June, summer is here even though the temperatures are not that high. Nature is giving us its best that’s for sure.
One of my favorite flowers. White lilac
The scent is so lovely
Posted for Cee’s Flower of the Day
summer 2023 -4
Author: Ritva Sillanmäki Photography
I’m a student of life; I see beauty in nature, people and the world around me, small details and complete view. Without the ability to actualize an idea or concept, art would not exist. My work is a constant search for the best way to interpret the ideas that I have about myself and the world I live in. I do not limit myself to one medium, style, or concept.
Inspiration and ideas change. My knowledge changes and grows. Each piece I create is simultaneously an extension from the past, where I’ve come from and what I’ve learned, as well as a preview of the future, where I’m going.
I do not classify myself as just a photographer, as some might think from looking at my work. I am a sculptor, a painter, a photographer, an artist.
If a viewer stops for just a moment to view and reflect on a photograph, a photo collage or a painting I have created, then I have succeeded in my work.
summer 2023 – 3
June, summer is here even though the temperatures are not that high. Nature is giving us its best that’s for sure.
One of my favorite flowers. Peony.
For Cee´s Flower of the Day.
summer 2023 – 2
June, summer is here even though the temperatures are not that high. Nature is giving us its best that’s for sure.
Snails, those slimy little things that eat my plants.., . I found these as I went through my archive for this challenge Snail’s
I found these as I went through my archive NPC #16 Snails
summer 2023 – 1
June, summer is here even though the temperatures are not that high. Nature is giving us its best that’s for sure.
Birds, not my expertise at all, sometimes I get a nice shot, but sometimes is the thing as I do not have the equipment to get the spot on shots. I found these as I went through my archive for this challenge Birds feeding and drinking
I found these as I went through my archive NPC #15: Birds feeding and drinking
Floral joy~ 9
Flowers from my archive’s and camera roll.
Something different, shaken and stirred .
Lilac time
Posted for Cee’s Flower of the Day
Lens Artists Challenge #252: What’s Bugging You?
Lens-Artist Challenge with a focus on, What’s Bugging You? by Donna of Wind Kisses
I am slowly recovering from my flu and participating on this weeks challenge, and will also be replying on comments I’ve received. what is bugging me is this flu, if I am being totally honest. I do have a stronger word in mind, but I will spare you.
Now to the topic on had bugs, slugs ( is it a bug?) probably not. I wholeheartedly agree with the Donna I think the true challenge here, is that encounters are rarely purposeful, and bugs are never willing participants.
So I am going to spare words, just post photos of bugs 🙂
For inspiration check out, What’s Bugging You? by Donna of Wind Kisses
Remember to link to this challenge when you post and use the Lens-Artists tag. lens-artist tag
Spring 2023 – 8
I have had the flu now for two weeks and no end in sight. I’m so tired of coughing and sneezing 🤧. I have been doing nothing, but today I am going to post few photos. Well of flowers.
Looks promising, we will get some strawberries this summer
For Cee´s Flower of the Day.
Lens Artists Challenge #251: Buildings and Other Structures
Anne wrote: My challenge for you, this week, is to find your own fascinating structures that capture your attention, tell a story or are just beautiful. You can capture new scenes or take a trip down memory lane in your photo archives. Lens Artists Challenge #251: Buildings and Other Structures
I am going to be brief worded, I have had the flu now for over a week so I am not at my best, it really drains you from all energy. SO I apologize for lack of responses to comments I’ve received. I will get to them.
So many to choose from, and without any reason I went with these. Enjoy.
Urajärvi Manor is one of the oldest manor museums in our country, having bequeathed their home for museum use by Lilly and Hugo von Heideman. The Empire-style mansion is located in Itä-Asikkala, Urajärvi.
The current main building was completed in 1810, the earlier one burned down and its exact location is unknown. The main building was initially a one-story building with a mansard roof. It was extended and raised into a two-story empire-style building in 1839-40 when the new manor owner Axel von Heideman moved into the house with his wife Sofia. The second floor was built only for grandeur and the fashion of the time. There are living rooms only at the ends.
