Finland itself is special to me. My mom was born there and came to Canada when she was 9yrs old. I have family there, but more so I see home in the land and people. The quiet, and rustic thoughtfulness, the capability without gender roles, the disdain for small talk… I always thought that was just me and the attitude I was raised with as an external force. However, it is a genetic thing! I feel at home, accepted and ignored all in the exact right way when I’m there. It’s a good fit.

I spent a month there in 2025, touring from Helsinki to Utsjoki and westward to Vasa. It was a full experience from near death in Norway on Bird Island to see the puffins to the reindeer, ice fishing for lunch in Inari, lovely everything in Helsinki, trains to Iitala and Vasa to have a wonderful few days with family. There is so much more I could have added, but this is a start. This is a super high bar for the rest of my travels….. it will be hard to beat.

Please comment or email me what you think about the first try.

The post First Zine ever from Lapland first appeared on Sobo Creative.

While I Fuss with Image Size…..

My photography focussed IG is @thelittlestwhiskyhobo You will find some recent work here. I’m cheating by sharing my Street Photography this way, but it seems converting my images for this webpage has proven to be super fussy for me today. It’s either 54MB or 170kb. No in between for me at this time. I need 2MB or less…..What’s a girl gonna do when the tech is deciding to be super annoying? Make some links and move on.

Have a look at the various styles of photography that happen in my world. I have been dabbling in street photography for a little while. It started in other countries and cities and I decided to try it out closer to home. I do feel, as I am ocean side, and surrounded by urban forests, that these are my neighbourhood street photographs. Not the expected, but I do feel it’s accurate.

Groups I’m a part of for Street Photography…..

I’m a member of the Vancouver Street Photography Collective @Van_SPC and Street 16 Photography @Street16Photography and join both for city walks and meet-ups. They have a great vibe of people and it’s been a great growth and learning experience for me with this local crew and exploring the city.

I’m still developing my Street Project of downtown Vancouver. This is going to take some serious time and commitment. There are so many hidden gems though, so it’s exciting to see what’s developing.

Next month I will be downtown as the second camera for a fashion photography shoot. I’m excited about this as I’ve been given creative freedom to express how I do, which is non-conformist but real. It’s always a bit of an imposters syndrome to accept a job like this. It definitely pushes you beyond the comfort zone and boundaries. I’m happy for that opportunity.

The post VanGroovy (Vancouver) Street Photography first appeared on Sobo Creative.

Join me for my first solo show, Reflection, here in White Rock, BC at the Nomad Gallery September 16-30, 2025. I will have a series of framed work from Haida Gwaii and the Cariboo offering a different perspective from the standard issue.

This show will be about reflections in a literal and visceral way. All the work was produced during contemplative moments for me over this past year. It was a good year for deep diving.

As well I will be show casing a special collaboration with September Archive and have another ceramicist bringing their work to share. A Solo Show with guest stars! These two stars are also a part of my contemplative work in many ways. They’ve both had a huge impact on my development as an artist.

Join us for a little quiet moment and a good chat, or not! A little quiet is good in this noisy loud world.

Karin

The post Reflection Gallery Show first appeared on Sobo Creative.

I was noticing other photographers taking 3-4000 images in a week on workshops and painstakingly editing and going through each one. They would complain about the painful process and being overwhelmed. I felt overwhelmed for them. There just isn’t enough time in the year to work through all of these.

Falling into this mode a little bit, and I would end up with 1200 images from that same week and found THIS to be terribly overwhelming and I wasn’t entirely happy with anything.

Although upon review 2 years later work satisfaction improved. I found I liked the shots that I had broken free from the group to quietly take more time with.

The rest were the easy get, and the same images everyone else had. Which I found disappointing, especially as these were expensive travel photography workshops. Bored of myself and my work I needed to rethink my approach.

I thought about what I could change to be more satisfied with my work. What efforts and expense I needed to go through to achieve this.

So I took a year off from travelling and used my travel money to invest in both the digital and analog Leica range finders.

Slowing down to get anything I’d like in focus has been a huge challenge with the range finder system. As well, it is not wysiwyg. The frame is off by a little bit, and the frame adjusts with the lens you have on. So the reality is that I don’t know what I have until it’s all over.

The other major challenge has been threading the film! It has foiled me twice now with not catching, even though I am SURE that I’ve done it correctly before I’ve closed it all up.

