Before selecting the photos into relevant categories and adding witty comments, I will follow the teaser with a short video:
Again, I am sorry for the music… that was happening on the floor. And I, once again, lost my last hope into humanity, seeing how those beautiful women are happy with that crappy music…
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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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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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Nothing wrong with a bit of police brutality cop and robbers game role playing.
Don’t you feel now like becoming a felon only to get a bit of such brutal treatment?
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If more photographer would be that hot, I bet a lot of guys would go for a photographer assistant as their career choice… wouldn’t you?
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Another large post with photos from the bikes and tuning salons, this time more focused on girls, with good looking portraits. Enjoy.
I have in the queue more portraits, taken even closer, but you’ll have to wait a couple of days until then, tomorrow we’ll talk about panties.
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You can’t have a good motor show without sexy celebrities and you can’t have a bike salon in Bucharest without Bebelușele, it would not be the same without them. They are beautiful and a pleasure for any photographer (even if this time they were places in a horrible spot with bad light coming from behind so you had to do mostly "contre jours".
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I have in mind a quote which is so obvious that a lot of people should said it already "a car show is for a photographer just like a candy store for a child"
So the candy store cam to me this spring in the form of the 2009 edition of both the Bikes Salon SMAEB and the car tuning salon 4tuning, something I couldn’t miss, no matter what.
I took effectively tons of photos (thousands), like in this post general shots of the show but more will come when I get to process them: a lot of beautiful booth babes, some portraits, a number of panty shots and a few surprises.
I am not much into cars or bikes, so the machines are only [at most] a secondary element in my pictures, so if you are searching for cars, maybe this is not the best place to look at.
On a technical side, I attended the fairs both Saturday and Sunday but tried something: one day shooting with a zoom lens (28-300mm) and a lot of flash (my first massive use of flash ever) and the other day used a 50mm prime and almost no flash. Being lazy, I still prefer to use the zoom lens.
The hardest part was, as always is the case for me, the selection. I just find awfully hard to reject photos, even when they have visible defects, I still find a thing or two what I like. This is my largest weakness as a photographer.
So stay ready, more to come…
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From the photographer’s point of view, one of the positive aspects of the "e-marigage" weddings fair in Bucharest was the frequency of the fashion shows they had on stage, so I could shoot about 3 of them. Too bad they had the same few models again and again (at least a few of them were beautiful, so all in all a positive experience.
Say anything you want, but looking at her I can’t think of anything else than Arwen UndomieLiv Tyler. I am definitely a geek (but she has nice rack too):
And they had also some "kinky" stuff too:
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One of the most popular tourism destination for Romanians is Turkey, so inevitably agencies present at a Romanian Tourism Fair must attract visitors with some oriental belly dance and if you, as a photographer, spot a cooperative dancer, the shoting is set:
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The ugly to hot ratio at a tourism fair is high, probably because the booth babes are supposed to talk with the public, not only to sit on display like at a car show (…or it was yet another effect of the economic crisis?), but a booth for Malta vacancies was putting quite a show: they had to bikini babes posing (unfortunately, in the hours I roamed around only the brunette was "working").
They also had a couple of guys in heavy armours, posing as knights, without Malta crosses and with a shiny cardboard background, so not very realistic but still some effort.
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From the photographer point of view, the spring edition of the Bucharest Tourism Fair (Tirgul de Turism al Romaniei) was worse than the autumn one: the place was very crowded, being hard for you to get some good shots (and considering the bad light, it was quite an effort).
But being insistent enough, you can get something, including revealing cleavages like this:
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Such thing just happens: you are at a Luxury Show shooting the preparations for a fashion show when you see right behind you a gorgeous blonde wearing a small bikini in a hot tub. Of course you turn around and start clicking on your camera…
Update: some 3 years later, I revisited one pic from this set and experienced with new photo editing.
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The admission price is a bit high at 60 RON, but overall I think those were well spent money, it was a great opportunity for some nice photos, mostly portraits (but there are more coming)
PS: there are more things coming from that event.
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Last wee-end, at the "Dulciuri pentru toti" ("Sweets for everybody") fair in Bucharest, is worse than porn: more addictive, triggering an instantaneous body reaction (mouth watering, hunger) and politically incorrect (for diabetic people). But is fun, enjoy.
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