I ended up shooting couple of weddings during the past year, and although wedding photography isn't my main forté (I'd like to think), I have to say the shooting experience that I could gain from that kind of events is invaluable. 

Every wedding is different with its locations, lighting conditions, amount of guests etc. and you also have to be sharp with the changing situations and the schedule that fills wedding days. For the wedding couple, this could be the most important day of their lives, so you definitely want to deliver when it comes to photographs. Here's some of the wedding shots from the past year.

I started this photoblog about a year ago and one of the first blog posts was a look back to the year 2010 with sort of a 'Best of' photo selection. So, I thought about doing the same this year as well, and although I feel very hesitant about making any kinds of 'Best of' lists, I think I could look at this as a flashback  or a quick coverage for the past year of 2011. I love visiting new places and countries, so even just by those standards, the last year was amazing.

I got to see a very very snowy winter and a hot summer (by our standards, that is) in my homeland, Finland, but I also had the chance to see The Alps in Engelberg, Switzerland, as well as the Bavarian region and German Alps in Garmich-Partenkirchen, Germany. I ended shooting some weddings, too, which added different kind of experience to my photography. On top of everything, I ended up moving to Sydney, Australia and also fulfilled one of my travelling dreams by touring a bit around New Zealand. So all in all, amazing places and amazing opportunities for improving my photography and I think I ended up getting couple of nice shots here and there. I don't want to view these images as the top selections for the year, but rather as  a photography collection that I see covering my year of 2011 pretty well and the way I personally see it.
All I can say is: The World Is Beautiful.

Here we go, the chosen 11 photos from the year 2011. Let this be a great start for the photo-rich year of 2012.

So the last post was about some inspirational films and now I'm sharing some things that have given me a chance (and a change) to see and explore new views in this world. Namely, I left Helsinki and Finland for Sydney, Australia in August. I also left my full time day job in Helsinki and decided to take some time off for myself as well as, you guessed it, to explore now places with my camera. My current camera body, too, is pretty new - I got this Nikon D300s this past July and so far I'm really liking it. Solidly built and good quality, although it's not the newest models body Nikon has produced.

Overall, I've been taking various kinds of photos (as usual) during my time here in Australia, from landscapes and cityscapes to street photography and wildlife photography. My new The Sydney Blog Tumblr blog is kind of my photojournal from my time here.

I also bought a new Manfrotto tripod and have been practicing long exposure photography, which I haven't been doing much before. I've been doing some night/evening shoots here in Sydney, which is a beautiful big city right on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. The other long exposure technique I've been precticing is taking LE photos in the daytime, for which you need ND (Neutral Density) filters. Generally I've been doing much more urban and cityscape photography than before and it's been really interesting environment to walk around and shoot. Since you also find beutiful coastlines and beaches from right here in Sydney, it's not like you're just surrounded with dark brick walls, though. Below is some cityscape photography I've taken during the past few months.
Here's a link to my Behance Network project with more cityscapes from Sydney. I've also been updating my facebook page with all the latest photos. Oh, and since the Google+ has properly taken off now, I'm also using that one and it seems that at least the photographer community is very active in the G+.

Due to some questions about from where to get my photography, I have started to use RedBubble for my print sales. Here's more info about buying prints through RedBubble with some selected photos. This is the link to my RedBubble portfolio. Go and check it out and if there's some different photos you wish to buy then contact me personally and we'll try to sort it out.

It's getting warmer in Helsinki and the days are getting longer. We went to do some landscape shooting with other amateur photographers this past weekend and here's a couple of photos I took. The location was the Suomenlinna Sea Fortress, situated on a group of islands off Helsinki. Established Finnish landscape photographer Mikael Rantalainen, who is specialized in winter landscapes, was instructing us so we got to see how an experienced photographer goes on with his outdoor shootings.

I got further in going through my Svalbard photos from last summer. I finally got going with my intentions of post processing and turning some of the photos into black & white, grayscale tone.
More of these photos in my Behance projects Svalbard in Greyscale pt.1, pt.2 and pt.3. There's some samples on my Facebook page here.

It's been a winter full of snow and, recently, damn cold in Helsinki. Here's some photos from the freezing days of February. Currently, it's -20 degrees celcius outside, so you can's spend too much time shooting without gloves.

Here's four pieces below and you can find more recent winter shots from my Behance Network project, Winter in Helsinki.

Shot taken in the remote Russian mining settlement called Barentsburg, Svalbard.

I haven't been doing too much macro photography and this is something I intend to do more in the future. My dear friend gave me a Nikon Extension Bellows and then I bought a 55mm Micro-Nikkor lens (which is old, yes, but sharp as hell) to get to try the bellows. These particular photos below are not shot using the bellows, but only with the manual 55mm lens. The stones I used as model were pretty small, about the size of a thumb, I'd say.

So, I had a chance to go to Switzerland for the first time in my life and see The Alps. To be more precise, we stayed for four days in the lovely mountain village called Engelberg. I did skiing every day we stayed there and the highest slope started from the top of the Mountain Titlis (3,238m). I had my camera and some lenses in my bag all the time so did some shooting as well, naturally. I posted two projects, colour and black&white, to my Behance portfolio and to Facebook as well, if you're up to getting a closer look. Here's some views from The Alps.

I've had my portfolio site up for about a year now and now I've decided to start running a photoblog as well. I've generally gotten a bit more active online in terms of photography since I recently set up my Facebook photography page.

I've been thinking what would be the best way to start a photoblog and I'm going with this: My favourite photos from this year, 2010. You could tell there's been some highlight trips for me this year, such as visiting Svalbard and Venice as well as getting a change to photoshoot wild bears from a hide in Northern Finland. I might be putting out some older shots later in the following posts or even doing a similar favourite collection for the year 2009. We'll see what will follow.

Anyway, here’s a collection of my favorite images from this year in no particular order.