Cloudbusting 172

Brightblack Morning Light is one of those bands in search of a holy grail of "cosmic americana". I can´t say I know their music that well, but I have been checking their music quite often lately. Their songs have airy, loose and improvised sounds and structures, just the way I like it. Their sound is far away from the usual bloated, overproduced and lifeless radiorock that the airwaves are filled with. This photo has yellow light and finnish liftmakers headquarters (Kone) and boats in a marina, subjects that are about as far away from BBML as it could be. Still I was thinking here if brightblack morning light could look like this. There has to be water, lots of it, and some clouds like they were splattered randomly across the sky like paint.

Cloudbusting 171

The dark is rising.

That´s the funny part of autumn, huge looking clouds can come and go really fast. The darkness rises from the horizon in 10 minutes, huge rain comes and lasts for 10 minutes and then it´s over like it never happened.

Cloudbusting 170

A sunrise with warm colours is always appropriate for sunday post. From now on I´m often out during sunrise or sunset. Pretty soon that´s about the only thing I will briefly see on my way to work. The daylight passes by when I´m inside. In the morning I must remember not to breathe too much when taking a photo as there will be vapor in the photo from cold moist air. It´s a lot easier now as the photo can be framed from a longer distance just looking at the preview.

Cloudbusting 169

Wednesday sky texture during the rush hour of the morning. I didn´t take it when I was driving, I was waiting for the lights to change!

This week has actually been one of the most cloud- and rainfree weeks that I have seen in a long time. Cold starry nights and sunny warm daytime. A perfect indian summer week.

Cloudbusting 168

Visit Sky Watch Friday for more spectacular views from all over the world:

Birds of the sky.

Cloudbusting 167 / Maples 3

Something really light, soft and colourful. I have plenty of dark ones and autumn seems to offer them a lot more, which is no surprise. I just don´t feel like doing those right now as there is so many glowing maples to catch!

Cloudbusting 166

Yesterday was evil, as there was another school mass murder in Finland. I feel bad and I also feel that somebody should do something about it. Of course they never do and it happens again sooner or later. Of course 20-year old crackpots should have a licence to carry guns. Who am I to say anything, my job is easy and I don´t have to deal with endless stream of wackos and separate the possible bad apples.

Cloudbusting 165

The Evil Eye

Maples 2

Today I don´t have clouds, only clouds of maples in their almost full colour explosion from yesterday.

Yellow wave.

3 trees was the closest thing to a forest that I could find. Most maples here are planted, that´s why there is no large maple forests.

A tree rainbow.

Red orange mountain, my favourite.

Cloudbusting 164

A concrete factory between a wastemountain and a recycling station. In winter there is a small slalomslope on the mountain if there is enough snow. The factory is located in Betonitie (Concrete road) in Helsinki. I love practical streetnames like that.

Cloudbusting 163

Explosions in the sky.

Cloudbusting 162

Visit Sky Watch Friday for more skies from all over the world:

Today I had to steal a couple of minutes
from the morning schedule
to see a tiny golden crack
in the grey armour of the sky

Cloudbusting 161

One reader asked me if I had any rainclouds in my blog. She claimed that there were only blue skies here. That made me curious how it really is. It´s easy to calculate that as I have numbered them all except the early ones. From 165 posts there is 4 posts about rain and about 20 rainclouds and grey skies in the 161 posts. For example numbers: 143, 141, 137 (my fave), 127, 119, 104, 98, 93, 90...

Sunny days with mildly interesting formations easily generate 10 okay pics to be used, but those rainy days perhaps 1 that I could find a bit interesting. The percentage of grey clouds is now 15% in Cloudbusting but I think in autumn and winter it will go higher. It´s just that when it´s grey on grey for 3 weeks in a row I go to photography hibernation and rarely snap anything.

Cloudbusting 160 + electric

The same electric lines that I used yesterday, just in a different light. From new Suurpelto-area (Big field) in Espoo. So orange, so cool.

Cloudbusting 159

it was almost an ordinary sunday
early autumn
just a hint of cold winter ahead
in the suburbs in his home
behind the wastemountain
between the highway and electric lines
(those places really exist!)
we were 11 or 12
I watched his red bird
his red bird watched it´s mirror image
thinking there was a friend
his collection of hockey cards
all the small cars he had build with glue

the smell of birdgace
stench of beer on the old brown couch
overflowing ashtray on the side
sunshine piercing through the apartment
playing with the dust in the air
we were friends at that brief moment
but we knew that tomorrow it would be like always
business as usual
I walked around in slow motion
never wanting it to end

Cloudbusting 158

Today Fleet Foxes will be the first music at work that I will play. "Sun It Rises" is a good way to start a new day and the album too. "He Doesn´t Know Why" is the song that I have played the most from that album.
Best samples from Myspace but there is also something in Youtube.