This was particularly heartbreaking when I had a few ‘bangers’ from a trip turn out to be nothing, and recently I was in Lapland and that roll was a bust as well.

It’s turning out that the Slow Photography is a challenge. I feel like I’ve gone back to square one, to my first roll, to the first day with a camera, I know nothing and can DO nothing!

If you had extra funds, you would invest in a Polaroid and do a test shot to see if the exposure was anywhere near correct.

Today you can still torture yourself with this process, but you can also take it slow with your digital. Training myself to take a similar approach is taking time.

Rarely reviewing any of the images immediately, I make myself wait for later that day or the next to download and review on a bigger screen. Taking that chance at complete failure, I feel that the more I fail, the more care I will take with getting things correct the first time.

There isn’t always a second chance, and this adds to the pressure to do it right in the moment. However, there is joy in the mistakes and that takes time to surface. You don’t meet your expectations immediately. Upon later review, I found that there is a sort of magic to the errors. Like the old days.

The point of this is taking time to connect with your subject, wait for the light, look them in the eye, absorb the place instead of just creating fodder for social media that is more visual clutter and completely forgettable.

I haven’t done away with my full frame digital. I do need the speed of it to try and catch the birds I love to shoot, and sometimes having the extra help, even if it’s on manual is a relief. The auto focus is such a treat when you’ve been struggling with your so specific range finder that mostly does something else than you thought.

When I shot film at the beginning of my photography life, I would end up with 65% of each roll was good. 10% was great, as the standard predicts. However I had a lot more useable imagery and shots that I was happy with. Now, I’m back to a barely useable 10% at best.

So you need to daily practice at slowing down to train yourself and get to know your equipment intimately and then you will get those shots.

Now, where was I?

The post Slow or not to slow photography? first appeared on Sobo Creative.

The purpose of this list is to give you some inspiration or push to start or keep up a regular practice.

Do not suffer in achieving this weekly challenge. Set a timer and do what you can in that time if you find you’re getting lost in perfection. These do not need to be your masterpieces, just a little direction for experimentation or just doing something. Try different mediums and styles and use an art book to keep it all together. Of course if you choose to use an alternate material that is a-ok, just slip it into your book to have a nice reflection at the end of the year of your work.

My art instructor, an art professional, does what she feels when she feels it. Sometimes this looks like 3 weeks of challenges in one. Sometimes she is busy with actual work for a week so she plays catch up the next week. These are both fine approaches. There really are no rules as long as you’re trying. It is supposed to be fun, or at least satisfying at the end of the day.

I will start posting what I come up with, likely in batches to reduce the tediousness of a million posts.

Happy art play! Enjoy!

The post Artist’s Version of the 52 Week Challenge. first appeared on Sobo Creative.

I found this challenge list on Instagram. I am sorry to say I can’t remember the woman photographer who posted it originally and it was now a few years ago. There’s a tickle in my brain that says her handle was 52 week photography challenge…. in some manner. There are a lot of them out there, and some are pretty cute. This one does not include favourite colours or outfits, but feel free to try that if you’re inspired that way.

ANYway, so here is a working list that I had planned to do, and as we are coming up on week 1 of 2025, this is something to prepare to do for the next year! It will be even more interesting to see how it fits in with my photography travel plans. My head is starting to twirl.

When it comes to my photography, I do switch between cameras, and film depending on my mood, and sometimes 2 in tandem as they produce such a different effect. I switch to lenses that get ignored and I try to pick a technical thing to focus on with each session. This makes sure that I don’t just produce a lot of the same old same old. Dare to be different, right?

Make this challenge as simple or as complicated as you wish, and please share your images! Email me your Instagram Handle so I can follow along, or your image of the week as you wish. hello@sobocreative.ca

Here’s the challenge:

52 Week Creative Challenge

• Instagram
• LinkedIn

The post Document your Year. 52 Week Photography Challenge. first appeared on Sobo Creative.

My first ever photography workshop, one of the leads, legacy photographer Chris Harris succinctly described 4 styles of photography. Documentary, non expressive and exactly what you see as in a medical textbook. Journalistic, somewhat expressive, sharing an emotion of the scene however mostly true to life. Expressive, what the artist sees in a differing point of view with the use of light. Abstract, not recognisable as what the image is through the lens of the photographer.

