Long time no see...Taiwan

It’s been a while! Actually, way too long without any update, but that’s to be expected after all, given that life took a turn and work started cutting into my life more and more. I did however NOT stop occasionally taking photographs yet and my reoccurring trips to Taiwan did present me with an ample opportunities to take my Pejka with me and dedicate a few evenings to my favorite pastime - aimless roaming through the night streets and getting lost!

For some reason, whenever I looked at the streets of Taichung and Taipei, I could not avoid the urge to shoot vertically, which as my former mentor would describe is very “un-natural-like“ approach and yet, verticality of life here is omnipresent, even in the darkest, most hidden corner of the side-streets and so - here I am, looking at the life in the concrete jungle vertically.

For some reason, whenever I visit Taiwan, there is a typhoon making its way across the island, but avoids me as if it knew. I won’t complain though.

New lens day!

I took a month long pause since the last blog post. I know, not the best way in these fast times (I must sound like a real old school dude now :D), but I decided to keep doing things at my own pace and also focus on some other hobbies of mine, one of which is cycling, which will eventually most likely trickle into this blog as well…and last, but not least, I got down to acquire a few more theoretical works about photography and slowly read through them as well. More on that later tho.

This spring was extraordinarily hot and dry and with almost two weeks with temperatures hitting almost 23°C, forests were probably the most sought out destination for many many Osloers. Luckily, few days of rain and dip in temperatures brought much needed respite both to nature and us, solitude seeking nature lovers and as it happened, this came together alongside first loosening of restrictions related to COVID-19, allowing people traveling beyond their commune borders, visiting their cabins and 1st of May holiday, which meant prolonged weekend this year…and so the result was obviously almost empty streets and local forests, yay!

I really liked the surrounding of Store Gryta lake (BTW: it serves also as a local drinking water reservoir) so we opted for just a short hike again, other reason for opting being me unable not wait to see the results of my newest addition to Leica M mount lens family - Voigtlander 75mm 1.8 Heliar Classic, which I acquired to cover a longer part of lens spectrum as my previously longest lens was Nokton 50mm 1.1, which despite its unique character, lacked close range focus needed for close up portraiture.

Note: Heliar does not focus much closer, but its focal length helps getting the subject seemingly closer and filling the space without the need to crop the resulting image.

Voigtlander 75mm 1.8 Heliar Classic - old design and simple, but with character

Voigtlander 75mm 1.8 Heliar Classic - old design and simple, but with character

I’m definitely convinced, that this lens will stay in my collection regardless of potentially better options out there as I came to like its character (one could say a collection of specific flaws haha).