Once again, the great Swedish photographer and flyfisherman Knotan has pointed us in the direction of an outstanding video.
This one is perfect for a grey monday morning. Get out of your chairs and shape up!
Farewell to Keihärinkoski
We usually don’t post and link other than stuff in English, but after reading a fantastic Finnish blog post about Keihärinkoski rapids, I felt I just had to share it here. For you who still haven’t learn Finnish, I can tell that Keihärinkoski is a short river, more like rapids, that connects the lakes Kivijärvi and Keitele in Central Finland, pretty close to where I come from. I have very fond memories from there, and just like the author, Jukka Naaranlahti, I was in the period of learning fly fishing for real when I started fishing at Keihärinkoski.
The text is about the golden years at the end of 1990s and beginning of 2000, and how this incredible fishing Eldorado gradually has turned into mediocrity, finally having a real fall in the last few years. The clear water has turned brown, the fish that used to crowd the whole area now only stay by the mainstream, and the huge monsters that came from the lake by night now only remain in photos and memories.
Anyone who reads Finnish, do yourself a favor and klick on the link below and read the text. It puts shivers down my spine every time I read it. Really.
Kirkkaan veden ääni: Jäähyväiset Keihärinkoskelle (Author: Jukka Naaranlahti).
Delay (and 5 shots)
We´re terribly sorry, but – surprise – the release of Season One on DVD is delayed…
Our best estimate as of tonight is three or four weeks from now. We´ll get back to you with the exact release date very soon.
The whole thing is done (and we´re pretty excited about how it turned out, too), but the design, mastering and print is taking a little longer than expected. All we can do now is wait.
In the meantime, here are some pics from one of last year´s J&FF expeditions. On this trip, we went deep into the mountains above the arctic circle, hunting for big arctic char. The hike was very long and steep, it was cold and wet, and the fishing was generally very difficult. But we had some moments of luck as well, and ended up catching a few really good ones (on film, too). All photos by J&FF friend Arne Mobakken.
Czech:
PS! The whole dirty story of this expedition (and many other dirty stories) will be revealed in our ongoing film project Season 2. Release: March 2013.
More pictures from this trip may appear here on the blog at any given moment.
A day in the life
Yes, that name is a bit stolen, I have to admit that… think it is ok. A day in the life, great tune by the way! Went fishing today as usual. Many small trout were landed, but the big ones knew how to avoid the fly. Here are some moments from today and yesterday:
1. A girl in a canoe was caught by a fisherman. A lot of words flew with the wind while it happened…
2. A feather suddenly came floating in a shallow bay. For some reason, that was a magic moment.
3. A ten year old boy turned out to be a very skilled caster, not a common sight if you ask me.
4. A friend stuck in the waders, a common sight if you ask me.
5. A random sleepy jazz drummer trying to reach the sun.
The jazz bread
The beginning of April 2012 is freezing cold. I have now been fishing quite a lot for a couple of days. I´m not sure it is a good idea, being a musician, to transform the fingers to stiff ice sticks. Can it really be healthy? Maybe somebody out there nows more about it. My legs are heavy and the hands totally dry. When I rub my hands together, it sounds like someone is sharpening a big knife.
The weather has been very crappy lately. And the fish? Well, the first day of April I caught a lot, but after that I have been struggling out there in the water. Every now and then a fish takes the fly, but with the northern wind against me, it is not an easy task to catch.
Since I´m very anxious to catch a huge trout, I hardly bring any food at all. I simply skip that thing. That thing called eating. Then I fish for many hours while snowflakes and rain is falling around me in into the sea. Cold. Yesterday I bought a huge bag of scary sweets instead of bringing descent food. Why? No answer.
I realize I have to change my eating schedule in order the be able to fish in a proper way. There is only one thing that works. Ladies and gents… it is time for… the very secret jazz bread, a magic bread that will make you catch true sea monsters. Some slices of the jazz bread keeps you going for hours.
It is very easy to make the giant bread, and it is very tasty. Of course you can bake many small breads or baguettes as you like, just remember to change the time in the own. The recipe goes like this:
The Jazz bread
0.7 liter of cold (!) water, not 37 degrees!.
50 gram yeast
2 – 4 dec rye flour
Some spoons of oil, olive or something else
Fennel (if you like fennel)
One carrot (only if you like it)
Whole wheat flour
Sirap or honey, some spoons
3 – 3.5 tea spoons of salt
1. Poor the water in a large mixing bowl or similar. Then add everything except the salt and the wheat flour. Work it for about 3 minutes until the yeast is spread out and it looks like a scary porrige.
2. Add wheat flour while the machine is working the dough. If you work the dough with your hands, you will get strong! The reason to not mentioning a specific amount of wheat flour is because it varies. Sometimes the flour is moist and sometimes very dry. Instead of counting deciliters, just look at the dough and continue to add the wheat flour until the dough looks almost done.
3. Add the salt and let the machine work the dough for about five more minutes.
4. Let the dough rest for about 40 minutes (meanwhile you can fish, wash, study, clean or something totally different)! Cover the dough with a towel or similar.
