Introducing Year of the Alpha – 365 Days of Sony Alpha

Show everyone the latest shots which make you feel dead chuffed with your camera choice
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Kalainen
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Re: Introducing Year of the Alpha – 365 Days of Sony Alpha

Unread post by Kalainen »

Birma wrote:A great shot Toni with a really unusual pov :)
Thanks Birm! It kind of game to me naturally, because that's how you see a tree when you climbing to it by yourself. With kids wideangle is usually better, it comes closer. For me it's challenging, since I'm very used to work with 50mm, which becomes 75mm with APS-C. Need to work with my kit lens more...

-Toni

--
Toni Ahvenainen (1976)
Year of the Alpha - 52 Weeks of Sony Alpha Photography: http://www.yearofthealpha.com
Flickr-account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/109262328@N06/
Kalainen
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Re: Introducing Year of the Alpha – 365 Days of Sony Alpha

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Greg Beetham wrote:I like the shot of the child in the tree, great clarity and dof, climbing is good I think even if slightly risky, it enhances agility coordination and strength and encourages a bit of self-preservation…at some point. :lol: It’s a pity the nice conditions you have at the moment don’t extend for a longer period of the year, the lighting looks great for photography right now.
Thanks Greg and nice to see a new face here. Finnish summer lasts about three months, but then are other seasons too which are great their own way. What is not great however, are the shifts between seasons. For example, from mid winter to early spring it's ugly because snow is dirty everywhere, trees have no leafs etc. My second season (Season of Tilt) was bit of that and it made my adventure more difficult that time. But right now I'm very happy to have good light. :-)

-Toni

--
Toni Ahvenainen (1976)
Year of the Alpha - 52 Weeks of Sony Alpha Photography: http://www.yearofthealpha.com
Flickr-account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/109262328@N06/
Kalainen
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Re: Introducing Year of the Alpha – 365 Days of Sony Alpha

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Image

Season of Summer Light
Week 22, Wednesday - Ice-cream
"To understand Finnish summer you need to learn how obsessed Finnish people are with ice-cream. Because Finnish summer is so short and because it's reasonably warm only in that time of the year in Finland, people want to express it by eating cold ice-cream. The hotter it is the more you need to eat it. I understand that same kind of thinking may exist in other countries too, but since our summer is so short Finnish people need to overstate it by (over)eating ice-cream on this short season when it actually makes sense temperature wise. [...]"

Read full post at my blog: http://www.yearofthealpha.com

Toni

--
Toni Ahvenainen (1976)
Year of the Alpha - 52 Weeks of Sony Alpha Photography: http://www.yearofthealpha.com
Flickr-account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/109262328@N06/
Kalainen
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Re: Introducing Year of the Alpha – 365 Days of Sony Alpha

Unread post by Kalainen »

Image

Season of Summer Light
Week 22, Saturday - Children's slide
"As I've already explained earlier, one of my objectives for this season is to take summer pictures of Aura. It sounds a bit more straightforward than it actually is in my head. You see, the thing is that I already have a history of taking summer pictures of Aura and I feel it is, in some ways, limiting to my photography. You cannot see this history by looking photos through my photo blog, but if you followed me a bit longer, you probably already know that I have habit of making pretty static pictures. Photographing events or something happening is, for some reason, harder for me. [...]"

Read full post at my blog: http://www.yearofthealpha.com

Toni

--
Toni Ahvenainen (1976)
Year of the Alpha - 52 Weeks of Sony Alpha Photography: http://www.yearofthealpha.com
Flickr-account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/109262328@N06/
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sury
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Re: Introducing Year of the Alpha – 365 Days of Sony Alpha

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[quote="Kalainen"]
Season of Summer Light
Week 22, Wednesday - Ice-cream
"To understand Finnish summer you need to learn how obsessed Finnish people are with ice-cream. Because Finnish summer is so short and because it's reasonably warm only in that time of the year in Finland, people want to express it by eating cold ice-cream. The hotter it is the more you need to eat it. I understand that same kind of thinking may exist in other countries too, but since our summer is so short Finnish people need to overstate it by (over)eating ice-cream on this short season when it actually makes sense temperature wise. [...]"

