A guide to light the kitchen.

Saara and Antti renovated their kitchen, while the main plumbing repairs where going on in their apartment building. They decided to make the new white kitchendesk wall more personal, with something that tells about where they live and something that fits the colors they love. Something that brings the surrounding nature inside and something that is mainly blue.

Living in Helsinki the Harmaja lighthouse and it's surroundings fitted their wishes well. On a clear day the city coastline makes a stunning view. And would make a great addition to their kitchen.

Now in order to get a large size print of this lighthouse on a kitchen wall, one needs:

• lots of extra pixels
• water resistant camera
• nice blue sky
• a boat
• calm water
• sea legs
• lunch for the captain
• printing house with good service

Lunch for the captain where self made spicy chicken rye-burgers with cranberry juice. Like they always say: the best part is the journey itself. Thanks to Captain Hans it became an enjoyable day being out on the water.

Making the final picture from several different frames gives the opportunity to play around a bit. In this case the focus was shifted from the lighthouse on the left in the first frames to the coastline on the right for the next frames. Given an overall sharp picture, which in this case is perfect when trying to discover little elements from time to time.

In order to get a more impressive picture the camera position was a few centimeters above the surface of the water, that will make the water waves in the front of the picture stand out more. At the same time being careful though not to get the camera wet, cause the waves are quit deceitful.


Finally because the picture was going to be on the kitchen-counter wall behind the sink the print got pressed between two pieces of acryl, making the print water- and air-tight. With a promised resistance to color fading of over a 100 years!


Technical information: all lighthouse images outside where shot with a canon 60D camera, canon EF-S17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM lens, time 1/250s, aperture f9.0, iSO 100 at 55mm and handheld.