49 - Photo of choice

We went with my friend to the hills in order to tune our form before the cross country ski race this coming Saturday. We chose the maintained tracks in the southern hills of Sumava. And during one long painful climb uphill I noticed this beautiful spot, where the snow hopelessly resisted coming spring. I wish it was here with the full force...

48 - Patterns

47 - Macro

No words needed. My DSR optics does not enable too close-up macros. Actually, the previous compact camera was better suited for macros, but it is broken and sleeping among other technical rubbish...

46 - Photoshopped

I had really fun when I worked on this theme. First I picked the photo with incredible face and pose of Alice, the younger daughter. I don't recall what was soooo funny at that moment. Anyway, I applied some crayon filter to it and then played with layer blending. The result is here...


I thought it was too easy. So I took the still life photo I made recently, I made fresh picture of my eye and combined, combined... and I had to laugh when I saw the result. Peep!

45 - Relative

I made this picture when we visited my sister-in-law's family recently. Dan took out the water pipe in the evening and we had a quiet while in their winter garden. We also agreed we'd try to capture the smoke in the air. It required quite steady hand in those poor light conditions. I was again glad that my camera has decent stabilizer...

44 - Friend

I'm without a chance to take a fresh photo of my friends these days, so again there is an opportunity to reach back to the archive. It's from our last holiday in Sardinia, Italy.

43 - Textures

I had to cut some logs today because the stock of smaller woods is almost gone. And as I took them one by one, the neat texture of the birch bark caught my eye...

42 - Treasures

I was thinking about the treasures in our house. My wife? Children? Yes, of course, but... but they are on so many other topics. What else? We have no gold hidden under the stairs. What is the most precious thing? Why am I even considering a locker in a bank? Yep, the photographs, the family, friends, events, our memories burned to silver halides of traditional photo papers or to the newer digital media. If the house burned down, this is what I'd miss the most. So, before I start thinking about some real picture, I've created this collage, a small sample of the treasure that we keep in the house.

Death

I have at last updated the Death theme.

41 - Food

Sprinkling water on the basket of fruits I felt like pro foodstyler... ;)

40 - Cold

Again another home made evening arrangement...

39 - Hot

Ouch... it was really hot while I was taking this picture. I opened the door of our fireplace, my hands started to burn and I was really afraid that something can happen to the lens. Next time I will have to find some safer way how to visualize this theme....

38 - Openings

It was really fun to take this photo. I had the DSR mounted on the small wobbly tripod for compacts, whose legs were constantly sliding apart under its weight. So with one hand on the shutter and the other hand clutching a small pocket light aimed at the board I finally managed something presentable. Only later I was looking what it is and this opening seems to be part of the Budapest gambit (I'm not a chess player).

37 - Lines

And again the railway station (I always find the trains, railway charming in some way, they evoke a notion of travel, distant places). The light reflected on the rails reminded me of the lines theme. I made the photo ultra contrast in order to stress the light lines, so it may seem a bit unnatural...

36 - Shadows

I made this picture when I was in Hamburg, Germany, on a business trip. The deserted passage along one of the Hamburg's canals allowed me to capture this nice pattern of columns and shadows.

35 - Photo of Choice

The electric power lines and pylons on one of Prague's railway stations caught my eye. Long lens shrank them all to one big tangle.

33, 34 - Hands & Feet

I simply can't resist to share the New Year greeting card that we prepared this year. It is kind of habit here to send the greeting cards, often hand made, especially by enthusiastic photographers. They can be funny, witty, serious, with or without Christmas/winter atmosphere. The message on this one says "We wish you merry year 2008". The PF stands for French Pour Feliciter - the best wishes. Interestingly, French do not use it at all... ;o) Often it is enough to have the PFyear on the card and everybody understands it. It's been in use here since late 19th century.

32.5 - Paths

I noticed I forgot to copy this theme to the list and I'd have forgotten about it if it weren't for your nice pictures of paths. I made a detour along the way to the office on Friday and covered several topics. This is indeed a path. Actually it is a picture of wooden planks that form the pedestrian walk on the railway bridge over the river Vltava. I made it B&W and ultra contrast to enhance the borders between individual planks.

32 - Life

It looks that winter is backing out in some areas. Even behind our backyard the wild sallow willows slowly begin to sprout their flowers. For me it is the clear sign of the new life that's coming back after the gray winter months .

31 - Death

At last I got out. I made a detour on the way from the office and walked to the solitary modest memorial to the anonymous victims of the road accident. It is sad that this is only one of many...

26 - Groups

It's more flog than group but I did not find better...

30 - Urban

I had to look up urban design and urbanism on internet to get better idea what can fall into this category of photographies. I did not get, or better I was left with th same wide range of topics that can be included. I uderstood that it is basically anything where the work & life of people/society made its mark and where it relates to towns, cities, the places where we live.

I'm usually passing impressive office building on my way to/from the work. I stopped there and took the first picture. The second is from the same spot. It is not awesome photo but it pretty much reflects how people change the look of the town by building the new houses (top half) or by construction of the new tram station (bottom half).

27 - Signs

I was thinking of this theme for some time and eventually got an idea to go to the old town (again) and look around. Number of old renaissance houses has house signs on them, usually above the main entrance or somewhere on the front side. And often the houses are called after the sign - the house at Two Bears, at the Golden Snake, at the Green Frog, at the Black Star, at the Blue Horse, etc etc. I picked as the main photo the sign of the House at the Black Star that gained the sign in the late renaissance period in 17th century. And, for information, I'm adding the collage of some other signs that I saw during my stroll through the old town today.

28 - Photo Essay

This essay was not made today but on New Year's Eve while we celebrated the coming of the yar 2008. I decided to share it anyway. We went outside and the girls started to play with the sparklers. Of course this adventure quickly ended when both of them burned their clumsy hands. The younger Alice was then so exhausted that she fell asleep in the living room, warmed by her friend cat.

29 Directions (Photo Essay)

I'm skipping Groups and Signs for the moment, I will come back to them. Today I was looking for directions. I had to go to the local town hall office for some papers and there I saw it. Emergency directions on poisonously green walls. I took several pictures and on the way back to work an idea occured, if the pictures can be composed into an essay? Why not, here is the combination of the directions theme and one short essay about "How to get out of the office labyrinth".