Helsinki central railway station

It’s general practice in Finland to find all the signs in both Finnish and Swedish, both being official languages. The magnificent Helsinki Central railway station (rautatieasema in Finnish and järnvägsstation in Swedish) is a widely recognised landmark in central Helsinki and the focal point focal public transport in the Greater Helsinki area. The granite exterior is notable for the two pairs of statues holding spherical lamps, and its clock tower (the statues are featured, for instance, on the covers of local timetables published by the country’s national rail operator, VR).
The station’s interior, besides its beautiful high ceilinged booking halls and wide concourses, has a good range of shops, cafes and bars, and entrances to the underground shopping complexes linked with the Kamppi store and other key points in the commercial centre. From the central station the trains rush out to the north, past Töölönlahti Bay and quickly reaching Pasila and on though the suburbs of Helsinki

It’s also a great place for people watching, with commuters coming and going between the trains, the connecting buses, and the city centre itself. I took quite a few informal shops near the cafes and ticket offices. And what really interested me were some of the quirky things going on – like the display below, some kind of art school project, I think, and the notes stuck to a pillar (I couldn’t figure these out, maybe they were advertisements). There were stalls selling berries and other fruits. It's a very pleasant atmosphere, as main railway stations go.

Porvoo old and new

Porvoo, Finland's second oldest city, is around an hour by coach from Helsinki, so when the weather was fine one day last October I decided it was time for a visit. It's well and truly on the tourist trail, thanks to the photogenic old town with its red ochre painted wooden shore houses right by the river's edge and its charming streets, small houses, gardens and galleries. Apparently the shore houses, now all painted red, acquired that colour in the late eighteenth century in honour of King Gustav III's arrival from Sweden. Anyway, they make a fine sight.

Porvoo is a pleasant place to stroll around for a couple of hours. So I did that, enjoying wandering round the narrow streets with their little houses and taking in the autumn sunshine. What I saw of the new town , which was largely limited to the streets around the bus station (shown below), was fairly mundane. Maybe a longer visit might have yielded more.

Suomenlinna

The Suomenlinna sea fortress just off the coast from Helsinki is a place full of atmosphere. The impressive fortifications became a UNESCO world heritage site in the early 1990s. It's just a 15 minute ferry ride from the market place (first picture) and I think it's a must see. The municipal ferries run every 20 minutes, so you could just go for the trip, an experience in itself, but I recommend staying for at least an hour, preferably two. The older ferries (second picture) have really atmospheric passenger compartments - old wooden seats, yellow walls, red columns - the newer ones, much less so. Sit in there for some people watching, or go out on the small car deck in the middle and look at the small islands and the approaching island of Suomenlinna.

The island itself is really four islands. Turn right on leaving the ferry and across the bridge for the two smaller connected islands of Pikku Mustasaari Lansi-Mustasaari, much less frequented than Iso Mustasaari, where you disembark. Alternatively, continue straight across on the main path and in five minutes to the surprisingly modern and well-resourced Visitor Centre just before the bridge to Susaari and with the docks to the right. Wherever you go there are imposing barracks, military installations, old wooden houses -and even a submarine.

It's probably at its most atmospheric for the photographer in the winter, when the serious snows arrive, or if you're lucky and catch sight of any of the garrisoned troops. There are shops and more besides - several hundred people live on the islands. There is a web site - http://www.suomenlinna.fi/ Suomenlinna won the Best Place in Helsinki vote organised by the City Planning Department in 2008!

I went in October and it was easy to leave the signposted tourist routes behind and discover for myself what Suomenlinna had to offer. I'd love to go back again when the snow's on the ground.

Try to see it my way

This is a blog about my photographic journey: about how taking pictures helps me understand the world and understand myself. It's a learning process. It will allow me to write about places I have seen and how and where I have chosen to take photographs. This process is still in its infancy and will evolve in unpredictable ways.

A little about equipment. I own a Canon EOS 400D for the serious stuff; a Canon Ixus 40 for the more casual side and a Sony Ericsson K800i mobile for the unplanned and candid shots. Having said that, there are certainly times when I'm inclined to take pictures of more or less anything and everything with whatever comes to hand. I have had photographs exhibited at the Norwich Arts Centre's 'Little Things' exhibition in the summer of 2008 - but definitely no other claims to fame. A few of my earlier photographs - from my pre-digital SLR days - can be found on the photography web site stripescreative.co.uk , which was a starting point for grouping and didplaying some of my early favourite images.

I will be posting about places I have been and my impressions - a personal and photographic journey - beginning shortly with Estonia and Finland, where I went in October 2008.