Ramping-up the launch of the Wiki Loves Monuments contest (Free photography for Wikipedia):
- Website up;
- Rules defined;
- Jury formed;
- Facebook page created;
- Official press release.
Stay tuned.
Wiki Loves Monuments
To the Livadă
I was reluctant to participate to the Livada de fotografii, my first reaction was “my photos are not intended for exhibitions” and my laziness is king: why bother digging trough so many photos? So I decided not to participate.
The other day I changed my mind: I can visit it, and if I go there, I can display some photos too, printing 10 of them is cheap enough, less than a couple of beers. Got the idea for a couple of themes, decided for one of them (involving people kissing in the city’s parks), but when I opened the storage to search for them, remembered some I wanted were on the lost card and was put down again by laziness and an unrelated depression.
Some late night chats made me change my mind again: if in the morning I am apt enough, select some photos and print them. Since the quest for the main idea proved futile, the second one kicked in: cold buildings, shot from a wide angle… quite boring and unoriginal.
The morning wasn’t good at all: the life is a really dark gray, the beacons of light far enough and unreachable. But still went to select a mix, not the indented one but a spaghetti of unrelated pictures. Asked a friend for a reality check and to the print shop!
Well, it was a bad day for printing 🙂 Asked my boss for permission to go put and print, then on the route remembered I forgot to add a signature. Heck, I am not egomanical enough, so I can live without a signature, continue.
The closest print shop is the one I am trying to avoid, since I had some unpleasant experiences with them, but I am during the work hours and they are the closest, so I go there. Refreshing news: their printer is not working (again! that was my years old problem with them too). OK, nice not having business with you again, see you later (probably never).
There is another print shop not far, but I have to search for it, a few minutes found! Ask for prints, the clerk says “but we don’t have glossy paper, only matte”… since the next shop is too far away I accept. Then “but our printer is performing some tests, will take 15-20 minutes”. OK, what to do, accept it again.
20 minutes was enough to time to go back to the office, breath a couple of times and go back! He way expecting me with the prints and they came decent. People, see you to the Livada!
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Photographer badge
I made myself a little “freelance photographer” badge, holding this title, my full name, an invented serial name, a photo and, of course, contact data, which I am lately wearing when shooting at public events, hoping will decrease the chance I get asked who am I. Not sure about the target audience, but so far quite a few photographers liked it and asked for one.
Since I was asked and because sharing is caring, I decided to share the design freely. As I do almost all my illustration and DTP work with Inkscape, the badge was made with Inkscape too, the canonical source is in SVG format.
I understand many photographers are not into illustration and may not know/want to edit a vector file, so I rasterized it and transformed into a GIMP layered (.xcf) file, for those who fancy that (I use GIMP for my photo editing needs):
Since I understand most of the photographers are unfortunately still locked in the Adobe world, I went to the extra-mile, used “Save As” from GIMP to produce a Photoshop (.psd) version. This is untested, since I do not have any installed, nor I want to.
Feel free to use it in any way you want, but don’t forget to add a photo, and to edit your name and contact info (web and mail). Also, put a random digit string as serial number.
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Life in Black and White, or How To Make It Simple
Felt sometime the life is to complex, to many details and aspects making you hard to take a decision? Time me teach a lesson: let’s start with whatever photo (this particular one is about the fight of good and evil, noble Jedis and scary villains with some cutesy in between, but to each his own) and open it in your favorite image editor (I opening it with GIMP, since it is my favorite):
You know how they say the life is about shades of gray? Let’s do that, trying to simplify it:
I don’t know what you think, but for me it seems still complex:
So the next step is to apply another tool, called Thresohld:
This is a much simpler life, no shades, only black and white:
Adjusting a couple of sliders we can move it more to the lightness:
Or to the darkness, according to each one’s taste and view of life:
See now, the outlook of the life around is so much clearer so a decision making become so much easier! Do it and do not look back. Easy solution to hard problems.
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ID
Hello, here I am 🙂
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Armed and dangerous
Now that the lost boy returned and a new one joined the team, I think my arsenal is complete for a while (not that I don’t want more toys, of course I could use a few more):
I don’t have the habit of personalizing my toys with names, as many other do, but the other day I had the idea for some cool (I think) names and, what the heck? Let me introduce the boys: The Sniper, The Normalizer, The Stretcher, The Prettifier, The Jack and The Tumpet. Their ranks changed a bit: The Jack, which used to be the protagonist, moved as the backup and The Trumpet was relegated from backup to the backup of the backup. Now the stars are The Stretcher and The Sniper.
Still, The Sniper has to prove itself in a real battle, looking for opportunities… I am armed and dangerous!
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The return of the lost boy
There is a story of the boy that was lost in the forest and now he has returned: my (not so) old Tamron lens, which was with me for tens of thousands of photos, one day got on its knees, with errors and errors and errors, so I had to bring it back to the mothership for repairs. It took over half a year, but now he is with me again and appearing to work:
A casualty is its tiny aperture operating engine, which was the very first thing they replaced… not sure how much a necessity it was, since the problem persisted after the replacement (the engine is dead now) and the problem was solved in the end many months ago with a software update (you knew a camera lens has its own motherboard with its own operating system?)
