About

Jani Helle
Politics graduate from the University of Glasgow
Finnish, b. 1983
Interests: Photography, politics, hiking, local history, travel, coffee.

I am a recent (November 2012) graduate from the University of Glasgow, with a MA (Social Sciences) in Politics. This is the portal for my presence on the interwebs. Of sorts.

At the moment I reside in Glasgow, Scotland, where, having completed my University studies, I am looking for a (relevant) job. Most of my time is spent around the campus of the University and the City of Glasgow, and that influence can be seen in my photography. I try to get out of the house and the city whenever I can with my wife, Nora, to go see more of Scotland, its beautiful nature and history. The camera, naturally, travels with us.

Photography is a hobby, one I indulge in very frequently. My main interest, though, is in Politics, and has been for a long time. In particular, the ever-changing winds of representative politics, of elections, and the relationship of the media and politics. I would love to say here that I currently work in a field which indulges these passions, but I am not there yet. Instead, during my time at University I strove to be as involved in as many things of interest to me with regard to my interests. I was the President of the Glasgow University Politics Society for two years, the International Students’ Officer for the Glasgow University Students’ Representative Council for a year (and ran for President unsuccessfully), and I was one of the founders of the Parliament of Oceana, a fictitious Parliament of a fictitious Republic (technically we re-established the Society, as it had existed before. In 1768.), as well as serving as the Society’s Media Secretary for the first year.

I’ve started numerous blogs in the past few years, with many of them running their course quickly, sometimes for lack of readers, sometimes because you ran out of things to write about, sometimes because of pure laziness. I don’t want to blog about my boring days and what I have for breakfast. I’m an occasional perfectionist, so blogging about a specific topic takes up too much of my spare time, in terms of the research I need to (and want to) do to be content with anything I post, as well as becoming too enthralled with the research I do. This is where photos come into play.

Most of my free time outside of work is spend in the company of my hobby, photography. I am an enthusiastic amateur photographer, evidenced by the fact that I bring my camera pretty much everywhere I go. Because most of my time is spent around campus at the University of Glasgow, and a significant portion of my photos are taken around campus, I started a photo blog to make use of these photos. Photos from Glasgow University (GlasgowUniPhoto.com) features events, buildings, secrets, and the history of the fourth oldest University in the English-speaking world, from the viewpoint of a University student.

Not all my photos are from and of the University of Glasgow. I take way too many photos (I refer you to the tagline of this blog), and currently have a backlog of hundreds, if not thousands, of photos I have yet to upload onto Flickr. I’ll get to that one day, but my current retail job and the search for a job in my field of interest and expertise keeps me busy most of the time.

My intention for this blog is to showcase some of my better photos and through them tell the story of my everyday life, be it in Glasgow, Scotland during term time, or back in the south of Finland whenever I’m back home. Or something.

I’ll post photos, stories, anecdotes, whatever comes to mind. Instead of having one particular theme or format to this blog, I’ll keep it open to my changing mind and whims. One day I’ll post a few photos, the next day I’ll recount something that happened, and sometimes I’ll go a while without posting anything. Let’s call it a surprise blog, in terms of content. Dear Internet, this is my life.

For the year 2013, I intend to post a photo of every day of something I saw it did that day. Please refer to the above paragraph for a more detailed description of the content.

As I’ve tinkered and toyed with different kinds of content on my personal blog, if you keep going backwards through the posts you’ll run into my older posts which I haven’t archived yet. Useless drivel, I’ll tell you. =) Ignore at will.

Sincerely,

Jani Helle