Cloudbusting 157 / Maple 1

If there is one nature phenomenon that I could love as much as clouds, it should be the maples in september. It doesn´t last very long but it´s so great those few weeks when it happens. During the couple of indian summer days of blue skies it´s always a real show.

Cloudbusting 156

That´s what I want
something simple and sunny
for the weekend

Cloudbusting 155 / Tallinn 4

It´s time to leave Tallinn with the last boat of the day. Boat terminal is in an old, windowless and sweaty Soviet-era naval bunker, which means it´s better to stay outside taking photos as long as possible. Views are great towards north and Finland.

If you check this post as part of Sky Watch, remember to check 3 previous posts to see what kind of buildings and skies there are in Tallinn, Estonia. If you haven´t already that is.

Quiet and still summer night. The busy harbour lies mostly to the right.

Cloudbusting 154 / Tallinn 3

One of the funny aspects of Tallinn is that many buildings are so different to the ones next to them. It´s as if there is no real logic and all the layers of 850 years are shown at once. Buildings can also be in a free angle related to the street below.

There can be really old parts in houses that were made in the 20´s or 40´s. Trashy meets slick. Rough meets smooth. Poor meets rich. There could be a shiny new Mercedes or a banged up Lada parked in front of a house. Inside the windows you can see ultramodern kitchens or rotten rat-infested ruins.

Cloudbusting 153 / Tallinn 2

SEB Eesti Ühispank building:
Finished in 1999
Architect: Raivo Puusepp
Floors: 24
Height: 94.5 m

Tallinn has couple of new skyscrapers too. Something for the reflection suckers. Reflecting clouds could have been a bit better during the time I took these, I´m not completely satisfied with them. However, there is a lot of potential in this building and I wish to take better photos from it if/when I can. It´s all very exotic and bold looking to me, because in Finland skyscraper architecture is quite wussy. There is always lots of angry people demanding only low houses in the middle of town centers.

Cloudbusting 152 / Tallinn 1

Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia, is an old city. Some of the buildings date back to 12th century. There is also lot of buildings that were build during the occupation of Soviet Union. This creates a town with many kind of faces.

Picture from the Old City. It´s especially favoured by tourists (like me). All pictures were taken with my trusty old Olympus C-120, which is a 2 megapixel mickeymouse- camera. Still the pics are quite okay.

Cloudbusting 151

I had a good weekend. The whole monday rush ahead of me. Gotta stop dreaming.

Cloudbusting 150

Look out, it´s coming! Naah, just an afternoon cumulus in front of the sun.

My new computer is brilliant. It´s a really small HP desktop-computer and it looks and feels so cool. I don´t mind Vista being what it is. My only gripe is the Norton antivirus that´s now tagged to every Windows computer. I feel that it´s the most bloated and annoying piece of software ever created. It´s not very intuitive, it´s complicated and it blocks all attempts to create anything close to real work. It´s the first thing I always do: get rid of Norton, install Antivir and then forget that I even have antivirus-software. Norton thinks it´s the most important software of my computer, reminding me all the time what it wants me to do. Whatever I do, Norton is there snooping around and giving me useless smart ass remarks. Antivirus software is the least important software as it creates nothing. It just has to work in the background without any headaches. Norton has that idea all wrong.

Cloudbusting 149

I never get tired of the sight of the small cotton balls slowly disappearing in to the sunset. It always fills my heart with joy.

Today I will buy a new desktop computer. Older one finally gave up and was beyond repair. Doing stuff at home only with a laptop is not so good as I sometimes need to work at home for real too. Older one had XP, but the new one will have Vista. I like XP more and I have it at work too. The good old days...

Cloudbusting 148

Just an ordinary day by one of the thousands of lakes of Finland, which isn´t so ordinary day for me after all.

It´s going to be super hurry friday, so I can comment back mostly in saturday. Sorry! Also, that photo seems to be a bit blurry, well it´s there.

Cloudbusting 147

Sometimes I wish I was working in a huge office building among hundreds of other collagues. My work constantly interrupted by philosophical coffeebreaks, lunches and meetings with pie. A ponytailed IT-guy fixing my computer and installing every single tiny software for me. It was not meant to be and then I forget it.

I think this is altocumulus, but I´m not sure.

Cloudbusting 146

Yesterday I went to the gym
This morning I had a cramp in my leg
I should know by now
that I´m not immortal anymore

Cloudbusting 145

Love, risin' from the mists
Promise me this and only this
Holy breath touchin' me
Like a wind song
Sweet communion of a kiss

Sun, siftin' thru the grey
Enter in, reach me with a ray
Silently swoopin' down
Just to show me
How to give my heart away

Judee Sill: The Kiss, 1973

Cloudbusting 144

Free spirits of the weekend zenith.