Almost a full month of daily protests in Bucharest against corrupt politicians. Now people formed a huge flag of the European Unions, one of the few entities they think may help save the country.
Record protest
After the communist government sneakily decriminalised acts of corruption by emergency ordinance (to save their asses), Romania witnessed its biggest protest in the post-communist era: an estimated number of over 300.000 took the streets in the entire country, with over 150.000 of them in Bucharest alone.
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No hope
If I am to pick a favorite picture from the anti-corruption protest in Bucharest this is the one, for the lack of hope in those people eyes. I feel it close resembles the situation in the country.
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Happy New 2017
We wish you a happy new year for 2017!
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Divine? No
I am sure some religious types would be ready to claim this as a manifestation of the divine, but no, is just a ray of light and some dusty air.
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Strategy on picking photos
For a photographer, the ability to pick his “right” photos is a very important one, be it when satisfying a customer need, presenting a portfolio, entering a contest and such. Having good photos but making poor picks or having not so good photos but clever picks, this can make a difference.
We often face face this dilemma: which photos to pick? I want to share the inner of my mind on how my personal selection worked when submitting photos for the Dragobete photo contest and exhibition. Any such process is open for improvement, so it worth thinkering.
The rule was simple: submit up to 3 pictures fitting the theme, “Dragobete kisses the girls”, so kisses, nice gestures, love, relationships and such. I have quite a few of those, so in a first step I made a rough selection of over 20 photos vaguely fitting made in the past year (that’s not a contest rule, is may own, submit fresh stuff). Then in a second step I narrowed the selection to 5, which I felt are better. Just for fun, I added one more to this selection, to have 6, two full sets in the case I decide I have split personality and participate twice. Of course I am not split, so had to proceed to final 3 images selection.
I went with images very different in style, theme and technique. One of them is a sunrise, quite cheesy, but such images have usually a big impact with the general audience got decent scores on various photography websites. Another one was street photography in black and white, I knew a majority of the jury are street photographers, they may appreciate that or, by contrary, be more careful when judging it. And the other one was a “rural” one, selected knowing the exhibition take place at the Village Museum and Dragobete is a traditional holiday.
Net result: the “rural” photo in the exhibition. Was my strategy successful? Well, I didn’t expect any prize, is highly unlikely one would win something two years in a row. Also, is highly unlikely one would have more than one picture accepted, considering the large number of participants (no one had this year). So, in a word: average.
On a positive note, I could note the placement. Whoever put the pictures on the walls, it happened for my photo to be front and center, at the entrance. Very hard not to be spotted, no matter what happens around. Also, the museum used it in a poster to advertise the exhibition on Facebook. Again, not a hard guess, since the photo was made inside the same museum.
For me, I was somewhat puzzled, I expected the sunrise to have a better score, it scored better in all the places I submitted it, and somewhat disappointed, since it required some advanced editing for which I could write an editing tutorial.
The real disappointment is I have for quite time a few good (I think) photographic ideas in my head for this theme but didn’t got yet to shoot them. Maybe next year. Or the year after. Or who knows…
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Black and white
Is the fourth time I participate in the Bucureștiul in alb și negru(Bucharest in black and white) photo exhibition and this time I managed even to get a prize, the 1st place. This is quite a surprise, considering not even 10% of my pictures are published in BW.
However, this is a story behind this photo, all photos should have one, but this one is more complex. Back in January there was a big snow, but caught with some things at home I couldn’t get out for photos and was jaded seeing the powerful pictures made by others. Then, a few days later, there was another snowstorm, more powerful and more beautiful. This time I went right out with camera in hand, an opportunity not to miss again.
After half an hour of shooting in the streets of the old city, my camera stopped with a dreaded message “Camera internal temperature is getting too high, can’t take pictures.” I had to take it under the coat and warm it for about another half an hour, shoot again half an hour, get the error again, warm it again, shoot some more and then go home.
