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Filling the square:play and dream Juha Haataja

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A SoFoBoMo 2010photobook

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Filling the square:play and dream

 Juha Haataja

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Filling the square: play and dream

A SoFoBoMo 2010 photobook 

Copyright Juha Haataja, 2010

http://lightscrape.blogspot.com/

What is SoFoBoMo? SoFoBoMo is a group event wherephotographers all around the world make solo photo books in PDF form,in 31 days, start to finish, and there has to be at least 35 photographs inthe book.

I made my first SoFoBoMo book in 2009, a quick job in a couple of days,showing the city of Copenhagen where I attended a two-day conference.Although everything was done in a hurry, the project was interesting, andI learned several new things about photography and typesetting.

This year, I decided to use the square format in my photographs, alsoreferred to as 1:1 aspect ratio. There is no deep reason for this, onlysome curiousity about the challenges of making square compositions. Itis often said to be very hard. Some claim that it is rare that a photographworks in this aspect ratio.

Usually people use the 4:3 or 3:2 aspect ratios, or even 16:9, both in thehorizontal and vertical orientations (“landscape” and “portrait”). Thesquare is difficult because it doesn’t offer straightforward guidance tothe eye about how to read the image. When using horizontal or verticalformats there is a natural flow to the image. Not so with the square. Theimage itself has to have structure to help the eye to travel through theimage.

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Mark Hobson is one of the photographers who are masters of the squareformat. Although I don’t always agree with his opinions of photographyas art, his photographs reach a high level of visual impact.

But is there something else in this photo book which may be consideredas a unifying theme, besides the square?

Most of the photographs can be considered to be nature or landscapephotographs, but there are also photographs of man-made things. Andthe landscape and nature photographs have some relation to beinghuman, why else take such photographs.

I have divided the photo book into seven chapters, each of which consistsof a few images which together build a bigger picture.

As the basis of this book I selected a set of 206 photographs takenbetween June 5th and 14th. All photographs were taken in or near thecity of Vantaa, in the capital region of Finland. I used a fifth of these 206photographs in the book. Later I included some additional photographsto make the chapters feel more complete. These photographs were takenbetween June 15th and 22nd.

While thinking about this project, I was reading Milan Kundera's bookL'Art du Roman, which discusses the art of writing novels. This little bookcontains some thoughts which apply also to photography, at least in an

indirect manner. This crossing of disciplines may not be so surprising asKundera was a composer before turning to writing.

I tried to use in this photo book some of Kundera's number-basedprinciples of composing, for example his idea of using seven chapters asthe large-scale structure.

Also, I’m trying to write short lightweight essays as introductions to thechapters, based on the impulses I had when I was taking those

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photographs. Or, as in some cases, thoughts which appeared whilelooking at the photographs.

You may note that I’m not using the words “making photographs” here.

Instead, I write of “taking photographs”. I don’t feel competent enough toclaim that I’m making art. I point the camera and press the button, that isall.

Technically I have worked in a streamlined manner. All images have beentaken with the Panasonic LX3 camera using the built-in square aspectratio, with the same settings, except EV correction if needed. Therehasn’t been any post-processing of photographs—photographs are jpegimages straight from the LX3. I feel this makes photography moreimmediate, no room for later correction of mistakes.

While doing this project, I reached the milestone of 100,000 photographstaken with the LX3. The little camera is still going strong after 21 monthsof use.

I need to note my gratitude to the fellow photography bloggers whosework I have enjoyed following over the years. In addition to already-mentioned Mark Hobson these include Paul Butzi, Andreas Manessingerand Markus Spring. Thanks for the inspiration.

I wish you enjoy this little book. And have luck with your own

photography!

 Juha Haataja  June 2010 Vantaa, Finland 

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1Hiding

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Hiding is a key survival skill for living things. It is hard to see whatis there. You have to be skilled to observe.

Humans no longer need to use so much our hunter-gatherer skills, but

we are good in this stuff if needed. But other creatures are even better inhiding, because their life depends on it.

In photography it is possible to bring visible something that was hidden.It may be the light, the form, the combination of elements, or somethingelse alltogether.

A camera is a tool for discovery, and the discovery doesn’t end at thepress of the button. You find things in the photograph you didn’t realizewere there when you decided to press the button.

Unfortunately, you often find out that the thing you wanted to bringvisible stayed hidden. Better luck next time.

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Wet

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Yponomeuta evonymellus

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Stuck

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Red barn

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Self-portrait

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2Waiting

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In the performance-oriented world of today, waiting seems alwaysto take too much of our time. Should we get rid of all the waiting andstreamline our lives so that we perform all the time? But what if waiting isthe thing which allows us to function at all?

