On the inside, looking out

I really think the opportunity to take photographs from a moving vehicle is one not to be missed. Whenever I get the chance I like to take internal and external shots: internal ones of fellow passengers, signs or other interior details, external ones of the passing landscape, the transition zones between urban and rural, the effects of speed.

These are a few of the shots I took on the bus between Helsinki and Porvoo, and on the train between Helsinki and Tampere last October. Partly it’s a liking for a record of the fleeting and impermanent shot, partly a record of landscapes impossible to capture any other way, partly the ease of taking pictures of whatever passes by. Reflections and out of focus shots only add to the character of a collection of impromptu snatched pictures. String enough of these together and you would have a unique travelogue of the journey, the passenger’s view, the inside looking out.

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.