Trip to Isokari and other pictures from Finland

[Fingers]

Last week I visited my brother who lives on the southwest coast of Finland. There's a great archipelago of thousands of rocky islands in this area, so I of course had to go check it out with him and my nephew. We visited one of the bigger islands, called Isokari (iso means big, kari means a rock or a shallow). There was an old lighthouse there with guided tours, they even let people up on the narrow catwalk around the lens housing... It was sheer terror looking down but the view was spectacular That's probably Finnish mainland you can see in the horizon, on the right side... Some 30km away.

[Fingers]

Played a tourist and walked around a few blocks in Helsinki... Starting from the famous hotel Kamp by the Esplanadi park, down to the marketplace with its infamous seagulls, nearby Uspenski cathedral, and around the corner to the Senate Square with yet another cathedral. Obligatory tourist photos attached.

[Sofia Alexandra]

Whee Helsinki! My papa lives there (though not right now, he's in Nigeria) so I've been there quite a lot.

I love the seagull, it looks so nice and soft, and I know how hard it is to get nice shots of moving animals.

[Fingers]

Hehe, that seagull shot was pure luck and quick reactions... He swooped right by my head and was only a couple of feet away when I took the picture. No big telephoto lens involved.

[Fingers]

...is the cloudberry, they say, because you have to bow down before each one (as you pick them).

Anyway, I spent much more time taking pictures of the environment and "wildlife" than picking berries even if that was the official purpose of this trip to the woods... Had kids and a dog along with us adults so it wasn't a serious thing in any case.

[mollyduker]

Looking good! I want to pet that dog. He/she looks so friendly (though it looks more like a he). Some of the buildings seem a little cut off, but the pictures fro isokari are really nice. The last set remind me of the area up my my mom's aunt/uncle/cousin's lake house that we visit when we are there. The frog and butterfly/moth pictures are gorgeous. How do you manage to get so close? And shoot without them moving? Keep shooting and posting.

[Fingers]

Yeah the pup's male... He's only 3 months old, don't know the breed but he's going to be huge. He belongs to my sister's husband.

The trick I discovered when taking pictures of butterflies is to come up slowly from the direction of the sun, but never have your shadow touch the bug. They sit still with their wings open in order to collect sunlight/warm up. Some of them are easier than others; the big red one let me really close while the blue was skittish and took many attempts as well as required more cropping to produce the final image.

The frog was still a baby and either scared stiff or not particularly smart The kids (the one holding it is a 10 year-old girl) picked him up three times and he'd stay mostly still in their hands for a couple of minutes before jumping off each time.

[Fingers]

Just arrived last night. Here's a few photos from the flight taken with the Canon IXUS pocket camera... Locations are southwestern Finland, west coast of Greenland, Newfoundland/Labrador, Maine.