Introducing Year of the Alpha – 365 Days of Sony Alpha

[sury]

Toni,
I am amazed with your captures. You have taken the "mundane" (like washing dishes or inside of a fridge) and elevated
to such enjoyable level. Thank you.
By the way, I loved the asymmetry of the unlit/lit windows.

With best regards,
Sury

[Birma]

Love the egg box lighting

[Kalainen]

Toni,
I am amazed with your captures. You have taken the "mundane" (like washing dishes or inside of a fridge) and elevated
to such enjoyable level. Thank you.
By the way, I loved the asymmetry of the unlit/lit windows.

Thanks for your kind comments. The way you describe them makes them more valuable to me. Even if shooting the egg picture was fun, I found myself thinking that it doesn't have any value, or the value it carries is not distinguished enough. Having heard many positive comments about it changes my perspective too. It's not serious by any means, but not boring either. So, thanks for your kind words again.

-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]

Love the egg box lighting

Thanks Birma, very much for the same reasons I already wrote Sury.

-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]

Week 7, Wednesday - Perfect Visions
"I took this photograph when I was outdoors at the playground with Aura. We were just leaving for home when I noticed this parking hall entry and had to look twice to realize that there is a well-known error message on screen. If you are about my age and have computer geek background you will immediately recognize that this screen, which usually shows how many parking slots are free, is actually running from a Dos/Windows based computer. What it is, is actually indifferent, but it gives me an odd 'Matrix-like' feeling when something like this happens. Suddenly the reality you've taken for granted is undressed so that everyone can see the digital architecture behind it. It reminds me how inclusively digital technology is adapted in our environment and how little I see of it every day. But it keeps coming fast. [...]"

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]

Week 7, Thursday - Photography is a state of mind
"When people learn about my 52 weeks project, one of the most repeated comment usually deals with a difficulty of finding something to photograph every day or even every week. If they are photographers they state several reasons, like lack of ideas and inspiration, bad weather and lighting conditions, mundane close environment, not enough time, bad camera gear etc. I have heard them so many times that I've come to realize that these reasons are not really about circumstances, they are about state of mind. [...]"

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]

Week 7, Saturday - Magical thinking
"If you've grown close to natural sciences it's tempting to see magical thinking, which lives somewhere between religion and art, as flawed attempt to understand world, and based on false logic, associative thinking or other irrational elements of thought – something which kids (and adults) grow out by learning logic and science. And while I can't totally deny this stance, I still find Claude Lévi-Strauss's thought of 'untamed thinking' to be more interesting way to describe this mode of thought. [...]"

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]

Week 8, Tuesday - Directions in darkness
"Before I created this photo blog I pretty much concentrated on family photography and shooting on holidays. In my first year with Nex-5N I took over 26000 pictures, kept about 15 % of them and post processed at least 2500 pictures from Raw to Jpeg. At early stages I was very unsatisfied with a look of my photographs (especially colors) and thought that straight of the camera pictures had, if not boring, at least some way standardized look that I often found uninteresting. Somewhere around 2000 processed pictures I started to felt a bit better with look of my photography and by the end of the year I was already pretty satisfied with it. But still something within me wasn't happy with a photography I did. What I was missing was direction and self consciousness understanding of my own 'photographic eye'. [...]"

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]

Week 8, Wednesday - Questions
"Before I began to understand anything about my own photography, I used to look inspiration from other peoples work. It's easy to trap yourself with an idea that you need to find your own photographic character from world outside. With a click of a mouse one can browse all kinds of photographs of different ideas, characters and styles; and have so overflowing possibilities that it actually just introduces insecurity. They don't feel home, because they don't come inside you. The only way to overcome this is to pay attention to your own photography and start asking questions. [...]"

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/

[sury]

Toni,
Nice shots and I love the baby shot the most. On the other hand, I find your images are getting kind of mono-thematic. Your last 4 out of 5 have very similar theme (at least 3 are similar) and the streetlight shot could be debatable. I acknowledge this is your blog and I am not being critical but just making an observation to provide additional fodder to your continual self assessment. Please accept my apologies if I have breached any protocols or ran afoul of etiquette and I assure you it is not intentional.

Sury

[Kalainen]

Toni,
Nice shots and I love the baby shot the most. On the other hand, I find your images are getting kind of mono-thematic. Your last 4 out of 5 have very similar theme (at least 3 are similar) and the streetlight shot could be debatable. I acknowledge this is your blog and I am not being critical but just making an observation to provide additional fodder to your continual self assessment. Please accept my apologies if I have breached any protocols or ran afoul of etiquette and I assure you it is not intentional.
Sury

Sury, thank you for your comment. This is a good comment and anything honest is fair really. I read already yesterday, but been thinking about things you say. When it comes to being mono-thematic, it's about lack of skills and experience really. No need to deny that and I'm glad that you have pointed it to me. I should be exploring different themes as well and force my self to borders of uncertainty to learn something. So, it's a good comment and reminder that I need to open up my thinking when it comes to finding subjects for photography. Getting out of the comfort zone as one might say.

-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]

Week 8, Saturday - First strokes
"I'd like to think that exploring my own photographic eye and starting to understand different individual and cultural elements behind it is most rewarding experience one can have with his own photography. It's also the reason why I felt I needed to depart from usual family&holidays photography and begin this journey into my own visual world. Having said that I believe that my own photographic eye isn't somewhere out there in hibernation just waiting to be found. I carry the individual and cultural seeds within 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/

[Kalainen]

Week 9, Wednesday - Stored memories
"I’ve already told you that I have some old film in our fridge, but what I didn’t tell you is that some of those rolls have pictures in them. Grown at the digital age I never clicked with an analog film, but there is one thing I’ve always liked about it – its physicality and worldly character. Image forms into a film with the aid of emulsion which contains light-sensitive chemicals. As such it is trace of physical reality and light that once run through the emulsion. Film rolls that are situated in our fridge contain these kind of traces from at least ten years back when me and Sari where younger and the life we now live didn’t yet exist. [...]"

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/

[sury]

Toni,
It looks like (in the first one) you have begun your journey towards unknown and therefore
new. The film rolls shot has nice lighting and makes those round objects look sharp. I sure
hope that the water drops are not condensation in your fridge (there shouldn't any, right?).

Sury

[Kalainen]

Toni,
It looks like (in the first one) you have begun your journey towards unknown and therefore
new. The film rolls shot has nice lighting and makes those round objects look sharp. I sure
hope that the water drops are not condensation in your fridge (there shouldn't any, right?).
Sury

Thanks for your kind words Sury. Water drops are actually ice, and I'm not totally sure if there should be there or not. Little time ago we cleaned our fridge and had to melt it to do that (I did the glowing egg picture after that). I thought that the ice would not form again, but after one day there were already there. So, I'm actually not sure about the ice, but food and stuff is ok. I actually like pretty cold fridge and Sari complains from time to time that her yoghurt is frozen.

-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/