With this example, most of all photography is a combination of the last three styles. This is still not helpful to answering the question. I do give a little shine to the photographer who can succinctly answer this question, but it is not me. Prefering the whimsy of the day to declare what I am. Shooting just any one of these styles isn’t realistic for me either.

What this question does do for me is to slow me down. In a good way. I’ve taken the past two years to be a lot more thoughtful about where I am, who I am as a photographer and where I want to go. I don’t try and shoot a million photos. Being more thoughtful and concise before I even take a frame is my focus. I’ve started to return to the film and range finder systems. This is like square one for a decades long photographer! I even regularly forget to take off the lens cap! With film loading, it doesn’t always work!

I think I’m a happy accident photographer mostly. I don’t have any interest in an “iconic” shot. This everyone seems to have, it’s been done and I don’t want that. I don’t have any need to get what anyone else has. It’s fine to emulate another to learn a technique, the Craft of photography, but I’m far more interested in the Art of photography, and the unique things that happen while I’m out there trying anything.

The easy get of a beautiful shot, the famous Golden and Blue hour shots, I find actually kills my motivation. How do I go into a busy messy dark and gloomy rain forest and try and manage a well framed shot that gives you the feels of the magic of this kind of place? This is my personal goal and challenge…. and again, what kind of photographer does this make me? A style of pain and torture?

My favourite photos are often these ones that I’ve made mistakes with and aren’t technically perfect. I remember on the scene saying “Oh F!” and that’s the one I get printed. Flawed and messy. The thing that makes these my keepers is that they bring me back to that moment. I smile and have a certain satisfaction reliving that little moment of emotion. I’m not anywhere closer to the answer of what kind of photography do I do. Maybe I leave it at Experimental. There is not a satisfactory answer to this question for me.

So I wander on, undefined, getting lost and maintaining an experimental approach to my captures everywhere I go. I use lenses I’m not used to, and unfamiliar with. I play with the toggles and settings. Something will work. No pegs in holes for me.

Want to work on creating and developing your own style? Work it out through experimentation and small goal focusses every time you go out to shoot. Use a variety of techniques and see what sticks. Reverse engineer images that inspire you. Keep shooting.

For a weekly topic to try, starting January 2025, join the 52 Week Challenge and see what happens!

Share your work with me through DM on Instagram SoboCreative.

The post Defining and developing your photographic style. first appeared on Sobo Creative.

Maybe you’ve worked some aspect of it as a job for a short time and it sucked your soul dry. The stress rises just thinking about doing it again. You can’t quite press the Go button to sell off the equipment or give it away. It sits quietly gathering dust and becoming a trip hazard.

How do we regain our desire to get back into it? How do we stop the break up with our passion project? Artists have shared with me that they haven’t touched their photography equipment since this thing happened that made them stressed out and sad. For example shooting and editing weddings. This has broken more than one photographer out there, killing their will to ever pick up their photography equipment again.

The image below is a boring not well executed photo of under a bridge along the Seine River in Paris. This snap shot had to happen because of the masked duck that’s mounted just up and out of reach. It’s the tiny bit of magic in an otherwise unremarkable image and makes me laugh every time just like the first time I noticed it.

The point of this example is to take the pressure off of yourself to be perfectly executing a prize winning image every time you go out. Your purpose is to take the stress levels down and just enjoy what you see. It’s your own journey to find little gems wherever you are that bring you peace and a bit of joy. This approach will start the trickle and create the flow that can bring back the more serious sessions that might produce the next Pulitzer. We need to start somewhere.

We need to do this with the pursuit of joy, personal joy, and nothing else. This is how we bring back the creative fun parts that have disappeared into the mist.

How do you ‘relax and enjoy’ again? As a creative, I have many expressions of what’s in my pea brain, it’s really hard to stay focussed to finish one idea. I don’t want to copy others in contrast there is always something to learn from how others do a thing. Some exposure to other artists is always a good idea. I often look at a photograph that inspires me from another photographer and try to reverse engineer it on my own.

Pick something, anything, to use that as your goal that day. We will stick with photography as our example activity. Sometimes I pick a colour and a thing. For example, I may assign myself to look for anything the colour green with the thing being a leading line, or blurring. My focus is to shoot anything the colour green and abstract it into something else, that may or may not make sense. I will then leave my images alone for a week or so until my image expectations diminish and then review with fresh eyes. You don’t always see the success in creative work right away.