Toni,
I love the colors and the sharp outline of the store. A nice contrast to natural shape of the background.

Perhaps one of the most interesting ironies is that Ice Cream being made with "cream" (fat) should be eaten in Winter
to keep you warm. Unfortunately it is relegated to summer since it is served cold. On the other hand, spices are good
for you in summer since they make you sweat and hence naturally cool you down.
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sury
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Re: Introducing Year of the Alpha – 365 Days of Sony Alpha

Unread post by sury »

[quote="Kalainen"]Image

Lovely shot Toni. One question out of curiosity. Is the weather still a bit cool? I have seen Aura wear
that lace covering more than once.

Sury
Minimize avoidable sufferings - Sir Karl Popper
Kalainen
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Re: Introducing Year of the Alpha – 365 Days of Sony Alpha

Unread post by Kalainen »

sury wrote: Perhaps one of the most interesting ironies is that Ice Cream being made with "cream" (fat) should be eaten in Winter
to keep you warm. Unfortunately it is relegated to summer since it is served cold. On the other hand, spices are good
for you in summer since they make you sweat and hence naturally cool you down.
I've never thought about that way (ice-cream=fat!). Now that I do, it does make me smile! :D
sury wrote: Lovely shot Toni. One question out of curiosity. Is the weather still a bit cool? I have seen Aura wear
that lace covering more than once.
Oh it's not cold at all! When I took this picture it was +29 celcius (makes it around 84 at fahrenheit scale). Many people think it's always cold in Finland and that we have polarbears, it's not like that at all. We have a very nice summer (though pretty short) and sadly we don't have polarbears. But that's the way it is, everybody is wrong about other countries in a world! :D That lace is there just that Aura doesn't get sunstroke. :-)

-Toni

--
Toni Ahvenainen (1976)
Year of the Alpha - 52 Weeks of Sony Alpha Photography: http://www.yearofthealpha.com
Flickr-account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/109262328@N06/
Kalainen
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Re: Introducing Year of the Alpha – 365 Days of Sony Alpha

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Image

Season of Summer Light
Week 23, Wednesday - Swinging
"It's a nice little portrait of Aura, but it also represents my habit of repeating a certain visual motif when photographing her. If you have ever tried to take nice photographs of children of yours or someone's else's you surely know it. It's a portrait of the with a nice nature background. The child stands there in her/his colorful clothes with a happy smile and has a eye contact with a camera. There are of course lot's of variations of this visual motifs (my picture being one of them), but they all represent the child in a same way surrounded by 'childhood happiness' – and the more I think about it, the more I feel uneasy about it. [...]"

Read full post at my blog: http://www.yearofthealpha.com

Toni

--
Toni Ahvenainen (1976)
Year of the Alpha - 52 Weeks of Sony Alpha Photography: http://www.yearofthealpha.com
Flickr-account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/109262328@N06/
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Greg Beetham
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Re: Introducing Year of the Alpha – 365 Days of Sony Alpha

Unread post by Greg Beetham »

I like the light at the end of the tunnel photo, it’s got a sort of unknown quantity or a kind of mysterious alien feel to it.
Greg
Ps I like the ice cream story too, I didn't even think about the issue before i.e. eating ice cream in a normally quite cold country/climate; I’m not sure I understand the ‘uneasy’ part of the narrative with Aura playing on the swing, is it because the photos in general are too ‘staged’ for your liking and not spontaneous enough perhaps? I know how difficult it is trying to capture the moment with kids, I practice on some victims here now and then and I came to the conclusion that some luck doesn’t go astray when attempting candid’s with children, but the child on the swing photo looks fine too me.
Kalainen
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Re: Introducing Year of the Alpha – 365 Days of Sony Alpha

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Greg Beetham wrote:I like the light at the end of the tunnel photo, it’s got a sort of unknown quantity or a kind of mysterious alien feel to it.
Greg
Ps I like the ice cream story too, I didn't even think about the issue before i.e. eating ice cream in a normally quite cold country/climate; I’m not sure I understand the ‘uneasy’ part of the narrative with Aura playing on the swing, is it because the photos in general are too ‘staged’ for your liking and not spontaneous enough perhaps? I know how difficult it is trying to capture the moment with kids, I practice on some victims here now and then and I came to the conclusion that some luck doesn’t go astray when attempting candid’s with children, but the child on the swing photo looks fine too me.
Thanks for the kind words Greg, and I agree you about the tunnel photo. It's pretty much what I felt too when editing it.