The English-style park of Urajärvi Manor Museum with its romantic walkways and viewpoints is an experience worth seeing and experiencing
A quick stop to old town int Nice in France, I am drawn to the old architecture, the colors and rooftops .
the colorful and slightly dilapidated houses of Cape Verde attracted me and almost asked me to photograph them. Some had been nicely renovated.
These two modern high-rise building’s are from San Francisco, they are impressive, but they lack warmth and soul
These are from Brisbane in Australia, similar high rise buildings as above, but you can see an old building left by the sea front. What difference in style. I was very attracted to the l Queenslander houses.
And if you did not know the header is Sydney Opera house 🙂
Posted for Anne’s Lens-Artists Challlenge
Remember to link to this challenge when you post and use the Lens-Artists tag. Anne wants to see all your artful structures
Spring 2023 – 7
I’m at my happy place, I can hear the birdsong, sound of the wind, bee’s buzzing in this so called place of silence. and smell scent of the Lily of the valley.
Lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis) is well known for its delicate bells and beautiful sweet scent. You’ll find lily of the valley throughout the northern hemisphere. Signifying the return of happiness, the plant is synonymous with the month of May, and it is indeed the birth flower for May.
Lily of the valley meaning
A symbol of purity, joy, love, sincerity, happiness and luck, lily of the valley . It’s actually the national flower of Finland, and in France, on 1st May for La Fête du Muguet, lily of the valleys are gifted to loved ones. This French custom dates back to the 16th century ) – symbolizing luck and happiness.
Mid-Week Monochrome ~ water
I have a soft spot for black and white photography, it is expressive and minimalist in and very mood enhancing.
Drinking water is like washing out your insides. The water will cleanse the system, fill you up, decrease your caloric load and improve the function of all your tissues.– Kevin R. Stone
Posted for Leanne’s Monochrome Madness
Spring 2023 – 6
I’m at my happy place, I can hear the birdsong, sound of the wind, bee’s buzzing in this so called place of silence.
Blossoms…
Here are some signs of spring , the joy and the glory of nature. I had made up my mind not to take flower pictures as I have so many of them already, but I did anyways.
Apple tree blossoms are in full bloom at the moment, what a glorious sight
For Cee´s Flower of the Day.
Spring 2023 – 5
I’m at my happy place, I can hear the birdsong, sound of the wind, bee’s buzzing in this so called place of silence.
The variations of green…gotta to love it.
Here are some signs of spring , the joy and the glory of nature. I had made up my mind not to take flower pictures as I have so many of them already, but I did anyways. Cherry tree blossoms…well got to love them
Submitted for Cee’s Flower of the Day AND Nature Photo Challenge #14
three versions
Editing is fun, and i make several editing versions of my photos and I try to pick the one I like the most.
I saw this challenge and thought I’d give it a go. This is for April as I could not find one for May.
The original one.above and black and white version below
I now days always shoot in RAW and am able to play with the photo in so more ways than if I did with JPG.
In this version I added light to the background, changed the tones more towards blues.
The last one I turned the shot into autumn tones and the mood changed totally
One-to-Three Photo Processing Challenge-April 2023
PS the header is slightly different from the original, did you happen to notice that? I added some softness to it
Spring 2023 – 4
I’m at my happy place, I can hear the birdsong, sound of the wind, bee’s buzzing in this so called place of silence.
The variations of green…gotta to love it.
Here are some signs of spring , the joy and the glory of nature. I had made up my mind not to take flower pictures as I have so many of them already, but I did anyways. Forget me not – I did not forget these tiny little wonders
Submitted for Cee’s Flower of the Day.
Butterflies 🦋
🦋 butterflies are so lovely … Here are some I have been lucky to capture.
