I had the opportunity of a glimpse over the city center of Bucharest. Sadly, it was very brief, got to press the shutter only a couple of times.
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Over the city
Chiajna
The ruins of the Chiajna monastery are next to the city of Bucharest, however only now I managed to get there. I knew them since forever, seeing them from the distance, but only now I got there – all the plans for previous visits failed for various reasons.
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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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Time check
It may not be visible at the small size, the monk is winding his wristwatch
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Best of luck, Iulia!
My friend Iulia is these days in Bangkok, Thailand, as a contestant in the Miss Grand International beauty contest. I am sure she is having plenty of fun there and a wonderful experience and I wish her best of luck in the contest. Note: for those interested, there is also a popular vote (for which one has to “like” a Facebook page and also provide an email address).
Unfortunately, not everything is perfect: the organizers picked a less than ideal picture of her for the presentation and our special shooting came a bit too late, so they used some stuff from Iulia’s Facebook profile. Nothing unusual. Unfortunately, nothing unusual happened when the news hit the Romanian media: Adevarul, a national newspaper, wrote about it. They also used a picture taken from Facebook, this time from a car-themed shooting and, as one can expect from the lame Romanian journalists, they credited the picture to Facebook. Not to the model, not to her employer, not to the contest, not even to the photographer but to Facebook, like it is a stock photography agency. And as a proof of their bad faith, the newspaper cropped-out from the picture a discrete watermark by the photographer. This the level of our press and not the first time I witness it first hand.
Update: …and it worked 🙂 The newspaper article in Adevarul is now edited with some more appropriate credits and more pictures
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A walk for wiki
Part of my contribution to this year Wiki Loves Monuments (Romanian edition) I made a solo photo walk to gather some pictures representing historical monuments for sharing on Wikipedia. My route was around an old street in Bucharest, Calea Călărașilor, an area with a huge number of buildings from the XIX century which are considered monuments but few people know about them . It was fruitful, I came back with over 150 photos, but a large part of the area is still uncovered, hopefully I may be able to return. Below are a few samples: 3 of what I found the better looking of them and 3 in the most deplorable state.
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Viral
Unexpectedly, a picture I snapped last week became viral on facebook, the stats below are “likes” and “shares” I can see directly, there were a lot of duplicates copied and uploaded separately by other people, for which I have no way to count them. On top of that, the picture was picked (copied from facebook) by mainstream traditional media, TV and newspapers like Realitatea, ProTV, Gândul, EVZ or RTV.
What was it about? Street garbage and people discarding it is a big problem in Romania and people eating sunflower seeds and spitting them on the ground are a special case. Friday evening, walking in the nearby I.O.R. park I assisted to an unexpected episode: a couple of local police officers confronted a group of youngsters practicing this bad habit and offered them a choice: take a broom and clean the place or pay a fine. This is original and funny and also quite unexpected, since the police rarely react to such things. I posted the image on social networks and the rest is history, a lot of people got enthusiastic over the police action.
There is one more side of the story, the police officers were not alone, they were accompanied by a couple of agents working for the private company hired by the park administration. One of those agents asked me not to show the logo of their company, which was printed on their shirts. I listened and excluded them from the frame. Their excess of secrecy made the company miss a huge free advertising opportunity.
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Sunbathing in the park
All the rage this year seems to be for people to go sunbathing in the city parks. I have nothing against it, as long as I can capture some interesting pics.
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The beautiful park
Many of the pictures I posted lately are taken in one of Bucharest’s big parks. The image below is from the same place, only a slightly different angle.
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Train Delivery
A smaller sister to the already established Street Delivery, this year Train Delivery debuted at Gara de Nord (Train Station North) in Bucharest. I didn’t manage to get there on Saturday when the weather was beautiful and the place animated, only on Sunday, when the station was covered by heavy rain and the action reduced a lot. Still, it was a good photography opportunity.
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13
Romania, Bucharest, Train Station North, Hall number 13.
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The Human Body
Yesterday evening, crossing the Herastrau Park, I meet the guys from The Human Body, flexing their muscles and promoting the exhibition, which is still open at the Antipa Nature History Museum in Bucharest.
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Some like it hot
Is hot out there… standing next to the flames from the grill.
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To the church!
In a previous post I talked about the cult of the dead in Romanian traditions and religion, a characteristic of those is they are performed most of the time by women, especially old women: they are the ones filling the church, they are the ones carrying the traditions. Here a group of women are bringing ceremonial food to their church.
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Cult of the dead
MoÈ™ii de vară, meaning something like “the summer old men” is a pre-Christian tradition happening in Romania and is part of the cult of the dead, it has a “sister” called “MoÈ™ii de iarnă” (“the winter old men”) and some smaller “Saturdays of the dead”. Even the name, MoÈ™ii show its old origin, this is one of the name attributed to the old Dacian god Zamolxis. There are multiple stories about it, one says the souls of the dead leave their graves 50 days in advance and walk the land, in this day they have to be lured back in their graves with food offering or else… is not clear what happens, maybe the vampires myth placed randomly here was not that random? Another story says about MoÈ™i as being the souls of 9 dead men who are protecting the community.
In the classic Christian tradition, the Orthodox church applied the “embrace and extend” strategy here: it put close to it a big religious holiday, the Pentecost, so now MoÈ™ii de vară is a big bullet point in their calendar, along with the other celebration of the cult of the dead they embraced. The food was switched to colivă and fruits (is the fruit season).
Still, the embrace does not look that successful, very few Romanians know the meaning of the Pentecost and even the holiday itself is called by other name, “Rusalii”, by the name of some female evil spirits hunting for souls – yet another pre-Christian tradition thrown in the mix.
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