Now I am not that angry with F64 and still doing business with them, they promoted me as a golden client based on my past purchases… not sure if due to this status or the massive delay, but the repairing came with a few perks.
Sure, there are bad news for the lost-and-returned boy: he’s not any more the golden boy, a new generation replaced it and now he’s a backup, But still has a future in front of him.
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Valentine’s Day
…choke on it!
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Dragon Fight: Heart of Ice
All of us have our dragons. The question is: can we fight them? Do we want to fight? Why?
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Dragon Fight: The Fire Within
All of us have our dragons. The question is: can we fight them? Do we want to fight? Why?
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My best shot 2010
Since other friends are doing it, I will join the meme posting my photo from the past year I like the more… and unexpectedly, is not portraiture/glamour/beauty/fashion/nude as I did a lot over the year (and still sitting on a ton of unpublished stuff, “thanks” to a camp organizer, but not only), but is a landscape made at a computer/community camp, which for me is kind of magic due to its special light and I am still using as a wallpaper on my computers.
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E.M.M.A., Santa, and the Ghost Nicu
Sunday I participated with Organizatia E.M.M.A. as a photographer to a charity action, where a group of people from this NGO donated all kings of things, from food to toys and sweets to a children center. It was an opportunity for we to depart from my glamour or depressive styles and try something more like photojournalism.
Still… I am not myself much than a little kid in a huge (and hairy) body, so from the normal photographer – subject interaction, it was not far to get into full play, we could resonate. They were in need for affection, happy to get it and to give back when receiving. Pretty much like me. And all of us cursed in the end.
The photo above is, obviously, not made by me, so credit where it’s due, it was “stolen” from Bogdan‘s gallery.
I am again in the sucky world, so didn’t have the energy to go in-depth with photo processing and publishing, so for now here is just a big photo dump from the event.
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9449 kilometers
My friend talked me into joining this project called 9449 kilometers (the title is the distance from Caracas, Venezuela to Bucharest, Romania) where we choose a topic, take each other a photo and put the results side by side. We just started the project, last week the topic was “office supplies” (but we evolved it in “notes”), this week was “stairs”, next week is supposed to be “alone” and so forth. Enjoy.
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Vengeance? I’ll pass
I am not a religious person but if I was I could easily categorize this as divine justice or such… back when a clueless manager had one video I made at a weddings fair removed from YouTube, not realising this is publicity for him and his artists, my only reaction was to complain on my photography blog and stop posting pictures with his starlets.
Well, the faith turned and pretty much by accident I managed to snap by chance a really embarrassing picture from an on-stage performance. I half-smile observing the “divine justice” and process to doing nothing. I won’t give them any publicity. And I don’t feel the need for vengeance on those people.
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Stupid stuff from keyord searches
My lens is still broken, I am still broken, I can’t do productive stuff, have to wait and see. But since someone lured me into that, and I need to pass some time, I’ll go to the classic posting of funny keyword searches that made people visit my blog (together with my smart-ass comments), maybe this will bring a smile to the face of one or two persons. Have fun.
The Bridal Department
- bride panties – I swear, I don’t know anything about that 🙂
- bride with no panties photos – hmmm…. we can start talking…
- brides show their panties – where? let me bring the camera…
- the bride erotic – lucky you?
- drunk mariaj – don’t do that! just don’t.
The Panties Department
- are you looking at my knickers – I don’t know, should I?
- are you looking at my panties – can’t deny nor acknowledge.
- do you want to look at my panties – thanks for the invitation.
- i want to show you my panties – I can’t disappoint a lady, sure.
- he was looking at my panties – she complains now?
- my man in my panties photos – i have a feeling that may hurt…
The Beauty Department
- perfect 10 blonde blue eyes 33 – yes please.
- show me girls close eyes photo – someone got my weakness…
- beautiful contact lenses – if you ask me, naturals are better.
The Me Department
- model from hell – i don’t do that often, but from time to time people do use me as a model
The Naughty Department
- a picture of a girl not wearing any clothes – again, yes please.
- ero shou – leanr to spell.
- hookers in bucharest – maybe at the above mentioned “shou”?
- where to find a girl in cluj – last time I visited the city of Cluj Napoca, there were a lot of girls there. Oh, do you want a nice one, or an available one? Sorry.
- focus girls sexy college girl – should be they from Cluj or Bucharest?
- most beautiful and sexy porn stars photos – certainly, you are on the right blog.
- blonde bikini filterui:imagesize-large – surely you want the imagesize to be large? Not other things?
The WTF Department
- you tub – me tub?
- comics strips love story – a girl, a boy, maybe another boy, plenty of broken hearts.
- baldur’s gate sexy portraits – OK, I am sold.
- fbl goth – methinks he’s watching too much TV.
The Linux Department
- fedora sexy woman$ – uh, Fedora is Free as in Freedom, do you know something about the “$”?
- fedora linux sexy hot wallpapers – yes, in Fedora 14 we have waterfalls, lakes, skies, forests and so on…
- sexy linux girl fedora tattoo – hmmm…. he knows something…
The Better World Department
- nicu fundraising campaigns – sure, I can use some new, better lens.
- cum sa faci aparate de bani – nope, the money aren’t supposed to be fake.
- mititei la grill – at least that… Don’t forget the beer.
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