I thought I could write a little something about me.
Never did it before. It's nice to do it for the first time.
Let's start with the 20th day of May in 1994. It's the day I was born. In France at Fontainebleau. Lucky me, I wasn't alone when I saw the sun and breathe the outside air for the first time. There also was my twin brother who was born 9 minutes before.
Nobody believes me when I say it, but Kalle is on the right side of the photo.
Anyways.
When I was a kid, I wasn't easy at all, I was crazy and I got sick all the time. (Actually I'm still hard to live with ;) )
But I already found my passion for arts, the first time someone put a pen in my hand. Starting from this moment, all i did was drawing.
Ok, there wasn't only drawing, I loved chess, karate and dressing up random clothes.
I was really young when I wanted to be a Karateka. (Like 4 years old ?) I chose Karate, and I think the reason is that I didn't know any other martial arts back then. Unfortunately there wasn't any club that would let me do karate because I was too young.
But 2 years later at the age of 6 I could finally be a great karateka ! haha
A few years later I wanted to play chess. So I had two serious activities. Karate and chess. Seriously I had like every weekend a competition, and everyday after school was taken because of lessons and trainings.
My plans for the future changed all the time, but they always had something to do with arts. I wanted to be a painter like my mother, a random drawer, oh and I also wanted to be a comic drawer.
But yeah !
When I was 7, I got my first camera as a birthday present. A digital one, with 1,3megapixels :D
My favorite model was my dog Gin. He was really good-looking.
After this day, my passion for drawing started to die, and my passion for photography started to grow.
I don't know when I decided I wanted to be a photographer. It came to me so obviously. Like true love!
But even though I wanted to be a photographer at the age of 10, I didn't really take it seriously, I just liked to take pictures all the time, without thinking about what I was doing.
I think it's in high school it really started when I got my first SLR camera (Canon 500D).
It was so fun. I don't know why but I started directly to use manual settings. Nobody told me to do it, I didn't read it anywhere and I just had fun with my camera. Like "wooow when the ISO number is bigger, the picture is brighter!"
And suddenly I knew how to use manual. Actually it's kind of fun, because I didn't know there was a light meter in the camera (when you take a picture you see if the picture is too dark or too bright.)
So I learned right away what settings are needed in different lights.
I noticed the light meter 6months ago, at school when the teacher said it.
And then I was like, "damn!". :D But that's a good thing because I'm really fast at configuring manual settings. It's just a plus.
One year after I got the camera, I started my first 365 days project (which I failed). It made me love conceptual photography and fine arts. But I already wrote everything about my photos in the previous articles (2011 and 2012 and 2013).
But about my life and my arts, it's really hard to say what really happened. What made me suddenly love photography so much. I moved to Finland with my brother when we were 15 years old (my parents still live in France). The first year I still was like "photography is cool and funny" and I just took random pictures.
Yeah it really might me the SRL camera that started everything.
And after it my passion just grew bigger and bigger every single day.
My plans and goals also, got bigger. Everytime I succeed somehow, I got more motivation and ideas for the future, and everytime I fail, I learn something new.
Photography is also the only thing I don't see as a competition. When I played chess, it was just competition competition competition and I stopped because I was tired of it.
With karate I wanted to be the best in competitions and get my black belt. My spirit of competition was REALLY great in karate. But not in other things.
In school it's a bad thing because everytime I tried to get a good grade, I didn't want it to be only good, I also wanted to be the best of the class. And that's why I didn't do anything at school. I was too scared to not to be the best, that I didn't even try and study.
But it doesn't matter because it went just well and I graduated last year from a maths high school, one year younger than other finnish people.
But well, about competitions, photography is the only thing I don't try to be better than others in.
Ok, maybe because it's an art. So none can be "the best of the bests". But still. The only person I try to be better than, is myself. And I don't even think about it like a "must do", I think about it like it's natural and fun.
Even if I was billionaire, I'd be a photographer, even if I was the most famous photographer in the world, I would try to get better.
What the hell am I talking about, again ?
After graduation, I went to a photography school at Muurla. Great place, great teachers, great friends. And perfect place for a brand new start.
New plans and opportunities. New friends, everything. It's awesome and I really do love my life now.
I know exactly what I want to do in the future, without knowing too well, so I'll get all kind of surprises and I still can improvise like I love to do.
I don't know if I've ever been so happy in my whole life. I have never been depressed or anything, I've always been a happy person, but this year, is way too awesome.
I still know how to hate myself though.
And I have some reasons to. As a crazy artist, I live my feelings way too much.
If I'm angry, I'm too angry, if I'm sad, I'm too sad, if I'm happy, I'm too happy.
If I feel like photography, I take pictures for hours, post-process for hours, forget to sleep, to eat and to go to school.
If I feel like I want to have fun and party, same thing.
I have big troubles with organizing my life. But I try really hard.
Now that I learned to eat well and clean my place and spend time with friends, AND take pictures for my project, I forget to go to sleep.
But I'm sure I'll succeed soon.
And here's just a selfportrait I took yesterday.
One softbox, slow shutter speed, reflector and the white balance with configuration of the white on cyan... :D I don't know how to explain better.
But I didn't need to photoshop it much. Contrast + dodge and burning.
The picture shows some new sides of myself and the beginning of a new life full of big plans and hope.
I wish I could write some more stuff about myself. Sadly I'm only 18 years old, and my life isn't really interesting.
But I really wanted to write a biography.
It would have been much more "official" if I'd have talked about myself saying "Karina" and not "I". But I don't think it's that important. And that's my blog and I'm the writter, I think it'd be a little weird if I said "Karina". No ?
Ok I start to write stupid stuff again, I stop now.
The article is not ready yet. It needs some edits and corrections but I'm tired now, I'll do it tomorrow.
I publish it here today anyway. :)
Oh! Katriina wrote an article about me in the newspaper but it's in finnish. But if you understand finnish there's more stuff about me in it.
I thought about translating it because some french (and others) people really wanna read it.
