Lavonardo

This week’s photo thursday challenge is kind. As taken from kiltti in finnish - also translatable as nice or kilt (the scottish piece of clothing).

My take is the attached image, of a giant panda. Which, despite its size, seems to be one of the most mellow animals on earth. Though not perfect, as it may attack passersby out of irritation. Which just means that anybody can have a bad day.

This particular bear was photographed in the Washington Zoo. And she certainly lived up to the reputation of being a lazy animal - this is the only image of the panda standing up, most of the time it was content to lie down on the rocks.

This week’s photo thursday challenge derives its topic from a poem in finnish. Basically the instruction is to provide a heavy secret.

My choice is the attached photo, of ground zero in New York, less than half a year after the 9/11 attack. Most of the rubble had been excavated immediately, but work was still going on at the site.

Even now the world is still reeling from the aftershocks of the event, so the burden of secrets must be heavy indeed.

This week’s photo thursday challenge is easy.

And guiding tourists in the off-season in Athens must be really easy, if the employees can take it as easy as this dog does.

This week’s photo thursday challenge is thought.

Hasn’t been one of those philosophical days today, but I certainly do often wonder whether we could indeed do with fewer wires. And this isn’t even getting closer to the really scary kingdom of wires, like the back of any stereo system with a serious amount of inputs.

This week’s photo thursday challenge is about storms.

Since this summer was about as boring as they get, storms-wise, I’m recycling an old picture from 2006.

While the set of crepuscular rays breaking through cloud cover looks dramatic, the gathering storm actually fizzled soon after the picture was taken, and no rain fell.

Photo thursday is back from a long summer vacation.

Thes fall season begins with a challenge on incomplete.

My take on the subject is the attached photograph, of Guggenheim Museum in New York, that was undergoing a significant renovation project in the spring of 2007.

This week marks the end of the first half of the photo thursdays of 2008. This week’s challenge is an image brought forward by Beirut’s song Sunday Smile (links to the song and video in the challenge page).

I didn’t find the song too upbeat or joy-inducing, so my participation is this smile-less lizard of an unknown species, who clearly is not having the time of his life.

This week’s Photo Thursday challenge heads for abstract waters once again with this week’s topic: whisper.

My take is one of the oddest discoveries recently when walking around Pikku Huopalahti with a camera. Despite the waves of nostalgia inspired by this loose piece of Brio railroad, I failed to heed the whisper to take it home - thus doing my part in not spoiling some kid’s future efforts in being the railroad tycoon of the living room carpet.

This week’s Photo Thursday challenge is a very finnish concept: a night without a night. This refers to the summer nights that are not exactly dark on account of the planet’s axial tilt - while the sun does set below the polar circle, it never gets actually dark.

The image is a month off the solstice, and as such the darkness has started to creep in already. The location is Nivala, Pohjanmaa - and the location pretty much exactly the same used for a previous challenge (#40: Most Beautiful Word in the World).

This week’s photo thursday challenge is all about encountering chance.

My take is a picture of a peacock that absolutely refused to flaunt his tail, being satisfied just to walk around with the flashiest bits folded away.

This week’s photo thursday challenge is all about human factor.

My take is one of the most saddest images I’ve ever taken - a metal tricycle scorched in the Hiroshima nuclear attack in 1945. Even if the atomic offensive shortened the pacific war, the number of civilian casualties was staggering - including the kid riding the bike as the new sun opened up in the morning sky.

The photograph is from the remembrance museum in downtown Hiroshima - a very sobering experience that takes ages to wear off. No idea what the object on the left actually is, looks like a helmet of some sort.

This week’s photo thursday challenge starts with the first verse of a very traditional summer hymn (and also the song that pretty much defines the School’s Out moment). I’ve never run into a formal translation of the song, and won’t attempt it here either. Let’s just say that it celebrates the beginning of the summer in a very lurical fashion.

