozen blue, I realized once again I’m doing something I truly love. And it’s my job too! Utterly fantastic.

So, that’s some nice stuff – liking my job. The results of my snowy adventure can be found here: Meanwhile In Finland – photo gallery

A fun link for the day: A very, VERY funny story about dogs not understanding basic concepts – might even be funny to non-dog owners. Excellent usage of MS Paint!
A movie link for the day: Cowboys & Aliens (trailer) – can you believe it? Cowboys and Aliens, and it’s exactly that! Seems so bad it must be good.
A love AND a music link for the day: Matt Cardle sings Knights in White Satin. Yes, knights. I have no idea why they haven’t corrected the title yet. Anyway. He’s going to be my X Factor boyfriend, just as Adrien Brody is going to be my Hollywood boyfriend. (I do think I will be needing several Hollywood categories to fit all my actor-y loves, but I’ll figure that out later.)

Well, THERE! Two weeks’ worth of updating. And LINKS! I hope you weren’t foolish enough to actually click on all of them. Quite nonsensy. (Is a word now!)

I need someone to tell me to finish my children’s book. Really. I need someone to kick my ass (we really use that expression in Finnish not for violence, but for when someone is encouraging, almost forcing you to do something when you yourself are too lazy to do it) when I stop drawing and writing it.

I’ve had this story in my head since I was 18 or so. FIFTEEN YEARS I’ve known it, the whole plot, the main characters and their adventures in a strange fantasy land. Back then, I actually had 12 paintings ready for it, but I sold them since I was young and stupid and needed the money. The pictures were framed and all, and I was working for this.. I guess you could call it a media study group. There were also some theater folks working alongside of us, and they did a fun trip to Ireland to do a few plays and meet some local colleagues. They took me with them, and I had a couple of short art exhibitions featuring my paintings. And me, telling the whole story to groups of people.

I think the best memory of those storytelling sessions was this old, lovely couple who came to tell me they had visited Finland 10 years earlier and that my style of painting reminded them of Akseli Gallen-Kallela. Whhaaat! I took it as a huge compliment, although I still can’t see how they made that connection. I mean really.

On our way back to Finland, I lost a couple of those paintings – I still have no idea if they’re hanging on someone’s wall or if they were just destroyed as suspicious packages at some airport.

After that, I had an exhibition at a library in Helsinki – the kids’ department librarians actually told me it’s amazing they haven’t been published, and wondered how I never offered them to any publishing house. So that gave me a bit of courage to actually think of doing so. Now I just need the backbone to paint everything again and do it.

I don’t mind selling / losing the pictures anymore, cause I think some of them weren’t good enough anyway. But it’s fun to think about – what if I’d finished the story back then and someone actually published it? Would I now be a happy author, making a living by painting and drawing these characters or a dozen others?

Who knows. As Tuitu says, you must not regret the life you’ve lived. I agree – there’s nothing I can do about the past anyway.

So, now. I have to start working on this. I don’t know if anyone is gonna like it, or publish it, but at least I’d get some peace of mind. I’ve set a schedule now, let’s see if I can keep it or do I really need someone to KICK MY ASS.

So, in a few weeks, I can officially demand an IMDb page for myself. Movie still photographers can have one, right? I hope so, since it’s secretly been one of my goals in life, just like getting one tiny photo published by Natural Geography – ok, I wouldn’t mind them publishing more than one. You gotta aim high you know?

Veijarit the movie is coming out in December. You can book tickets here, and see a couple of photos I took. The quality’s not quite as good as in the originals, but even the originals could be better – 450D just couldn’t handle all the darkness. Wish I had my 5DmkII back then already! Well, next time. There’s always the next time. Better equipment makes things easier, I give you that, even if it doesn’t make you a better photographer in any other way.

In other news: Tarja & Cristiano got married today. YAY! I went to take a few photos & to have an afternoon wedding meal with them and a few friends. Good fun. And now I’m off to take some artsy fartsy photos in an old attic – this one’s for our photo assignment of the week. It’s related to certain song lyrics. Luckily, I have Jenni to do all the posing, since I hate self-portra.. no wait, I generally hate being in front of the camera.

Hence the being behind it.

Off now, ta-ta, write to you later!

