DAVID BELLARD

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Shooting Film in the Forests of Finland

Given all the media attention being drawn to the forest management practices of Finland, I thought it would be a good time as an American who has actually seen - and extensively photographed - the forests of central Finland to give people a glimpse of that well-maintained natural wonderland.

The following photos were all shot in the forests of the Kainuu region of Finland, on the border with Russia, on 120 medium format film using a vintage Fujica GM670. I shoot almost exclusively on transparency film for my artwork, so these are lo-res scans I made of the original photos prior to using them in the FINLAND: IN THE ANCIENT FOREST series. I have never posted these unedited photos before, I mainly used these scans to simply document the film before cutting it, so it’s cool for me see them in a collected form like this. I think it’ll be fun for people familiar with my artwork to see what the photos looked like prior to being cut up. This is a short-ish selection from about 100+ photos I took on that trip.