STRAP

IMPORTANT: The WORK blog is now combined with the regular blog. Click here for last year's WORK.

How us finns are. 14 Sep 2007 Posted by Jussi Leinonen.

We're scared. I live in a four-story building, families and young students live in this building. I'm the type who likes to say "hello" to the neighbour. Some of the shitheads around here don't say anything, it's ok not to say anything if you're the silent type.. but when someone says "hello", JUST SAY HELLO BACK! How F*cking hard is it to utter a WORD, instead of acting like an asshole and just walking by.
This one time I opened the door downstairs for this prick with a blonde dyed hair and those puma shoes that look like girl's shoes. I opened the door for this guy, said "Hi", and this asshole just walks in, says nothing back, doesn't even look at me. What can you say, I didn't go berzerk and find the guy's family, kill them and bury the bodies 3 meters below the earth surface (so the bears, wolves and foxes can't smell and find them) or anything. I just muttered something in disgust and walked outside.

Today's picture is a example of how people are sometimes. These two older gentlemen, seemed to have nothing to do during that time, they sat around in the shopping mall watching at people walking by. Why not sit closer and discuss current events¿ Maybe they just liked their privacy, like the rest of us usually do, but please say "hello" back if someone has the balls to greet you in the first place.

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Leftover. 13 Sep 2007 Posted by Petri Uutela.

A leftover from the reindeer round-up photo essay.

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Shooting slide film. 11 Sep 2007 Posted by Petri Uutela.

Last weekend I was doing my school assignment where we had to do some street photography (pretty cool assigment!). The assignment had to be shot with slide film. Wow, it had been a while since the last time I used slide...and actually I had never ever used slide film in street photography before. I used to shoot with it when I started my photography hobby and not surprizingly I used to shoot landscapes, not people. Also we "had" to use modern autofocus cameras with built-in meters and that was also something I hadn't done in maybe two years. All this made me very nervous in terms of what kind of stuff I'll manage to pull off. Well, I focused hard on trying to meter the scene correctly and actually those very contrasty street scenes worked out just beautifully, I really like to look of these images! The color and tones are fantastic, highlights are nice and those deep shadows still contain details. And the real surprise was during scanning; nothing could be easier than scanning slide film with my Nikon scanner (by using Nikon's own software), actually I didn't have to edit images in scanning software or photoshop almost at all! Used only slight levels adjustment, cropping, resizing and sharpening. I really need to buy and shoot more slide!

And yes, this image is from that roll. This nice couple saw me with my camera and sort of asked me to take their picture. I framed and took a couple of images and when I started to take this third one the lady started laughing, raised her hands and asked me that "well... for how long are you going to keep shooting us¿"...haha, funny situation. Then we said "have a nice day" to each other and I moved into new adventures...

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Outowear project. 10 Sep 2007 Posted by Jussi Leinonen.

I recently did some work for a clothing brand called Outo, check out their new website at outowear.com. I've been working with Outo almost since the beginning, on websites and such. This was the first year I took pictures for the website and other material. Since we've known for a while, I got Ville at Outo to give me artistic freedom to photograph the pictures the way I wanted to. So I was going for something that looked credible for the average customer, with a bit of grimy flavor, but nothing too dark. Layout was going to be in black and white, so that was the goal.

The main use for these pictures is the website, and there in a very cropped form, but I think they could be used everywhere. I didn't shoot products images, just these promotional lifestyle/product shots. I still have to photograph the beanies for the site, so it's not completely done yet.

There is a lot of images and I'm posting only two now, I'll post more in my own blog.

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I have no title today. 08 Sep 2007 Posted by Jussi Leinonen.

My niece is a bit over two years old now, she's beginning to understand when I'm taking pictures. Usually she goes silent, looking serious, and when the shutter goes off she'll crack up and scream in joy (I have no idea why). So getting laughing pictures isn't easy, at least without a motor drive. I think there is something serious, older than her years and something out of this moment in some of the expressions I've caught this way.

