I am sitting on a ton of photos from the past weekend at the Expo Mariaj fair in Bucharest and I am swamped with work and having very little time to allocate to photo sorting and publishing. To make the wait more interesting, here is a sneak preview, the very first thing I photographed on the grounds. Isn’t great? And she was here before make-up and such…
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A short lived tradition (it was the second iteration), but is still a tradition, it was again the time of the year to shoot New Year’s Eve concerts and fireworks. Unlike the last year, when my choice was to boycott a communist mayor ans stay in Piața Revoluției, this year I headed to the main event, in Piața Constituției.
However, I still passed trough Piața Revoluției, with a party organised by Pro TV and MTV, which was flooded with people wearing blue and red fedoras (I covered more about this elsewhere).
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Playing the Pan flute is pretty much a highlight of the local folklore (you know, titans like Zamfir) so when you encounter a Christmas concert in the park, even if the singer is pretty much a kid, what she’s playing is not bad at all (there is also a video with her solo play of O, brad frumos/O Tannenbaum).
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You surely know Santa, that big, fat, old bearded guy, who is useless by himself, he can’t do stuff without his helpers. So I present you, close and personal, the Santa’s helpers:
Note: I pretty much messed-up this photoshot, it was so clod, my fingers almost frozen so I didn’t concentrated well enough for the best exposure… too bad, the girls deserved better.
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With this snow all over us and no handy access to some beautiful landscape out of the city, I decided for a week-end walk in the park, trying to capture the moment:
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Back in the hot and sunny winter days I used to walk around the parks and take photos of people skating (roller skating, that’s is). Now in cold winter days, what I am supposed to to? Right! Walk around the parks and take photos of people skating (ice skating, of course). And this is not hard to to, since there are quite a few skating places in the city.
Nice enough, right? But now the question is, what you like better, summer or winter?
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This was a hard working week-end, shooting effectively hundreds of close-up photos of eyes with contact lenses (7 models, about 50 lenses, 3-4 shots for each). Tiresome but rewarding, commercial but without pay, Fun stuff.
During the photo session I developed a theory: interested in cosmetic contact lenses seems to be girls with beautiful brown eyes and girls with less-than-beautiful but non-brown eyes. Probably a try to fit a social norm and a corrective action.
I can understand someone is not happy with her eye color, hell, I am not with mine, I can also understand someone’s curiosity about a new eye color, but I can’t understand why someone with beautiful eyes would prefer a complete fakery (duh! those lenses are so unnatural!) only because she does not have the “perfect” color (I think is obvious I find the natural form of some of the eyes above to be really beautiful).
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One of the concerts I saw at Bucharest Days was “Balade din Carpati” (“Carpathian Ballads”) by K1 and Felicia Filip: not sure what was their target with such an interesting combination of modern, classic and traditional music, maybe they wanted to cash in on the Nightwish success, maybe they were awed by Therion or something else… the point is: it was interesting but to use a well known expression: “close, but no cigar”.
First of all, I should acknowledge the sound system in the street was total crap (it was crap also a night before when Mircea Baniciu performed together with Vladi Cnejevici, and that was folk music, where everyone knew the songs), so the experience was far from optimal.
First of all, the K1 band cannot hide its roots in a boy bad: they sing, move and dace like a boy band and this is ….bleah. They were the lowest point of the show, their dance stuff destroy all the symphonic metal stuff.
Then the “story teller”, Vlad Radescu, he can’t hold a candle to Christopher Lee in Symphony of Enchanted Lands II by Rhapsody of Fire. But, honestly, who can hold a candle to Saruman? He do not even tried: no cavernous voice, no magic, no nothing. I do not care about the joyful voice of a bald guy.
Felicia Filip did her best, she is a great soprano with an amazing voice, no complaint about her.
What I think was the highlight of the show was Cornelia Tihon, she is really great with the Pan flute (and other woodwind instruments, like regular flute or tulnic, she also has some extraordinary legs and is not afraid to show them on stage.
I will hold a final conclusion until I hear a show in better acoustic conditions (YouTube is full of recorded clips from various concerts, do a search and apply your own judgement), but my initial bias is not very positive, I was disappointed.
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I didn’t understand the purpose of Malaysian dances at the Bucharest Days festivities, but just like the rest of the audience I found them hot. And I guess this is all that matter.
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I started with great expectations and blew everything up with my bad mood, but still managed to snap a few shots with traditional costumes.
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One of the events taking place at the Bucharest Days was the high school students march, with thousands of kids from Bucharest. I searched for my colleagues but no luck… I guess they were smart enough to take place in what effectively was the launch of Oprescu’s campaign launch for presidency. Good things guys!
But the thing which clearly stood out in the march was the high concentration of lolita’s on sqare meter, which was…. uhm… unhealthy
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This weekend is supposed to be the peak for the 550 anniversary of “Bucharest Days” and I plan to be there and take photos, still the weather will have the final word: the forecast for Sunday, the most important day, with fireworks and stuff is supposed to be rainy (showers, probability 60%) and Sunday is expected to be good.
The shooting opportunities must be plenty, as attested by this preview from last week-end when the festivities began
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So, as promised, a series of photos from ONGFest and Bucharest Days, what is the best start for it? How about some free hugs by the “Bucegi Mountains fairies”? Pretty neat, no matter how you stretch the definition of a “fairy” and to whom you apply it. And you must be content with what you get, right?
note: “îmbrățișări gratuite” = “free hugs” but it can also stand for “gratuitous hugs”
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My bad joke is like: if her name is not Enache already, it should be. Laptaria lu’ Enache. Sorry, but I think she its impressive and I believe all natural. +1.
I tried hard to get the best shot, so hard that in the end I got noticed, which reduced the "candid" impact. So is life… too many people crossing the road, not enough chanced for a clear shot.
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I always hated the megalomaniacal constructions in the center of the city at Piața Unirii, I think they are an ugly remaining of the dreaded communist era and are making Bucharest uglier.
But passing there is a torrid summer day the large number of fountains in the middle of the crammed traffic is somewhat refreshing.
And I find even more refreshing the life around those fountains, both beasts and people are enjoying the water.
I think the dog puts in perspective the "dog day" expression and also I envy his his freedom.
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