My take on the subject is the attached image, a lush lawn intersected by a looming shadow. Helsinki is right now enjoying my favorite season - the turning point from spring to summer. Everything is still green, the days are not reliably warm yet, and most important of all: we’re not yet jaded of the summer. In a couple of weeks the season is taken for granted, now there’s still some of the wonder left.

The photo thursday is celebrating its second anniversary, and I decided to follow Juha’s lead in describing my own involvement in the photography meme.

It all began in the fifteenth challenge, in september 2006. And despite having upgraded my camera recently, the very first photograph used was a low-quality camera phone image of the baltic sea in twilight.

Since then I’ve participated in almost all of the weekly challenges, and will continue to do so.

A couple of images have been taken just for the site, but most have been trawled from the archives.

Based on the hits from Google image search, by far the biggest hit is the one on crepuscular rays breaching purplish clouds. That’s been used here multiple times, so I’ll use another well-received image as the illustration instead. This photograph is from the challenge #36, and shows off opposites of hot and cold - habanero and snow.

Valokuvatorstai celebrates its second birthday with an approriate challenge. This week’s subject is simply 2.

My take is the attached image, of two aging elephants, walking slowly in their large enclosure in the Washington Zoo.

This week’s photo thursday challenge pulls participants in to the BlogCatalog’s blogging for hope campaign.

So basically the topic is nothing less and more than human rights. Probably one of the toughest and open-ended assignments thus far. And as shown in the others’ photos, no single universal subject overwhelms the rest on this one.

My take is the attached image, of a long bridge across a turbulent river. Worldwide, it would seem that human rights are always just a step (or seventeen) ahead, but no matter what happens, there’s unfortunately an extra mile to cover.

The star-spangled banner flying on top of the bridge should not be considered as an endorsement of the country’s policies.

This week’s photo thursday challenge is once again of the “continue the story” type.

The source image is a painting by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, and in my opinion the woman in the painting is perplexed by a cormorant sitting on a piling on the lake.

As usual, the full-sized photograph is available by clicking the attached image.

This week’s photo thursday challenge is domestic - something typically finnish.

I’m sure this week’s collection will be filled with images on flags, forests and snow. Among other things. My take is a very common scene in Ostrobothnia, an lush emerald-green field sliced in half by a powerline, topped with a roiling sky. The photograph is taken in Nivala, on the edge of just such a field, and despite appearances it did not rain that day.

Even more typical image would have been one of a lopsided barn, weathered by scores of winters, but in the era of effective agriculture, such buildings are becoming rarer every year.

This week’s photo thursday challenge is esthetics of degradation.

My take is a gargoyle, perched on a rooftop in Paris. This is a very close crop, and there’s multiple of these critters in the full-sized image (available via a click on the photograph). The weather has not been kind on the stony carving, and the degradation is visible all over the surface.

The gargoyle is one of the coolest concepts of medieval architecture, one that sadly never really made it to Finland. The word has got a really good translation though: räystäspiru - eaves-devil.

This week’s photo thursday challenge is to take the name of a novel, and extrapolate from that. Out of the three names given, I chose Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying (which has a far more agreeable name when translated).

The image is of a plane approaching Boston’s Logan airport. An airport that is located almost next to the city, just a narrow bay away. Some of the hotels in the harbour actually have water taxis that shuttle travellers to the airport, thus avoiding the congestion. Which is rather mild these days, following the completion of the Big Dig.

This week’s photo thursday challenge is bogeyman, mörkö in finnish.

According to wikipedia, a bogeyman has

… no specific appearance, and bogeyman can be used metaphorically to denote a person or thing of which someone has an irrational fear.

My take on the subject is a small creature with a fearsome face. This is an unknown mantis species, about five inches long, climbing on a shrubbery. It’s probably dangerous only to plants (or other insects, should it be a predatory species), not to man. But blown up to a big enough size, or looked at from a short distance, the critter certainly is scary enough.

The image is available in full-size (albeit there’s lots of out-of-focus bits) by clicking the photograph.