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Walks-with-poles. 07 Sep 2007 Posted by Petri Uutela.

I don't know how are things at your neighborhood, but here in Finland it's a popular trend to do physical exercises by walking with cross country skiing (or similiar) poles. Apparently by using poles your heartbeat raises just nicely so that it is higher than when just walking, but lower than when running. At first it looked kinda funny when people started this trend, but nowadays you see all kind of folks doing it, young and old, men and women.

This image would be better viewed larger, but hey...maybe later. I promise to post a large image of the next trend I believe is coming; walking with your snowboard (naturally your feet attached to the board).

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Honda Monkey, GTFO. 06 Sep 2007 Posted by Jussi Leinonen.

First of all.. What the hell is a sorry ass looking miniatyre moped like Honda Monkey even existing for¿ Only reason I can come up with is that these pieces of shit are responsible for evolution taking it's course to get rid of idiots who choose to ride bikes like this and eventually crash and die. Yes, die, what did you expect when riding a bike half the size of a stray cat (skinny, nasty straycat that is).

But could someone tell me WHY a crappy motorized lump of metal deserves a parking slot¿ I'm a fan of humour and the guy who parked his Honda in this slot gets my vote. But I don't even think he was joking, I think he is just one of those punks who ride suicidebikes like this neglecting other traffic and pedestrians. You know those punks who sit around, smoking and spitting whole puddles of spit around town, skipping school, plotting how they'll get in some under-age panties. The monkey is their ride, and of course they tune it up so there is no control over the vehicle. Damn.
I'm secretly dreaming of one day roundhouse kicking a Honda Monkey driver when he drives past me.
Are these things even legal anymore¿

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Project finished (sort of). 04 Sep 2007 Posted by Petri Uutela.

Today I finished that pt. 1 of my long term project that I have been lately busy working with. Actually I started the project almost exactly one year ago, so this is clearly the longest project for me so far. But there will be parts 2 and 3 in the future so actually this project might last few years in total. Even if Jussi tried to hype those images in his last post, I have to slighty dissappoint you by saying that I can't publish the set right away. There are couple of options I like to explore first before uploading the story to our site (meaning that I would like to see those images in the pages of some fine magazine before publishing them here). We'll see what happens.

Todays picture is called "The dissapointed stereo-photo man.". I met this man in Helsinki city at the "Taiteiden yö" happening week or two ago. He was gladly posing to my camera, but was deeply dissapointed when he found out that I was just taking "normal" photographs. He thought I was shootin stereo-photographs. I dunno where he got that idea from...perhaps my M-Leica looks like a stereo camera.

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Water resistant. Part two. 02 Sep 2007 Posted by Jussi Leinonen.

I haven't been photographing too much lately, nothing special anyway. This picture I'm posting today is a photograph I made while sitting in my friends car when he was taking some exams in Tornio. It was pouring all the time so I decided to sit in the car and just look around. Nothing happened. Some kids went by, and this guy in the picture wandered past the car. I guess people in Tornio were feeling like me, not wanting to go out in the rain. Well, at least my friend got in the school he was applying that day.

Yesterday Petri showed me some of his work he's been scanning and finishing, and I must hype you that it was excellent. Propably easily some of the best pictures on this site, and actually some pictures that have a true story, a meaning in them. I'm not sure when we'll be able to put it out here but I believe it's worth the wait.

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Sheep. 30 Aug 2007 Posted by Jussi Leinonen.

These guys were munching grass few houses from my childhood home. I went to see them every day with my niece, she wanted to touch them but you could only touch them around the nose area because those guys were shitty as hell. The guy who owns them said they had eaten something on the field that made them have diarrhea, so the sheep were rolling in their own feces, dirty as hell. I have my doubts if the animals were taken care properly, but I don't know. I think they had a vetenarian come to check on the diarrhea so I guess it was up to the requirements. Cool guys though.

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