And as Denzil wrote: For Nature Photo Challenge #13 we focus on Butterflies. Butterflies of course are beautiful, photogenic, and interesting. They deserve to be protected just because they are butterflies and worthy of our love and protection. However, they are also highly useful insects.
If you ask me to name these species, no, not able to do that, but as stated they are lovely.
For Denzil´s Nature Photo Challenge.
Lens Artists Challenge #250: Skyscapes or Cloudscapes
This week, Amy challenges us to post some beautiful sky or cloudscapes.
what can I say, great topic. I have so SO many cloud and sky shots. When in a car I live watching the clouds, more often than not we have clouds in the sky here in Finland, it is m feeling, not an actual fact, but let’s go with that anyways. I did dig up some information about clouds, if not interested skip that and just view the photos. That is my thing anyways… enjoy. And Thanks Amy this was just up my kind of topic.
These are cloud types in Northern Hemisphere
 | Cirro-form The Latin word “cirro” means curl of hair. Composed of ice crystals, cirro-form clouds are whitish and hair-like. There are the high, wispy clouds to first appear in advance of a low-pressure area such as a mid-latitude storm system or a tropical system such as a hurricane. |
 | Cumulo-form Generally detached clouds, they look like white fluffy cotton balls. They show vertical motion or thermal uplift of air taking place in the atmosphere. They are usually dense in appearance with sharp outlines. The base of cumulus clouds are generally flat and occurs at the altitude where the moisture in rising air condenses. |
 | Strato-form From the Latin word for “layer”, these clouds are usually broad and fairly wide spread, appearing like a blanket. They result from non-convective rising air and tend to occur along and to the north of warm fronts. The edges of strato-form clouds are diffuse. |
 | Nimbo-form Howard also designated a special rain cloud category which combined the three forms cumulo + cirro + stratus. He called this cloud “nimbus”, the Latin word for rain. The vast majority of precipitation occurs from nimbo-form clouds and therefore these clouds are generally the thickest. |
Clouds in the Northern Hemisphere can vary depending on the latitude, season, and weather patterns. For example, in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, clouds tend to form ice more often and contain less liquid water than in the Southern Hemisphere. This is because the air in the Southern Hemisphere is cleaner and has fewer aerosol particles for cloud droplets to freeze around.
One of the most interesting types of clouds that can be seen in the Northern Hemisphere are noctilucent clouds, which are the highest clouds on Earth and can only be observed at night during summer months. They are made of tiny ice crystals and reflect sunlight from below the horizon, creating a blue or silver glow.
Noctilucent clouds are only visible at night during summer months because they are very high up in the atmosphere, around 76 to 85 km (249,000 to 279,000 ft), and they need very cold temperatures and low pressure to form. They also need sunlight to illuminate them from below the horizon, which only happens during astronomical twilight in summer at high latitudes.
Above are clouds and skies from finland, below sunsets from all Sri Lanka (man gliding) next to it sunset in India, the red moon. Unser it a sunset and clouds in Key West, Florida. The very blue and red sunset is from Cape Verde. The last three are from Australia.
These first three are from are skies from Florida. Next two from France – Nice. Last row is Italy, USA – California and last Australia- NSW
I invite you to join us this week to, challenge hosted by Amy to post some beautiful sky or cloudscapes.
Saturday Classics – 20052023
Sing – Travis
Something light and positive for this weekend, I am sitting on the patio at my summer house, and enjoying the sun and listening to the sing, sing, sing from the birds. I could not find a photo of an singer , but here is a bird.
Songfacts®: Travis’s frontman Fran Healy told Yahoo! the story of this song: “It was written while watching MTV with the sound down. There was a thing on about swing beat. So I started singing this song – I was writing at the time, I was watching the telly and playing the guitar and humming along – and I got this cool little melody, and when it naturally got to a sort of chorus-y part, I started singing, ‘Swing… If you swing, swing, swing, swing.’ And I was imagining someone pushing someone on a swing. It was just that feeling when you’re a child on a swing – it’s the coolest feeling! And so, I played to the guys the next in the studio and everyone played along, and we recorded it as a little out take, just to get the idea down. During that, it changed from ‘swing, swing, swing’ to ‘sing, sing, sing’ halfway through the chorus. It was half and half.”
