In addition to the photos from the New Year’s Eve parties and fireworks I also recorded vidos. Unfortunately blip.tv failed with the conversion so the entire show is available in a ~970MB .OGV (Ogg Theora) and the only thing I can offer is a low-quality cut version (09:50 minutes long) on YouTube.
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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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Beyond being totally creepy (oh, those empty eyes!) as a statue and beyond the need for some kids to get a life, I kind of admire the dedication of building this unusual snowman, the snowcarnation of Michael “the king of pop”. Maybe I should take a detour to take another photo a few days later, it wad warm and rainy, he should look disfigured and even creepier.
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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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The Christmas lights are lame this year, but is cold and the snow abundant, so a combination of the two is interesting:
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A couple of days ago Bucharest was assaulted by the first real snow of this winter and it was beautiful, like in fairy tales, with large and thick snowflakes and a bit of wind to animate them. Frustrating to be trapped in the city, at work and not free of a field for beautiful, expressive shooting of the season. Now is freezing cold…
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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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I complained a few days ago about our incompetent city mayor and the late firing-up of the city lights for Christmas, the city center is a major disappointment: for the first time they are using exactly the same lights as the last year, only fewer (some were probably broken).
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Suddenly, it seems the Kiseleff Parc became fashionable this year (I guess is close to the city mayor’s house or something like that) so a big Christmas Fair is held here for the first time. And it was a first time for me, when I went into shooting mode with my new pocket video camera (is my first, so forget the amateurish style, it was a learning experience).
Of course I also used the DSLR, taking a fer snapshots:
Not that is a Romanian Christmas: plenty of food (pork), plenty of drinks (wine and țuică), lot of people.
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Knowing the old tradition of having the Christmas lights to be started in the city for the December 1st, I planned a shooting expedition in that evening, with the tripod, cable release and everything, but after freezing in the morning at the military parade, I didn’t feel like it, and postponed for a later day. Next day I felt bad about losing an opportunity, so after work did a short walk in the city with only the camera, no additional gear: surprise! the lights were still off, thanks to our incompetent city mayor, so my original decision wasn’t that bad.
At least the failure was not epic: I found a boulevard with some lights (not the city center, just a more civilised district with probably a better mayor) and, and this will be cubject of another post, people in the street protesting about the possible communist restoration in the upcoming presidential elections.
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What a bummer! After a couple of sunny weeks the morning of the national day, with its traditional military parade, was cloudy and misty. Bad for photography, bad for the photographer, so the photos are not much better than last year, in yet another cold, cloudy and misty winter morning. Click to enlarge.
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From the “posted elsewhere” category, with a full HOWTO of the process on my other blog. Enjoy.
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The weather is freezing cold, the parks are empty, the benches are lonely…
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Some weeks ago browsing aimlessly (I was looking at the price of various photo gear) I noticed the Photon Photography Course, the price looked right to me so I decided to enrol myself, trying to improve my skills. It started this week-end with a couple of theory lessons. Not something really new for me and not very deep, but basic knowledge for any photographer.
So after the first course, I made a couple of photo experiments showing the dependency if aperture size (F number) and the depth of field. The range of aperture values is not very large, just as my main (telephoto) lens allows (F3.5 is my limit):
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