Anttilat

So, because I won the last modelling competition at #blender.fi I got to choose the next subject. My choice was "sampo".

A bit over a week ago I submitted an entry to a modelling contest again. There was only two contestants and the other work didn't have much of modelling in it, so it's not that amazing that I won. I'm still happy about that, though!

The theme was "something in the darkness" (or actually it was in Finnish, "jotain pimydessä"). I thought of the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland, that takes to a great unknown.

It was a really beautiful day today. Sun was shining and the weather was chilly but not too cold. Every once in a while a slight breeze would make big snowflakes fall slowly off the trees. We walked at the city center just as the sun was setting, taking the scenic routes. I got a lot of pretty pictures and the difficult choice ended up to this one.

I didn't have a tripod with me when I cycled home from another kung-fu training, but I did have my bike. It's not that adjustable but it's just a stable. So I experimented a little on camera settings. This one was taken with 15 second exposure time.

Its funny how it still doesn't look at all like it would have been taken at daylight. Mostly I think it looks like a fake setting in a studio. I guess it has to do with how the light scatters and the shadows are.

After several weeks of skipping kung-fu lessons I finally went there to see the beginning of a new beginner's course. It felt really good to move a little bit, although the snow made cycling there and back a bit difficult at places. I snapped the picture right outside the training hall.

Now this is NOT what was supposed to happen. We went to an SCA (www.sca.org) event for the weekend. We had a lot of fun and I took a lot of pictures. But first I did spend all day inside on Saturday. I didn't go for a seperate walk on Sunday, either. On Monday I did go outside but didn't take a camera with me. And when I finally did take a picture for my photoblog on Tuesday, I was too lazy to post it. Hopefully this isn't going to become a habit...

In more southern Finland, especially around Helsinki, there has been a real problem with snow. There's too much of it and the city doesn't have enough resources to haul it all away. People parking their cars on narrow streets doesn't help the situation.

Luckily I haven't noticed the snow to be a problem here - but then again I don't own a car. Quite a few car owners need to dig their car out of the snow.

I almost skipped the walk today. I just didn't feel like it. But I made the decision to keep this blog so I wouldn't stay inside just because I'm lazy so out I went. And it felt great.

We've had a good deal of snow lately. This pile of snow is at the university. It's by no means the only one but it's the biggest one I saw. It will probably be summer before these piles melt.

Today's walk was about 20 minutes and the weather was cloudy and -15C.

It was way warmer today, just a couple of degrees below freezing. It's been snowing most of today and yesterday. This morning just walking to the university and back was unpleasant because of the blizzard. In the evening the snowing finally stopped and these icicles had appeared on streetlamps.

I took a little break in the middle of the day and slipped to the botanical garden again. It was snowy and beautiful. I couldn't explore all the places I wanted because there was too much snow, but the paths were pretty and worth of a photograph too.