Month: March 2012

To the Heavens

Near the sunset, when the sun is low and if the clouds are also low, it can happen for some rays to escape, painting those light pathways climbing to the sky and beyond.

heavens

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Sunset

Red sun, red sky, red light, dark clouds covering the sun: that is the drama, that is the sunset. I know I posted already a few sunsets, but I can’t help it, if the light is just beautiful.

sunset

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Birds flying

Is spring, everything goes alive again, including those gulls here, floating over the I.O.R. lake in Bucharest, in the warm light before the sunset.

birds

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Village life: requiem

When somebody dies the family will hold many requiems: right after, 6 weeks after, 1 year after, every year after, at some special days and so on. And a Romanian requiem has to include a large, sumptuous food serving, almost like a party (but no music and no dance, of course). In this village apparently someone rich died, as the requiem was excessively large, even the photographer received a bread.

requiem

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Village life: spirits

Like it or not, is a reality people around here like to drink, some a lot, some way too much 🙂 So of course an important place in the village is the distillery where they make țuică (usually moonshine). Here they make it from apples, since the region is surrounded by apple orchards.

distillery

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Village life: the fold

Romania is a country of shepherds, it was even since it was called Dacia, from shepherds we have a lot of traditions. Sure, in modern days the country changed a lot, but you can still see the flocks in the mountains or the remote villages near the mountains.

sheep

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The lady and her house

This lady is 80 and she has the stone wall of the Corbi monastery in the backyard. She also has a blue house, which is a traditional color for houses in some parts of Romania. She’s also used with tourists and photographers and have no problem posing for them 🙂

old lady
blue house

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Fire

Not sure what happened here, but the orchards were covered with fire and some firemen fighting with it. I wish I wasn’t in a bus going to full speed, but in the middle of it, better capturing the moment (I know, the photo is bad: made trough the window of a running bus).

fire

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The Well

This is a very traditional well as you can see today if you are lucky in a remote village. I have to witness, I didn’t drop any coin in it and didn’t make any wishes, but would like some photo sessions in this type of scenery.

well

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Cetățeni

Upside view of the Cetățeni village, as seen from the Cetățuia Monastery. Is the village zone near the monastery, it is poorer and inhabited mostly by gipsies.

Cetateni

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Thracian Horseman

On the old stone wall of the Catățuia/Negru Vodă Monastery there is this ancient mural painting representing a Thracian horseman. I wonder how it escaped unerased by the later Christian monks, but I am glad it happened.

thracian rider

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Piety

Praying at PeÈ™tera MoÈ™ului (Old Man’s Cave) at Cetățuia (Negru Vodă) Monastery. This cave is a medieval Romanian (Vallachian) church built on the place of an older, ancient Dacian holly place and for a long while there were hermits living in isolated caves around.

piety

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Beans and papanasi

This is a very Romanian meal: beans soup with smoked pork (Romanian: fasole cu ciolan) and papanasi (doughnuts with jam and cream). The soup was served in a bread, to attract the tourists (myself included) and there was also a glass of boiled wine, which is not pictured, I drank it long before the soup was brought to the table.

fasole
papanasi

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Sunset on DN1

Returning from a mountains trip, close to Bucharest, there was this beautiful sunset on the side of DN1, so we stopped a little for a few pics. Probably we could have stayed a bit more and capture this image on the spectacular mountain scenery? Unfortunately no, the mountains are tall, the sun goes fast behind them so early in the spring.

sunset

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Old photo, new edit

I needed a pictures with water drops for a little photo contest among a small group of friends, this is what I tool the roses, skin and water drops series, but unfortunately I had some publishing restrictions suddenly appearing on it, with no time for new pics, there is a “plan B” to activate: get an old pic and make the best of it for the contest. So here’s the old pic with today’s editing:

water drops

And if curious, the old version from about 3 years ago when I was a newbie photographer with beginner’s gear and a lot less editing experience:

water drops

However, I expect some (trolling or not) to prefer the older version (these days I am reading a book about “extreme” editing makeover, so is not impossible I went overboard or was misguided).

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