5. Remove the towel, press with your hands on the dough so that the air goes out. Put the towel back and wait another 40 minutes (time for a running trip?)
6. Turn the own on 200 degrees. place the dough on a regular Put the dough on a regular baking sheet covered with parchment paper. Make it look like something that reminds of a bread – it doesn’t have to be pretty. Put it on the lowest shelf.
7. Check it out after 25 minutes, it probably needs around 30 minutes!
8. Ready to eat! /F
Pontza's 1st of April photos
As a reply to Fredrik’s hilarious description of our 1st of April trip, I will now post some photos in behalf of my new alter ego Ponza Luvainen. Pontza indeed has vodka in his vains and that makes him immune to the cold water and wind. When others lied in the sun and warmed their frozen bodies, Ponza took out his camera.
Falling down on the ground
Pontza Luvainen and Jenna Tervo
I have had two very busy weeks, packed with teaching, gigs and rehearsals, fly tying, grass fishing and a lot of other strange activities. Yesterday we were finally allowed to go for the sea trout again. After this long and boring winter. While Tapani is spending his time color-correcting our documentary and Håvard is sewing his own clothes in order to survive the arctic winter, a friend, Joona and I were catching trout. All together we got 16 trout.
We didn’t stop to fish until we fell down to the ground. Too much sun and coffee, no fresh water and freezing cold weather simply makes you want to fall to the ground. Later, in the evening, when I arrived to the apartment, I realized my keys were gone. Many keys. All the important ones. Today I went back to the spot, this time without the rod, about 35 km south of the city. Where are the keys, please, let me find the keys. It was my father who found them, lying on the ground between two cars. Lucky, you might think. I might agree. Too bad I didn’t bring the fishing gear!
Unfortunately, I have no pics from yesterday since I´m not in a “picture-taking-mood” on the first of April. The brain told me “take pictures, take pictures”, but the heart only wanted to fish. Joona is a more disciplined man and I´m pretty sure he has a lot of nice pics from yesterday, his camera was clicking the whole day. Maybe he doesn’t have a heart. It might be replaced with something. A bottle of vodka perhaps? That explains a lot. I realize I´m very tired. I will dream about sea trout, waves and what a mix of Joona and our producer would look like. Zzzzzzzz /F
Bokeh Monster: The Meyer Görlitz 135mm
In photography Bokeh (from Japanese boke), is the aesthetic quality of the back- or foreground blur. Photographers love all kinds of tests where lens performance is measured by resolution, contrast or edge light falloff, but the bokeh can’t really be measured. You either like it or not, or maybe you don’t even think about it at all.
Some bokeh is generally considered “good” or “bad”. Usually good bokeh refers to smooth background and is pleasant to the eye. Sometimes people refer bokeh as the roundness of the out-of-focus highlight points. Their form is determined by the form and number of the lens aperture blades. They can be a hexagonal, septagonal etc. and the more blades you have, the rounder they get. But bokeh quality is a result of several attributes: camera lens construction, coatings, focal length, aperture, number of aperture blades and so on.
Bad bokeh is distracting and busy and draws the focus from of the image subject. Especially mirror lenses have a reputation of ugly, donut-formed bokeh. But still, that can also be the element that makes the shot!
I recently purhased an old lens for my Canon 60D. It’s the Meyer Görlitz 135mm f/2.8 (later re-branded to Pentacon “preset”), sometimes referred as the Bokeh Monster. It has 15 aperture blades that make the highlight points very round, and just the blades are a beauty to watch! It can be used with the modern DSLRs with a simple adapter. The lens has its flaws (it’s quite soft wide open and chromatic aberrations can be a problem at times) but the bokeh is so smooth…
I can’t wait to try this one out on the fishing trips! Filming big rising trout in evening light… mmmm…
Here are some hand-held snapshots I took with the Bokeh Monster, followed by a photo of the lens itself. Then for comparision also some pictures found from the internet representing something as subjective as “bad bokeh”.
Colors
Tapani is working hard at the moment. Jazz & Fly Fishing´s Season One is soon up for release on DVD, and Tapani has gotten the important but dirty job of color correcting and color grading the whole 9 episodes.
This is a massive job, since it involves adjusting the esthetics of the picture in every single scene…
However, we´re confident that the job is in the best of hands – Tapani is a true renaissance man, who can do pretty much anything he sets his mind to really well.
A couple of weeks ago, he sent us these before/after vidcaps from Episode 2, just to give us an idea of what it´s gonna look like. This episode centers around Tapani, and we get to know more about Tapani and what makes him tick as a musician, flyfisherman and human being. I think it looks pretty cool, and I´m super excited that the we´ll soon be releasing Season One!
Here we go (color graded pic on top, ungraded bottom):
NB! Preliminary release date is April 16th.
Friday Disco!
This video works anywhere in the world, but Norwegians, Swedes and Danes will probably enjoy it the most.
Check it:
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