When Healy arrived back home that night and listened to it in his house, he realized the song had switched from the joy of children playing in the playground to the recuperative powers of singing. He told Yahoo: “I thought it was really cute, kinda charming. So the words in the verse I kind of directed at Nora, my fiancée.”
This song went on to become the band’s biggest hit to date and a favorite with buskers. Healy told Yahoo!: “‘Sing’ – You could replace that word with ‘Dance’ or ‘Cry’ or ‘Laugh’ or just ‘Let Go.’ ‘Cause as an expression, when you’re a child, you sing all the time. And then when you get older, you don’t – you just go, ‘I don’t want to, my voice is crap.’ But when you’re a kid, you don’t care! And I think that’s what you should always have – a little bit of that still in you. People look at people in the street that sing like they’re mad, like, ‘What are you singing for?’ But it’s about having fun and feeling good and all that stuff.”
The Invisible Band is Travis’ third studio album. The title refers to the band’s status after the success of its predecessor, The Man Who, as – says Healy – “having famous songs, but not being famous themselves.” The release quickly went to #1 in the UK and peaked at #39 in the US, making the band more visible than ever.
Baby, you’ve been going so crazy
Lately, nothing seems to be going right
So low, why’d you have to get so low?
You’re so
You’ve been waiting in the sun too long
But if you sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing
For the love you bring won’t mean a thing
Unless you sing, sing, sing, sing
Colder, crying over your shoulder
Hold her, and tell her everything’s gonna be fine
Surely, you’ve been going too early
Hurry, ’cause no one’s gonna be stopped
Now, now, now, now, now
But if you sing, sing, sing, sing, sing
For the love you bring won’t mean a thing
Unless you sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing
Baby, there’s something going on today
But I say nothing, nothing, nothing
Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing
So, now, now, now, now, now
Lepis is hosting Saturday Classics, you can add your own link here Saturday Classics
On Her page she writes: This blog is back with hosting the Classics after few years break. This time we’ll be playing on Saturdays and you can link straight here on this own page. Rules: There are no rules, as long as the song you play is a classic in your mind. Linking open 8 am and closes 12 pm.
An other take on sing, sing, sing
“Sing Sing Sing” : version Benny Goodman
The Swingsationals – Sing Sing Sing
Throwback Thursday
We all have these photos … throwback photos! Don’t we just… so many. It’s described as ‘nostalgia-inducing pictures … from a different era of your life”.
This week (#TB Thursday). We visited Karhulinna ( bear castle) in Korkeasaari Zoo in 2015. I got some nice shots of the bears enjoying a smim and playing together.
Korkeasaari got its first bears already in 1888, i.e. a year before the zoo was officially founded.
Today’s Karhulinna is home to two bears, Sofia born in 2001 in Ähtäri Zoo and her female cub Yulia born in 2006 in Korkeasaari. They look very similar, but there are some differences in behavior – for example, the younger one of the bears likes to swim, but its mother is content to wade. Bears hibernate indoors in their own dens, usually from November to the beginning of March.
The bear is Finland’s largest predator, but it mostly eats plant food. It tastes soft shoots, leaves, roots, berries and grain, but also all kinds of animal food such as small mammals and fish. Despite its large size, the bear moves nimbly, climbs and swims well.
In Northern Europe, bears hibernate, when their body temperature drops a few degrees and their vital functions slow down. Hibernation is the bears’ way of surviving the long winter, when there is little food available. Before going to sleep, the bear gets fat, eating a lot of sugary berries in particular. Bear cubs are born during the mother’s hibernation in January-March. Their birth weight is only 350-500 grams. The cubs emerge from the nest in May-June, and stay with their mother for a couple of years. When the female has her young cubs with her, she avoids the males when moving, as they can kill the foreign cubs. The female does not have offspring every year.
