Lauri Herrala

COOL B&W PHOTOGRAPHY FROM COLD, DARK NORTHERN FINLAND

Think it’s cold and dark in the winter where you live?

For some (rather alarming) perspective, you might want to check out the weather in the town of Seinajoki in Northern Finland, about 350 miles south of the Arctic Circle.

Winter is really cold and dark up there.

We got a fun email from photographer/neuroscientist Lauri Herrarla noting (somewhat casually, we thought), that “It’s freezing out there!”

He wasn’t kidding; 21 below zero, centigrade. Any darkroom worker knows that 20 degrees centigrade is 68 degrees Fahrenheit, so we’re talking around 70 below zero, with less than an hour of sunlight per day all winter long.

(Conversely, in the summer the sun essentially never sets. Of course it is not always 70 below in winter, but it is always really cold and really dark, nonetheless.)

It’s challenging to be a photographer where it’s that cold and where there’s virtually no sunrise for a long part of the year. (It’s challenging to be anything in that climate, but that’s another matter.) Herrala has met those challenges, producing powerful B&W work using a Canon 5D and the new Zeiss/Voigtländer manual-focus Canon mount prime lenses, for something of a “slow food”-style approach to photography. He favors the 28mm 40mm and 50mm.

His wintertime work involves a lot of very long exposures in very low light (see the two shots of sparse vegation amidst a snowfield, at right.)

He describe himself as “a truly devoted amateur, and B&W is my thing.” He’s been photographing for 30 years, and has had his own exhibitions. “The madness has taken tight grip of me,” he notes. He tells us a bit about his B&W work, below:

How much of your work in is B&W?

As a pure amateur, photography is only a small part of my daily work. My main field is in neurology. Almost all of my photography is B&W currently. I started in early ‘80`s in the traditional way. I was lucky to have a brother who could to do the darkroom work.

What does working in B&W mean to you?

For me the choice to work with B&W was really a practical one. Partial colorblindness was the true reason. Imagine trying to drive without feeling balance, playing an instrument without hearing the low notes or a trying to cook without perfect taste – you’d be lost. Anyway this handicap does not affect seeing gray tones. And, after all there is the emotional part of photography of course, which I prefer.

Where do you find inspiration? Who are you photo heroes?

I’m a person with an associative mind. Tip of the day: Photographs represent feelings, and feelings are very true. Digging slow and deep into the world of images reminds me of basic things in everyday life. Memories, as with all senses, are served to you by a perfect shot.

I greatly admire Finnish photographers like I.K. Inha, Pentti Sammallahti and Elina Brotherus, for their courage and ability to see beauty around them.

Inha called photography the "black art," opinion that I share.

(Inha was born 1865, and for him photographing was some kind of

struggle and a miracle at the same time. By "black art" Inha meant getting the exposure right in difficult settings. Of course Inha was photographing in very different way than we do today. Still, a long winter period with very little natural light, makes for extra challenges, then as now.

Technical: camera, lenses, film, digital or darkroom approach & materials.

Basically I don’t like gadgets. A good lens is all you need. I mostly work with manual lenses. Zeiss 28 and 50mm will do. For travel - a light and truly sharp Voigtländer 40mm. This lens loves b&w.

All my work is digital (RAW) and camera makes the conversion. Keep it simple. Canon 5D M II has been my choice for the workhorse. It is a regular winter’s day in Northern Finland today; -21 C, 34 cm of powdering white new snow. Strong winds and a dim sunlight for an less than an hour of a day. That’s my darkroom.