Category: FAIL

Luxury photography

Hunting for my latest batch of photos for the Wiki Loves Monuments photo contest, I encountered this building, which is not a historical monument, but still an interesting sight. Ans you can probably see is a former shop, which had a “FOTO LUX” sign, if not obvious, that is Romanian for “Luxury Photography”. Think of the past glory of this place…

luxury photography

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Hipstering around

There is a saying “you are not a photographer, you are just a kid with a Nikon” used to ridicule the people who use a camera but not using their brains or learning anything. For some, it can be enlarged with “you are not even a kid with a Nikon, you are just a hipster”.

hipstering around

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Why Wiki Loves Monuments?

I take part, and I am also an organizer, in the Romanian Wiki Loves Monuments photography contest, where we try to get people contributing photos of historical monuments to Wikipedia. The things are not all roses, photos below, taken in the old city of Bucharest, the most important touristic area from our capital city, are a proof of why something like it is badly needed. Our history, our culture, our identity, they are going away due to carelessness and/or greed. We can at least preserve their image.

wiki loves monuments
wiki loves monuments
wiki loves monuments
wiki loves monuments
wiki loves monuments

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Hospital

If a couple of days ago I had a photo with people sleeping on the street across the street from the Emergency Hospital in Bucharest, this morning I saw some others right in front of it. Everyone’s attitude was like nothing out of ordinary.

hospital

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My photos in Cancan (no license, no credit, no nothing)

Cancan is one of the most known local tabloids focusing on celebrities and such stuff (to judge its level, the article I am talking about here is about a Facebook fight between a dancer and the nephew of a rich guy) and I just discovered back this January they used a couple of my photos for an article, here’s a screen capture from their website:

cancan

Obviously, they had no legal right to post them, neither from the photographer (me), nor the model (Alicia), it looks like they just lifted the images from a Facebook album of mine (stupid them, they could have obtained better quality from the g+ equivalent album) (the model has also a copy, but she put on her profile only one of the two images used by the tabloid).

On the legal side, the photos on Facebook are just put there, so they are full protected by copyright, according with the Romanian law. On Picasaweb/Google Plus, where there is such an option, I have put them under Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike, which still require an user (Cancan in this case) to credit the author and keep the license. Is true I did a mistake: forgot to add a watermark, which I do with images like this which are likely to be misuses, but the presence of a watermark was no influence on the law and copyright (copyright is applied by default) and the tabloid modified the crop anyway. They act like everything is online is free to use, which is false but used by other media outlets from the entire world.

So what I am doing next? Nothing, I won’t sue the tabloid (probably they expect that much, people to be busy with other things to sue them), but I will post the pictures here, for reference and for people to be able to see the original, compared with the tabloid editing. I do like to share content and I do it all the time, but under the rules I want, which means most of the time a Free license.

alicia
alicia

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Easter in the land of the Stupid

Romania is one of the poorest country in the European Union, while is also one of the most religious one, this is not a coincidence: people wait for “someone” to come and solve their problems instead of putting their asses to work and get done what is needed. I was reminded of this Saturday night at the Easter mass, when, despite the rain, churches in Bucharest were flooded with people wanting to “get the light”, it was one of those moments there is no hope and the indoctrinated masses have no future.

Ironically, a couple of days later, I meet a few kids on a park, having a whiteboard and asking people to write down a reason they think “Romanians are beautiful”. I turned-down the offer, Romanians are sheep.

easter

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Hipster photographer

A hipster has to be a hipster: scarf when everybody is wearing T-shirt, a huge tablet with bad lens and sensor instead of a camera… different enough. I bet he will upload the pics to Facebook using Instagram, just to reach hipster level 999. At least the girl on the left has a priceless expression.

hipster

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Duel?

I don’t know if those two couples are in a duel for who’s love is bigger or pain envy or even just laziness or carelessness. But those guys sit like watching a movie or something. What can I say? Enjoy the view!

duel

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Sakura kiss

I pretty much missed the Sakura season this year: the Japanese cherry trees are in full blossom, the weather is ugly, the light bad and me, knowing the weather forecast, have not arranged anything… what can I do for now is take a few shots of random strangers and hope the apple trees will blossom under better circumstances.

sakura kiss

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Martisor 2012

With the winter gone (at least in theory), 1st of March is the Romanian holiday of Mărțișor when men are expected to buy shiny trinkets, put then on a red-and-white string and offer as presents to all women around.

martisor
martisor
martisor

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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!

print photos

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Crimson city

At times I may be positive towards it, but there are also many cases when I hate this shitty city, like yesterday evening when returning home I witnessed such a beautiful sunset, only to have the city obstructing my views and ruining the scenery.

sunset

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No comment

help nicu

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Tea versus Green Men, an Earth Hour story

A small group of photographers meet Sunday in the Bucharest city center with the plan to take some photos at the Earth Hour festivities (for my part, I was dumb enough to forget home the wide lens, so wasn’t able to shoot many things there)


A cold wind made us enter for “an hour” in a tea place, warm a bit, look at photos and have some talk

But the “hour” took a hour and a half, just enough for us to miss the critical time… blame the dea (wild cherry, cinnamon and honey bush flavors):

Still, we managed a few glimpses with the green men and their “victims”:

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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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