Another highlight from this adventure: right after clicking this picture, I know I will sent it to the black an white exhibition.
Note: the exhibition is open until the end of this month at Café Verona / Cărturești in Bucharest, where all the photos can be seen.
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Bucharest Art Photographer Salon 2014
Today, 11 January, in Romania is officially celebrated the photography day, this is established in the memory of Carol Popp de Szathmary, the first Romanian photographers and one of the photography pioneers of the world. There is a week ahead full of photography related events and it started today with the fourth edition of the Bucharest Art Photographer Salon.
After last year participation, I submitted photos again this year and three of them were accepted. On top of that, one was rewarded with a honorable mention, that’s is, one of the 6 prizes awarded in the salon. Not bad.
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Mother Uța
I meet her a couple of years ago during a trip to old cave monasteries, but I heard stories about Mother Uța even before that. She had her house next to the Corbii de Piatra monastery, a less known but quite famous in some circles touristic place and a few attractions, including a stone raven (Corbii de Piatra means Stone Ravens) is practically in her backyard. So almost everybody visiting the monastery was visiting her too and she was very friendly, talking with the visitors, posing for the photographers and so on.
Today I learned (from the monastery’s Facebook page, no less) she is no more. This made me dig from the old pictures from March 2012, find an unpublished one with mother Uța, who at the time was 80, edit and post it. Remembering thing and people is one of the things photography is good for.
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Unexpected encounter
A couple of years ago at the traditional Flowers Day fair I had the chance to meed a nice old lady, she impressed me at the time by telling about her, how she is at the sunset of her live and sad she will not be able to create more. Two years later, today, I saw her again at a Flowers Day fair, she is well and as active as ever. Good thing!
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Event photography portfolio website
It wasn’t planned, just happened to be ready now, but is a cute coincidence to launch my event photography portfolio website on the Valentine’s Day. Maybe is a sign 🙂 But the important thing is, if you need event photography (be it a wedding, an anniversary, corporate event, spectacle or something else), I am open for commission. For the 2013 wedding season start now, is no much time left until the summer!
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On copyright
The news broke a few days ago: the European Court of Human Rights has declared that the copyright monopoly stands in direct conflict with fundamental Human Rights, as defined in the European Union and elsewhere (read more). At a first look, it sounds like good news for users. A law is a law because people agreed it serves the public interest, and that’s the case for copyright too (at least in theory and before corporations and their lobby and money got into play)
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Two for Dragobete
Two of the three pictures I sent made the final selection for the photo exhibition for Dragobete (it’s all about love and couples, like a Romanian Valentine’s Day). The organizers jumped the gun and announced “the top images to be exposed” but we, the participants, are still supposed and think if we participated and, if one has multiple images, which one (the price is proportional with the number of images). So those are my two pics and I have to make a choice: two, one or none? I will surely participate and kind of like the second better.
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Kill the pig! We are not a colony!
Something struck me when photographing a traditional pig butchering, a guy told me with pride “Europe should not tell us how to kill the pig!” (background: European Union tries to impose rules for sacrifices of animals raised in rural households, Romanian peasants refuse due to convenience and price increase).
That is the key to read many recent [in/e]volutions in our society: populist politicians protesting “we are not a colony” when EU tries to push us into civilization, modernization, morals or anti-corruption: we keep the old ways, killing the animals with our hands (and eating their blood), we elect known corrupt politicians and delinquent to rule the country.
And then we drink and wait for an elusive deity to save us all. Welcome to Romania!
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Photo editing tutorials
Lately I wrote on my general blog a couple of photo editing tutorials, both of them are targeted at GIMP, since this is what I use on my day to day work. Of course, the principles are general and can be applied to other similar tools.
The first one is about watermark removal on photos submitted to Wikipedia, this is something perfectly legal, since those pictures are submitter under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license.
The second tutorials refers to creating customs grids to be used on photo editing but also in graphic and layout design.
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