STRAP

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

My apologies.. 24 Jul 2007 Posted by Jussi Leinonen.

I'm sorry I haven't posted anything here for a while, I'm out of town doing some vacation business. I've been getting a lot of good words about the My father story available on this site. Thank you all. It is the first incarnation of the story about my father, I have no intention to stop shooting him whenever I get the chance. Shooting your loved ones is the biggest thing anyone should do as photographer. Making memories last for you and your children, and their children.

So go and capture the people around you, catch as much of them in pictures because when they leave this life, you can have a whole decade or even whole life of them in pictures, continuing to affect people. This is how someone lives forever. Flowers will always grow the next year, sun will always set tomorrow, people might be gone the next morning.

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Simerock, even more! 22 Jul 2007 Posted by Jussi Leinonen.

Petri has gone missing, and I'm out of town too but managing to support my internet addiction, but for a good cause! Here are more Simerock leftovers I promised you.

First one is of these boys who were collecting bottles people threw away. I think they made a lot of money during the three days. I decided to go with another picture of them for the final story, because I thought it had more edge and it just performed better visually.

The second one is one of the last pictures I took, on the last day of the festival. Pretty much everyone had left or went to see the last act, Hanoi Rocks. The camping area was a total mess. There was stuff that made me think that what the hell were these people doing there. The picture that went into the final story had a missing pair of jeans on it, jeans, how do you lose your pants.. Mindboggling. Another post coming in few days, check back! I promise you'll like it!

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Simerock leftovers! 16 Jul 2007 Posted by Jussi Leinonen.

I promised this, so here we go. First two (2) of Simerock images that got cut from the actual story. First one is one of those pictures when you just walk in the crowd and try to spot people who define it all, the feeling, the weather, and even the music. She is one, but the one who ended in the essay was even better.

The second ne is about a picture idea I had when I didn't even know what the area looked like. All I knew was that there had to be these crappy mobile WC's, and that led me to the conclusion that these would end up full of shit and other bodily 'stuff' before the festival was over. So I had the idea of a girl entering or exiting one of these.. I don't even know what to call these to make right to how disgusting they get in three days. I saw this girl trying out every toilet in that set and she didn't enter any of them, must've been pretty crappy toilets.. Hah.

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Music photos. 15 Jul 2007 Posted by Petri Uutela.

I looked at my scans again I found out that I have lots of music related photos and these might be just fine material to use in this blog. So to make it short, here we have my multi-instumentalist brother playing the piano.

To listen some very artsy improvised music click this and this

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Simerock story OUT! 11 Jul 2007 Posted by Jussi Leinonen.

It's been couple of days scanning, finishing, hallucinating and just going crazy, but it's done now. So without further yadda yadda, please check the story on Simerock, a rock festival held here in the arctic circle of Lapland.

Proceed to the story here. Please comment via e-mail if any feelings came out. jussi (a) strap-photos dot com. And yes I'd like to come document your festival too, but I need to eat too. Haha. Thanks for your time, and don't forget to come back to check out the leftovers I'm going to post in the blog from this story!

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Halleluja, halleluja! 10 Jul 2007 Posted by Petri Uutela.

The mail man brought me something today I have been waiting for; the results of that school applying thingy. I'll make this short; yes I passed the tests and got accepted. I might say that I am soooooo very thrilled about the fact that most of the things in my normal daily life are about to change because of this. I surely have been waiting for this one a long while! So, in a month or so Strap will expand to other parts of Finland as well... Lahti is based on the other side of the country, so I'll need to take control of that area and Jussi keeps northern Finland in his control, haha...

The image here is one of those images I used in that "own projects" part of the preliminary assignments. Oh, how appropriate! lol.

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CLUB XXX 07 Jul 2007 Posted by Petri Uutela.

Todays post is my elegant drawing from couple of months ago. I applied for school in Lahti, Finland, to study photography in local polytechnic and this is a drawing from that project. One part of the preliminary assignments was to include about ten pieces of my own work from my own projects (photographs) including two pieces of non-photographic artwork. Also everyone told me that if you pass the prelimininary assignments and are invited to those 4-day long tests you need to draw there a lot. Wow, that was really tricky thing to do... I don't know how to draw, I don't paint..etc. ...photography is the only artform I try to do. So, I knew that I needed to practice drawing since that was just about the only non-photographic way I could possibly pull off -- if I managed to find a proper technique and "look" for my drawings.

So, I tried and tried and nothing...just horrible horrible drawings, just awful. Then one day a friend of mine said briefly a small comment about drawing that I luckily remembered few days later and tried it; use pencils with soft lead and try different styles to hold the pen, "do not hold like you are writing a letter". And that is what I did and this was the style I "invented". More about this school thing later (hopefully next week), but I might reveal that I passed the preliminary assignments and went to Lahti to take those exams. I did every single "drawing or painting" -type of test with this same technique and look.

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Leftover from Sodankylä + news! 07 Jul 2007 Posted by Jussi Leinonen.

Howdy. I'm tired as hell and it hurts my wrist to type (it's not what you think), but I was shooting at Simerock festival today. Young Finns at their best, drunk as fuck, vomiting around and ignoring music. I hope nobody gets raped or killed. What's with kids and alcohol on these festivals.. What's the point when all you remember is the worst hangover of your life.
But I'm just letting you readers know that there is going to be a new story out within a week or two. If nothing technical hits me in the head.

The picture here is a leftover from the film festival story, I went with 100% black and white on it so this was cut out because it relies solely on color. Click to see bigger! Cheeers.

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Sneaky motherlover. 05 Jul 2007 Posted by Jussi Leinonen.

I've noticed that when I'm secretly trying to take a picture and capture people with their guards down I have this way of looking like I'm photographing someone/something else instead. It looks like I haven't even noticed them and the photographs even suit my style, you know I'm big with keeping the bokeh area in the front. This image was shot during my trips to Sodankylä for the Midnight Sun filmfestival. There was a charming old lady behind us in this extremely expensive crappy cafe, I managed to take a picture of her drinking coffee.

I've heard Petri has been getting a lot of nice feedback over the internet on our little site and our work. Thanks for everyone who checked us out, please come back later to check out the blog and future photo stories, if you dig this stuff, I promise it will be worth it! Thanks.

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More rambling about portraits. 04 Jul 2007 Posted by Petri Uutela.

Like in that earlier post I talked about portraits in a studio envoriment. In my case the word "studio" is actually correct -- I had my studio at my studio apartment (you know, small one room apartment). That is also one thing why I didn't like to use flashes and all other studio accessories; you need a lot of space to use those things effectively and comfortably and very often you could need a helping hand of an assistant (and naturally I don't have one). Also the actual training before the shooting session is sort of a pain in the gluteus maximus if you don't have friends posing while you set up and test the lights etc... My friends and family...well, they really really really do not like to be in front of my camera (I shoot them anyway in real life situations, haha)...so mostly I tested these things by myself -- by doing self-portraits. Here is yours truly.

Jussi and I decided long ago that if we are going to take more members to Strap Photos there is one important criteria the new member has to have; you need to be naturally bald or seriously balding. Haha...

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