Woke up late today. I’ve been staying up until early hours for almost a week now. I just can’t get myself to sleep before 4am or so. I know, I should just get up early one morning so I’d be tired earlier in the evening. But so far, I’ve failed to do so. Anyway. Today I woke up to a nice phone call. It was about this rather fine job, photographing a few places for a firm. I hope it will pay ok, I’m pretty tired of being paid half the money I should be getting. I just sent my offer for them, and to me it seems fair. Hope they think so too.

I am a cheap photographer and I really don’t wanna be one of those asswipes who ask for thousands of euros per a day’s work just because.. I don’t even know what their excuses are. I know, I know, if I’m going to make a living out of this, I just can’t keep doing this for those pennies. I often joke about getting a manager to deal with the financial stuff and all, but frankly, it’s starting to sound like a joke less and less every day.

But yeah – I’m feeling better and better about not leaving the country just yet. It seems I’m finally getting some more work and now that I have the new camera, it’s gonna be a bit easier and the results better. Of course, it’s not the camera that decides what’s in the photos, but it will certainly improve the quality. Phew!!! I’ve been needing that for a looong time now.

More photo talk: we started a fun photo project with a few pals. We’re taking a couple of photos every week with a changing theme, and of course, since it’s something I started, we’ve already pushed the first deadline by a day.

Me and deadlines. Not always such a good combination.

I’m a broken record – I just wanted to remind you of our beautiful second hand shop! Cmon everyone! Come and visit – Harakan Taivas is just lovely, and very dear to me :)

..with a project. I’m suddenly so involved with this fun thing called Harakan Taivas, which would translate into Magpie’s Heaven beautifully. It’s a retro / second hand clothing store my friend decided to start, and wanted me to join the project…

So, for the last week or more, I’ve been painting the walls, planning the interior & doing all kinds of things related to the store itself and of course, the promotion of it. We have a blog too [click!], but it’s in Finnish – I’ll translate some of it to English at some point, but at least there are a lot of pictures of what we’re doing. In case you’re interested :)

Also, some nice news about my photography. I took part in this fun competition put up by an awesome nature photographer called Chris Weston, and ended up in the top three! But the best part of the whole thing was his commentary on my swan photo. Here’s a quote:

“In this image by Tiia Ohman, the photographer has made great use of the elements of design in order to capture a striking, graphic image of a relatively common subject. A perfect exposure has brought out in vivid detail the varying textures of the swan’s feathers, creating an almost 3-dimensional appearance to the photograph.”

“Seeing the detail, as in the Swan, is a perfect example of learning to see. A brilliant effort.”

-Chris Weston [see his website here.]

Imagine that! I think these comments are something I’ll cherish for the next few months – that is, if National Geography doesn’t call me up and ask if they can publish my photos. Ha ha ha. Maybe in a few more years… (what a dream!)

So, that’s that, all is well here, inspiration & long days..  Hope you’re all happy & well! Leave a comment before you leave!

Winter photos. Some of you might know how I feel about this time of the year, so you can imagine how much courage it took to spend 30minutes outside just to get these pictures.

The Gannet. She’s protecting to girl on her back, but the rest of the story.. you’ll just have to figure it out. This one’s for sale, too.

Me and a friend of mine are working on this big project, that will actually give me some more REAL work to do. We’re gonna start a blog about that later on, and you’ve been warned: I will promote that thing a LOT in the upcoming months! So excited!!! Wish us luck, we really need it.

Hello reader! Just a quick update – a couple of paintings I’ve been working on. They’re all for sale! If you’re interested, send me an e-mail or leave your e-address in the comments!

“Hugger Tree” & “My Voice” – Acrylic on deep edge canvas, 20cm x 20cm.

“The Crocodile Ride”: Width 90cm, height 32cm (with frame). Original china ink drawing with wooden frame, passepartout and glass.

The trip was awesome. I kept a diary while I was there, mostly about foxes. That was unexpected. It’s like a wannabe-animal behaviourist’s journal full of random notes and thoughts. Might publish it someday, if I’m not too embarrased to.

Got a fun job yesterday, via someone I’ve known in the blog world for years. Finally met face to face, that was fun! It seems she’s going through some rough times, though. Don’t like that. I want to believe in karma, such karma that it only punishes bad people, not the nice & good ones.

Already had two cups of coffee. Am I allowed to have a third?