Chris Worfolk's Blog

Helsinki Zoo has some wonderful bears.

A feature that many sports photographers like to take advantage of is back button focusing. I was trying this out at Yorkshire Wildlife Park recently and it has its advantages. The idea is that you can use a button on the back of your camera to focus, rather than have the camera focus when you press the shutter button half way down.

The advantage of this is that you can focus when you want to, and then not worry about the camera re-focusing if you take your finger of the shutter button.

For example, I often press the button half way down to get my focus, then re-compose the shot because I don’t want my focal point to be right in the middle of the frame, then take the photo. This means I have to keep my finger on it the whole time, and need to re-do these actions if I want to take additional shots. With back button focusing, I focus using the button, then point the camera somewhere else and take as many shots as I like.

Some cameras let you re-assign the exposure lock button, but your higher end DSLRs will have an “AF-ON” button you can use to activate the auto-focus without having to re-assign a button – useful if you use exposure lock as well. In which case, all you need to do is stop the shutter button activating the auto-focus. I’ve done a video showing you how to do this on the Canon 6D…

By the way, the video is the right way round, it’s just the thumbnail that is wrong.

I wasn’t particularly impressed by the Helsinki Sea Life Centre. It had some cool animals in it, and you did get to walk through a tunnel with sharks swimming over your head, but it was fairly small and over quite quickly.

The first photo is a shoal of piranhas. They just sit there waiting for something to happen; it’s quite unnerving. I took a video.

A dolphin skeleton. They don’t feel much likes the clowns of the sea when you see how many teeth they have.

Every single diorama in this museum depicted one animal eating another.

The history of life exhibit finished by talking about modern times – including a chainsaw, skateboard, first aid kit and mobile phone.

Roughly translated, this means “an exhibition on animal poo”.

Straight Pride UK promotes the idea of having a straight pride, alongside a gay pride. Fine, no problem with that. Not sure I see the point, as situations where I feel discriminated against as a heterosexual are reasonably infrequent, but each to their own.

In fact, their wording starts off quite nicely.

There is nothing right with being homosexual, there is nothing right with being bisexual, and there is nothing wrong with being heterosexual

But then it says this.

being proud to be of natural orientation

To me, that implies that being homosexual is not a natural orientation. Which is where I start to take issue with it. Any sexual orientation you are born with is a natural orientation.

And if it is natural, why should we be proud of it? Sure, it’s great being straight. The majority of people in our society are straight and this being straight gives me a large selection of potential partners (ideally I would be bisexual but you can’t choose how you’re born), but surely something I have no control over, and was given randomly at birth is not something I should be proud of?

Their Twitter strap line is worse.

A voice for those practising traditional lifestyles & relationships. Those who want to celebrate being of natural born orientation & traditional family values.

To call the homophobia experienced in the twentieth century traditional relationships does a rather large disservice to extensive periods of history. And what are these traditional family values they speak of? Presumably a time before martial rape was criminalised because I can’t think what else is different between a loving couple marrying and adopting today to one of fifty years ago.

Then, as you reach their aims page, you begin to suspect the entire thing might be a troll.

Heterosexuals do not have equality, homosexuals have more rights then any sector of society. They have the right to take over city streets, dress ridiculously, and parade with danger and contempt, invade hotels and B&B’s run and owned by people who object to homosexuality, and then sue them when refusal is given.

Surely it must be, because no intelligent person could believe this, could they?

Finland do many awesome ice cream flavours. They do some interesting ones too. Here is Elina eating a Salmiakki ice cream, and in Laitila we found a tar flavoured one.

Cathedral in Helsinki harbour.

Helsinki Cathedral.

View of the harbour as we took the boat to the zoo.

The Elina shop, were I took Elina for her check-up.

They don’t seem to have KFC in Finland, but they do have SFC.

The Finnish Parliament building.

Finland’s coastline as we flew home.

Finally, some panoramas…

Helsinki harbour. Click for full size.

The view from the observation point at Helsinki Zoo. Click for full size.

Given Elina’s hate of onions, I’ve occasionally joked I wanted to go to an onion restaurant that has a giant onion for a logo. Turns out there is one in Helsinki.

Some highlights from the Lancashire Wolverines at Yorkshire Rams game, that finished 7-22. You can see the full set on Flickr.

In celebration of GabrielÄ—’s birthday we headed down to one of the best Chinese restaurants in Leeds – Red Chilli. Most of us settled on the Courtship menu that came with three starters – soup, a platter then shredded duck – followed by a main course of many dishes.

Elina opted for the baby octopus and it was exactly as it sounds – lots of little baby octopuses.

We also got GabrielÄ— a “everything tastes better with cat hair in it” mug on a count of her being a crazy cat lady.