About the swinging picture, you are right that as an individual picture it's ok. However, with my camera I'm trying to capture Aura's childhood (a scope beyond this photo blog) and this kind of visual motif, which is very popular way of photographing kids in general, gets repeated all too often in my pictures. It makes me uneasy, because I feel I'm reproducing this certin visual motif and not photographing the childhood Aura has. Things are filtered out because this dominating visual motif. Even if this picture is ok, I like the tunnel pic more, because it solves its way out of this motif.

-Toni

--
Toni Ahvenainen (1976)
Year of the Alpha - 52 Weeks of Sony Alpha Photography: http://www.yearofthealpha.com
Flickr-account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/109262328@N06/
Kalainen
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Re: Introducing Year of the Alpha – 365 Days of Sony Alpha

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Image

Season of Summer Light
Week 23, Saturday - Wood sorrels and somoe blue flowers
"In this summer I've decided to take Aura more often to nature instead of enclosed playgrounds. Playgrounds are nice with all their ready-made-activities, but they don't offer same kind of possibilities for exploring the world as nature does. I want to take Aura to forests, lake shores, hills and such - just to introduce these things to her and expand her worldview in a healthy way. [...]"

Read full post at my blog: http://www.yearofthealpha.com

Toni

--
Toni Ahvenainen (1976)
Year of the Alpha - 52 Weeks of Sony Alpha Photography: http://www.yearofthealpha.com
Flickr-account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/109262328@N06/
Kalainen
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Re: Introducing Year of the Alpha – 365 Days of Sony Alpha

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Image

Season of Summer Light
Week 24, Wednesday - Far away
"Like I've already mentioned earlier, during this summer we are trying to make more trips to nature and be away from the playgrounds. While I love these trips, they often include a photographic problem called hard light. In people photography, what this season very much is, hard light produces too strong shadows (especially around eyes) and it makes difficult to get soft natural looking skin. Perfect light conditions would require me to work within golden or blue hour, which is impossible with Aura since currently the sun sets in Finland around 23.00 – and Aura's bedtime is way before that. [...]"

Read full post at my blog: http://www.yearofthealpha.com

Toni

--
Toni Ahvenainen (1976)
Year of the Alpha - 52 Weeks of Sony Alpha Photography: http://www.yearofthealpha.com
Flickr-account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/109262328@N06/
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sury
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Re: Introducing Year of the Alpha – 365 Days of Sony Alpha

Unread post by sury »

Talking about how pretty Aura looks seems
Repetitious. :D
I love the pier/deck punctuates in that blue
Water. Love the composition.

Sury
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Birma
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Re: Introducing Year of the Alpha – 365 Days of Sony Alpha

Unread post by Birma »

I love the summer blues in that one, Toni. Great clouds in the sky as well. All I can suggest for that harsh summer light is a walk in the woods :) . We are also 'lucky' in the uk that we have so many cloudy days that we never suffer too much with harsh light ;)
Nex 5, Nex 6 (IR), A7M2, A99 and a bunch of lenses.
Kalainen
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Re: Introducing Year of the Alpha – 365 Days of Sony Alpha

Unread post by Kalainen »

sury wrote:Talking about how pretty Aura looks seems
Repetitious. :D
Sorry, kind of comes with a season! :D Though, I constantly thinking how to change my usual habits..
sury wrote: I love the pier/deck punctuates in that blue
Water. Love the composition.
Thanks for the kind words. We've been there some other times too, but I've never approached the deck with wide angle lens. It's a beautiful place and nowdays pretty quiet because the ordinary road there is shut because of some construction. We took a little path through the forest.. :-)

--
Toni Ahvenainen (1976)
Year of the Alpha - 52 Weeks of Sony Alpha Photography: http://www.yearofthealpha.com
Flickr-account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/109262328@N06/
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