Pages
Photo of an old ledger and a book I am now reading, maybe this tells that I don’t have all that many grand ideas to take photos off 🙂
Mid-Week Monochrome ~ cookery
I have a soft spot for black and white photography, it is expressive and minimalist in and very mood enhancing.
The greatest dishes are very simple.– Auguste Escoffier
Cooking is like painting or writing a song. Just as there are only so many notes or colors, there are only so many flavors – it’s how you combine them that sets you apart.-Wolfgang Puck
Posted for Leanne’s Monochrome Madness
Spring 2023 – 3
I’m at my happy place, I can hear the birdsong, sound of the wind, bee’s buzzing in this so called place of silence.
The variations of green…gotta to love it.
Here are some signs of spring , the joy and the glory of nature
Posted for Cee’s Flower of the Day
Garlic
Practicing my food photography.
Garlic was my choice this time. I add garlic to so many foods, and lots of it. Even now my hands smell of garlic as I just put a pan on stove to simmer, making pasta sauce.
Onions I’ve done several times so, this is a slight change.
“Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food.”
Those are famous words from the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, often called the father of Western medicine.
He prescribed garlic to treat a variety of medical conditions — and modern science has confirmed many of these beneficial health effects.
Fast facts on garlic
In many countries, garlic has been used medicinally for centuries.
Garlic may have a range of health benefits, both raw and cooked.
It may have significant antibiotic properties.
Lens Artists Challenge #249: Art in the park (and other places)
This weeks challenge is John’s Art in the Park
This week’s challenge features a focus on the arts. Public art in all its forms and locations. Whether in a park or a parking lot, an outdoor theater, or a street corner, art in public places can be found in communities worldwide.
Here we go
Mustion Linna – Mustio Manor is a similar place like the one mentioned in the group, but in a smaller scale here in Finland.
Mustio Manor is one of the most precious manor houses in Finland with a history of more than two hundred years. The manor was built between 1783 and 1792 by Magnus Linder II. The manor house is the largest non-ecclesiastic wooden buildings in Finland. The architecture is a mix of the two styles, rococo and neo-classicism, while the Gustavian style dominates the interior.
The park was originally designed as a baroque park in 1787 but in the late 19th century Fridolf Linder renewed the park into an English style of park. He planted many exotic trees from all over the world, which are unusual species in Finland.
The park is now a welcome retreat for the soul with its winding paths, romantic bridges, statues, follies and a water lily path over the water.
Here are some finds from my travels, statues seems to be the most popular art in parks.
Since opening in 2009, Wynwood Walls has evolved into a globally renowned street art museum . These remarkable Walls have transformed the definition of modern art and become a career-defining moment for contributing artists, all while helping to make Wynwood one of the world’s most celebrated urban revitalization projects and an oasis for cutting-edge creativity. The shots below are from 2018.
Art festival in Florida also in 2018
Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, built in 1916 as a winter retreat, this lavish villa is a tribute to the Italian Renaissance. The museum contains much of the original furnishings and artwork, and is surrounded by lush, formal gardens, with many statues.
I invite you to join us this week to John’s Art in the Park
Floral joy~ 8
Flowers from my archive’s and camera roll.
Something different, shaken and stirred .
Photographs were taken at the Botanical Garden in Helsinki, and I do not remember the name of the flower. It is pretty, it is orange and that’s all good.
Posted for Brens Floral Friday – For Cee’s Flower of the Day.
Warm
Warm in and outside, the joy of cottage life
Spring 2023 – 2
I’m at my happy place, I can hear the birdsong, sound of the wind, bee’s buzzing in this so called place of silence.
I slept so well last night, such a blizz to be able to do so…
Here are some signs of spring , the joy and the glory of new green and pops of color.
For Denzil´s Nature Photo Challenge.
Ritva Sillanmäki Photography 