Kiutaköngäs is the name (and isn’t that a beautiful name) for the main rapids of the river Oulanka in the Oulanka National Park in Finland. The rapids, easily accessible even for the not-so-hiking-inclined, are one of the major natural attractions in Finland: 135m (443 feet) of pure rock and fury. In the whole rapid area the water drops 14m over a stretch of 325m. It is quite a spectacle. But still, somehow such famous sights make me hesitant. Why add another photograph of something that has already been photographed a million times? But I also challenged myself on whether I was seeing Kiutaköngäs the right way.
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September 2016
In the previous post in this series I explained some of the foundations related to the role of exposure time in photography. This time I’ll share some thoughts on uses of long exposure times as an artistic tool, especially in scenes with moving water.
The effect has been demonstrated often, so let’s just summarize it briefly. Moving water looks very differently depending on the exposure time. With very short exposures, the movement will freeze, like in this crashing wave exposed at 1/1000th of a second.
(more…)The river Kuusinki is the smallest of the three larger rivers in Kuusamo, Finland. Still, it is renown as an excellent fly-fishing river and once hosted the world fly-fishing championship. Its attraction lies in a population of wild brown trout that migrates every year up from the White Sea for spawning.
So it was for fishing that I first visited the river many years ago. And usually in September water levels in the river are relatively low (even though there are deep pockets of water). This year, however, I had already been warned by locals that water levels were unusually high. That often indicates bad fishing, but also for a photographer it changes the scene in significant ways.
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Sometimes I am being asked, whether I plan my shots or whether I just find my pictures while roaming the outdoors. The truth is: both. Most of my photography is indeed a result of careful planning and sometimes involves returning to places often. Some pictures therefore took months to make. But there is no denying that lucky accidents happen. As it was with the picture above.
I was returning from a shoot at Kuusinki river in the Eastern part of Kuusamo, Finland. The weather had been cloudy and rainy all day, but now in the early evening the cloud cover was breaking. I was driving on the road near the little village of Virkkula when I was literally stopped in my tracks by a sight besides the road. I stomped on the brake and looked for a place to stay the car. Don’t try this at home! The empty roads in Northern Finland are among the only few places where such a maneuver is safe – and yes, I looked in the back mirror first.
(more…)Coming back from a recent trip to Kuusamo in northern Finland I am going to post here some behind-the-scenes videos. Each video will be very short and focus on a single photography location. I’ll start with Riisitunturi National Park, which lies west of Kuusamo in Posio, Lapland. The weather was very sunny, which is in my view better for hiking than for photographing. Still, I hope some of the vastness of the landscape made it into the photos.
