Milestone

1,000th blip! I feel like I should celebrate somehow. Perhaps with a sweet pastry of some sort. Except they don’t travel well on bicycle, and a pile of shaken-to-sludge pastry goop is hardly what I’d choose for a milestone blip :-)

But I do feel like a bit of retrospection.

I started blipping because I wanted to practice photography. I stay not just for the practice, but also because of you. If you are reading this, you are part of the nicest, most pleasant corner of the whole, wide internet. Take this to heart. I rarely have the time to write anything useful to the people here, but please know that I love hanging around here.

What I did not expect was finding my own photographic style. Oh, I have no idea how it actually works, just that people around me often say “that photo is so you.” So obviously I do have a recognisable style. And all I did was  to practice.

To celebrate this, I looked back in my archives and picked a few blips that I am particularly fond of:

Yellow bench - just my 25th blip, but it came back so many times that I eventually started tagging it. I haven’t seen it around for a while, but most likely the paint has just faded away over these years outside.

White fluff - a departure from my usual style, I don’t shoot much high-key, but this one came out so perfect. I had no idea my camera could take shots like this.

et - taken during my first visit to Umeå, one of my favourite cities in Sweden. And with a bicycle that just happened to sit just right in the frame.

Medieval parenting - my favourite silhouette photo by far. Yes, the silhouettes are slightly blurry, but that combination of medieval garb and hyper-modern pram just takes the cake.

Morning traveller - I just happened to stumble over this gorgeous morning light in the central station. Can’t believe how well it turned out.

Catching those last rays - visiting a very dear friend of mine, who is also a photographer, so of course we went on a photo tour just for fun. And managed to time this exquisite sunset against pristine snow.

Out for a walk - not only was this my first proper multi-day hiking trip, but it captures so well the feeling of vast and empty loneliness in the Swedish mountains. I long to get back up there again.

Oaken portal - one of those places that I pass by every day on my commute, but in that particular moment… wow. Eerie and serene.

FINALLY - my first aurora. Took an hour and a half of waiting and hoping. I hope to catch more this winter, as the sun is close to maximum activity right now.

A sight for sore feet - again with the mountains and the loneliness. I guess that is a strong element of my style; a touch of the old Swedish melancholy.

Old Town - best rainbow I ever saw, and I even managed to frame Stockholm’s Old Town within it. And again, a feeling of empty desolation despite a heavily travelled bicycle route.

And thus I conclude my first 1,000 blips. Thank you for reading this far, and I hope to see you again in the 1,001st… :-D

Extra: a replica of the oaken portal, but taken this morning in beautifully foggy weather.