Did I find joy? Is there any happy accident? This process takes the pressure off and distresses me. I’m about to make ugly art and I remember that absolutely no one cares. I love the surprise of something turning out beautifully, or at least interestingly, in all its’ messiness. That can be pretty special. Below is an image that has all of the three criteria above.

This image was taken in a derelict cannery of the many coloured fishing nets along the West Coast of Canada. Green, with strong leading lines and blurry. This was the week I learned to play and I completely renewed and regenerated my love of photography. It was the beginning of my deep dive into creative vision and artistic photography and it definitely improved my daily documentary style that we all have and is often the killjoy of our art.

We forget to take the pressure off of trying to achieve technical perfection and just play. It’s definitely important for me to do to cut the noise of imposter syndrome and that quest for perfection, which you may need when you’re applying to a competition, but is counter productive to enjoying your craft at any level.

The post Bring back play! Removing the creative block in photography. first appeared on Sobo Creative.

We ebb, flow, sit in stillness, get bored, get excited, get distracted, curl up in a sunbeam, hop on your motorcycle, go to the bookstore or eat a sandwich. So how does all of this help us stay fresh?

True creativity is coming up with a new solution to a problem or scenario. That really is what makes it so hard to sustain. We don’t ALWAYS have a problem to solve. We also can’t just continuously make ourselves problems. Actually we can, but that is toxic so we try not to, so then what?

Myself, I know I need time by myself, as well as time to experience the work that others do. Then I pick one thing and really try to explore that thing fully. I’ve picked up some techniques from other artists and have a little list I never actually refer to when I need it. So messy and completely inconsistent at best.

Actually, if I’m honest, the only consistent thing I do is to have a general idea of what I want to try and relax and go forth calmly with particular attention to having my kit prepared and organised. I also always have a little book of some kind to write my ideas and plans down.

An inspiration to me is photographer Freeman Patterson. He has written many books and most of them read like a workshop. He has great techniques to loosen the cogs and tap into your creative approach.

The following gallery has a number of examples. The various techniques used are:

• Neutral Density Filters
• Long Exposure
• Zooming In
• Multiple Exposure
• Double Exposure
• Change of POV
• Aperture Priority
• Shutter Drag
• Shutter Priority
• Polarizing Filter
• Combinations of the above.

I do find that sometimes my ‘oh f’ mistakes are some of the more interesting things I end up with. A lot of times, you need to just relax and play. Just to see what happens. So I definitely don’t sweat it if it’s not perfect or exactly what was in my mind’s eye. It’s half blind anyway.

Check out the 52 Week Creative Challenge on the blog.

The post Warming up for Creativity for Photographers. first appeared on Sobo Creative.

It starts with a mediocre photograph, IMO. This comes alive when the image is manipulated and turned into fabric. From there I wait for the spark that inspires the silhouette and create a pattern from a sketch. Then I turn the whole thing into a garment that tells a story.

Often the story is geographical with the base fabric also originating from the country that the image fabric is from. As the image is from one of my travel adventures, this is better than a tourist t-shirt!

The fabric for the apron was created from an image in a vineyard on the West Coast of Italy. It was printed on cotton gauze and lined with Bamberg silk. The base princess seam style dress is made out of organic cotton jersey.

As this sample is on a mannequin it really falls flat. This design is intended for a full figure and definitely looks better with the physical body underneath. I like that this Apron can fit anyone of any figure or body style of any size.

In future I may adapt this design to have belted adjustments, and I can see a leather hip bag attachment as well.

The Apron portion of this design looks best styled over a white button down shirt and cuffed jeans with boots and a large glass of wine in hand.

Each time I sit with an image that I like some small aspect of and play with it, it takes me in a different direction. I know when the fabric design is right. There’s a tingle, a pop. Picking the type of fabric to have it printed takes me to the next level. It’s a lot of imagining the textures and image textures. So much imagining with so much waiting as well. It truly is slow fashion. The wait makes the final design extremely satisfying.

After I wait for production, and get it into my hot mitts, I hang it where I can see it and sit with it for even longer.

At some point I see a line in a design somewhere that I think is interesting and begin sketching. I think about the drape and construction, then one of the fabrics will pop into my head as the right one to start designing with. So many adjustments and redesign happen through out the process, I often end up with something completely different than when I first get a vision of inspiration.

I don’t always get it right. As a Velvet Duster Jacket will prove. That post to follow…..

The post From the coastal wild to the studio….. first appeared on Sobo Creative.