#10 Summer Recap & Self Promotion
Summer in France, new tattoos, passion project behind the scenes and darkroom printing + some self promotion in the form of a new website.
Summer Recap
Hello reader! Happy to have you here.
I haven’t had this socially active summer in many years. Those who know me, are well aware that I usually cocoon whenever there is a public holiday or any other chance for some time off. I’ve wondered if this is just how I am or has it got something to do with my profession where I’m often expected to lead various situations by problem solving and communicating with others. Likely both.
In July, we spent three weeks in France with an extended amount of our closest friends who rotated in and out in a seemingly organised but completely un-orchestrated manner–and it was so much fun. But I must admit, that after that three week trip I spent the last week of July pretty much all by myself–also so much fun.
Another “haven’t done that in a while” thing was helping out my friend and colleague Antoine with a passion project short film (his debut) and it felt really nice to be part of a very small team of four, including the talent, and make something ambitious and beautiful happen.
I haven’t really shot any film in a while and had only one roll in the fridge, which I decided to bring with me along a digital camera. Funnily enough I ended up liking 5 of the film photos (5/10, 50%) and 5 of the digital photos (5/118, 4,24%), not surprising but interesting. Curious to hear which ones you like better?
Inspired by this one roll of film, I spent a couple days at the darkroom and besides printing those five, I managed to catch up on some older negatives as well.
I also got two new tattoos made by my brother who was visiting Helsinki in August! One is the symbol of one of our Veli Studio logos and the other a little doodle I made last Christmas while reading The Creative Act by Rick Rubin. There was this chapter about how we all have an infinite source (of ideas) that fuel our creativity, but you need awareness to surface them.
To close out the long hot summer, we attended a week-long wedding celebration of two of our close friends–what a beautiful way to bookend the summer months.
Self Promotion
So I just made a new website for myself! This is the first time that I approach it as an actual website rather than a side project photography portfolio and it was a bit more tricky than I assumed. See, I’ve never presented or detached my professional work from our studio, which makes sense since I’m the founder, but I’ve noticed that other people don’t necessarily know what it is that I do creatively. A bit of an existential awakening one might say.
Every piece of work I've created as a professional has been done within our company.
There have been moments, though, when I’ve envied some of my freelancer friends, working on massive projects with long-established production companies. But my professional journey has always been intertwined with the growth of our studio, and I’m incredibly proud of how far both I, and we and my friends have come.
-excerpt from juhoviktor.com
Making this new website is a way of being more intentional with how I present myself adjacent to my company. The site is now live, but I’m still missing quite a few projects that I’m updating there constantly and optimising it for different devices. I’d appreciate if you could take a look at it and perhaps give some feedback (positive or negative!). Another thing that I’m still trying to figure out is how this newsletter fits into this scenario. Should I integrate it to my website as well, should the naming conventions be cohesive, does any of this even matter?
With the recent developments of the Substack app, I feel that it can be tricky to figure out what is the main channel where people read the posts and where does the author’s “brand” live? In people’s email inboxes or the new twitter-like notes feed of the app? Both? Anyways, I have to say that this new system has made me quite active on the platform posting notes and discovering new people. How do you feel about this and where are you reading this post, I’d be curious to hear that.
Ok that’s it for now, thanks for reading this far–it means a lot to me!
CURRENT INSPIRATION
✈︎ Airpressure.info – I discovered this remarkable project by artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan, while researching for our recent documentary trip in New York. This website catalogs and visualises all Israeli military aircrafts that have violated Lebanese airspace over the last 16 years. There is also a sound database to help identify which aircraft you might hear in the sky.
📹 Adam Savage’s Tested – My favourite YouTube channel. For many reasons, but especially for videos like this one, in which he quite unexpectedly starts the 22min video with a 6min philosophical pondering on why everyone should geek out about fonts and typography. And then he gets “back” to what the video was actually about. Love this person and his endless curiosity towards life.
THE STUDIO
Veli Studio is a full service creative studio based in Helsinki.
Website – Instagram – Behance – Linkedin – Attraction Magazine
LET’S CONNECT
Thank you for reading this far. If you found something worth sharing with others, please do so!
If you feel like we should talk, hit me an email – I promise to get back to you.
Cool to read about things especially the Troubled Waters shoot and the photos! Also I spot a GFX 50/100s? Anyways don't mean to focus on the tech but I worked at a camera store for 5 years so its just the camera store guy in me. Just picked up a 50s ii myself and cool to see what other people are doing with them, do you use the adapted cine lenses for stills or also video on the GFX?
Great work Juho!