One key word joining together many of my photographs is a feeling of waiting. Sometimes this is related to impatience, but more often to apatient (and natural) kind of waiting. Serenity is a word you could alsouse.

Things happen in their own time. If you force things, they may break.Patience, the capability to wait, is a key asset of a photographer. I havetoo little of that.

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Road to north

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Boat

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Seeds

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Under firs

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On the rock

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Coming

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3Dreaming

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What do we dream about? Many of my dreams — although it isn’toften that I remember what I dreamt about — happen in forests. Andsometimes while going for a walk in a forest I get a dream-like feeling, asif I was returning to a lost country which I didn’t remember any more.

When I was young, I was able to (almost) believe in some of my dreams,and continue dreaming them after waking up. I lost that skill at somepoint. Now things I think about are more or less real. Or at least I thinkthat the things I think about are real. But are they really real, that I can’tfor sure tell.

Some photographs are such that they seem to open up a window into adream, something that is not quite real but nevertheless is. Maybe it isthe magic of nature, things happening which connect to our brains on alevel below rational thought.

Sometimes I suspect that the world is a much more wonderful place thanwe think it is. Nowadays we are so used to globalization we forget thelittle local details which are a dream.

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Night of rain

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Rowan

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Bat shadow

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Beauty

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Calla

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4Playing

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It is said that dogs are wolf who never grow up. Humans have along childhood, and some of the playfulness seems to survive in most of us, although the daily routines and pressures tend to hide that,

Children remind us what it feels to have an open mind, and their example

may even teach to us how to see with open eyes, although it is verydifficult, so much there are routine things in our lives, seeing just thesurface, not having the freshness of meeting things for the first time.

Previously, I didn’t much appreciate gardening, but this spring andsummer I have grown to appreciate it. It is a way of returning to roots. Of playing.

Our world is full of paradoxes. In the adult world, some aspects of childhood are put on a pedestal, such as creativity. On the other hand, it

seems that childhood is getting shorter and shorter, as children areexpected to perform, in school and hobbies, just like little adults. It theretime for playing?

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Yard

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Fence

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Heart

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93

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Garden

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Pieces

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5Surface

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Surface is how we meet the world: though our skin, through ourtongue and nose and lungs, and through the dual channels of two-dimensional information generated in the visual system. In a three-dimensional world, surface defines our shapes, and our difference fromthe air or water around us. And then there is the surface of the ground

under our feet.

A photograph is two-dimensional, and in this book, a square two-dimensional representation of the world. If offers clues of the thingsinside, or of things outside. Two dimensions provide a surface on whichto project a representation of multi-dimensional reality.

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Fern

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Holes

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Grid structure

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Glass house

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6Decoration

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It is a human thing to decorate the world around us. We makedecorations out of small objects, we hang artwork on our walls, and weenjoy the decorative aspects of nature.

I like taking photographs of nature because there is nobody who owns a

copyright of the things there. (Although perhaps some biotechnologycompanies may want to copyright the DNA of living things...) But anyway,nature is a source of inpiration, and nature has a capability of producingendless decorations, either through biological growth or through physicalprocesses.

When taking photographs of man-made things there is always a feeling of stepping on someone elses toes, of copying, of not being originalenough. But, on the other hand, most of the day is spent in man-madeenvironments, so it would be pity to not use the opporturnities for takingphotographs there.

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Interiors

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Lobby

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Pot

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Lupine

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Line

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Stripes

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Crossing

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Wall

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Bright

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7Growth

It is the nature of things to grow. Cities grow, plants grow, human

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It is the nature of things to grow. Cities grow, plants grow, humanbeings grow. Almost all of the growth is due to the sun, whether oldsunlight wihch is stored in oil and coal, or new sunlight caught by plants.

Light is also behind the act of creation in photography. It pictures the

dynamics of world dominated by light and by the lack of light. Thesephotographs were taken in June in the capital region of Finland, when thelength of day approaches 19 hours.

It will be very different six months later. Enjoy the long days of the shortsummer while you can. One shouldn’t forget that it is a hard to stay alive.

But one should also remember water. Without it, thirst. Perhaps there isalso a thirst behind the need for taking photographs. There is a searchfor understanding, of observing, and perhaps even a kind of need forgrowth.

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Transport

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Drops

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Drops

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Summer blue

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Poisonberry

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Geranium

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Strawberry

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Birch

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Leaf colors

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