Modeling

From the same press conference as this post which I posted a couple of months ago. I can't really decide which is better, so I'm adding both of them :-)

Into port

This was taken during our recent coffee in Koper. We caught an incredible sunset and I took quite a few photos - around 20, to be exact, all on film. This is one of the better ones - this ship was waiting for a tug to pull it into port. And yes, the colours are exactly the same as on film.

Welcome to the Jungle

One from a sunny trip for these cloudy days... This photo was taken about a year ago, a few weeks after I discovered the polarised filter and the power of raw files. The jungle is river Soča, where we took a trip with a turist boat. The picture is not as sharp as it could be, the boat was moving all the time and I had a lot problems with sharpnes on my kit lens when using the filter. Not so much with the focus, but with the acurate sharpness, so I had to use aperture f8 and the time is quite slow for the 90mm (equivalent) using on the boat, only 1/100s. I don't like the picture that much now, it looks like some inappropriate use of hdr to me, but I thought some of you would like it. If you don't tell me and I will replace it with normal one :)

Just stoned

Sometimes it just happens that you have a good photo day. Like this one, again from a trip to the seaside about a year ago, everything I took a photo of looked cool, or at least OK. Sometimes when I try to take a good photo, especially when I want to show someone (or some special girl) what I see, I just can't. It can last a week or more. But when you walk by the beach, relaxed, enjoying the smell of the sea, every photo looks useful. In this case, I just wasn't thinking, the light was OK, but the ISO speed is relatively high, at 1600. Dreaming about some stuff, taking pictures of the sky, of the sea, of the stones on the shore... they just don't look stupid... they look soft, round... stoned maybe :)

Wild blonde dancing with the cutting light

To make this blog a little more bloggish, I mean, to also show a little where are we spending our time, I am posting photo that I have taken the past weekend. We had a little party time with some friends at Cvetličarna club in Ljubljana. I was planning to take some more photos of our friends having party time and dancing, but later the alcohol and interest for other stuff was stronger, so I took only a few, nothing really special. For me the most interesting is this one showing two people I don't really know well, but I love her hair dancing wildly with the light that he can't handle :) She is a professional dancer, at least she was a few years ago, as I remember, so she is hard to handle. But I think he had a great time anyway :)

A work in progress

Ljubljana's castle is probably its most known landmark. But, as we've already shown in one photograph, it's undergoing reconstruction. This shot was taken from my sister's apartment, which is in the very center of town, with my old Konica. As with most of my night photos, I used film and a sturdy tripod. The sky behind the castle is as bright as it is because of light polution, the magenta colour of the castle is from floodlights which light it up every night. They are actually never magenta, but change colours - in this case, the camera caught both red and blue and put them together :-)

How it was done

This is another masterpiece of Alvaro Siza Vieira which stands in the student campus at the edge of the city of Aveiro, Portugal. The picture doesn't show the good work of the architect, it is more a parody, but a college friend of mine, who was making a report about this building, asked me if I have any different (or possibly funny) pictures of this library. And then I remembered this one which I made when we were walking through some new construction yard to this student campus. The photoshop was done quickly, so where I had to make it manually, the edges are still a little green :) Also the original picture is OK, because the sky is white and grey and there are only two colours, green and orange. Sadly, I can't find the original. The thing I like most of this building is the interior, because the five floors are joined so nicely into one big hall, and some details make the outside world look like a picture framed in the external frontage. It is hard to show that in the picture, but I have to admit that the man is a genius.

Is this going to work?

Janez, a good friend of ours, is nuts about car acoustics (and acoustics in general). I seems like his car will never be finished - there will always be something which can be improved - from better speakers to a better amplifier to better cables (yes, cables). Anyhow, he helped Žiga with the music in his car as well. This photo is from one of the countless tweaking sessions of Žiga's car. It's that final moment before you turn something on and pray that it doesn't blow up. Žiga's expression pretty much says it all.

The Chase

An Audi being chased by what I think is another Audi, last September at the Circuit deCatalunya near Barcelona. Like before, I used a technique known as panning where you follow a moving object with the camera. If you manage to follow it well, the object should be sharp while the background is blurred (you also need to use a relatively slow shutter speed, in the case of racing cars, 1/100 of a second is more than slow enough).

Smile, man!

This is a photo of a friend of ours, who's name also happens to be Jure. Taken during a picnic last summer on black and white film. I could probably go around convincing people this was taken twenty or thirty years ago - though I'm not sure how common dreadlocks were back then.

Winter sunrise

This photo of a winter sunrise over the Sava river was taken this winter, close to where I live.
For some reason or another, I had to get up early one cold Saturday morning (I think I had to drive someone somewhere), and I figured I might as well take the opportunity for some photography. I tossed one of my two old Konicas - the one with Velvia colour film (I always keep colour film in one and black and white film in the other), a few lenses and a sturdy tripod into my car. I went to a nice spot along the river that's isolated and shot of almost an entire roll of film (36 exposures).

Many of the photos were bracketed - which means that I took the same photo at two or three different exposures (light settings). This is because with tricky conditions such as these (the sun shinning directly into the camera), light meters have a hard time determining the correct exposure, especially older meters such as the ones found in the 30 year old Konicas. New cameras have better light meters and all sorts of electronic tricks, but even they can get confused sometimes. In the days of film, professionals often bracketed photos because the price of film wasn't as important as getting the perfect shot. With digital, bracketing has become less important, mostly because you can check the photo on the spot and decide on any changes right there - something you can't do with film. Besides bracketing the exposure itself, one can also bracket focus, white balance or flash.

Portrait in portrait

My younger sister is absolutely amazing at painting - this is her with one of her portraits. Taken with a fixed 85 mm lens with a maximum aperture of 1,4 - the lens itself costs over 1000 Euro.

Pollution is beautiful

The picture speaks for itself, I really like the colourful dirty buildings in the night, especially at longer exposures, when the smoke becomes so flat and blurry. The photograph was taken with a compact Canon G9, which has a problem, that the shutter can only stay open for 15 seconds. But I still like this picture of Belinka factory.

Mountains of Austria

Taken on a recent ski trip to Mokrine (Nassfeld in German) from one of the higher peaks of the ski resort. I don't know any of the mountains by name, but they sure look imposing. The photo was taken on film (Velvia, of course), I only took around five or six photos during the entire day, because I only had my film EOS camera with me and I managed to forget two rolls of film in my car (which was back in Ljubljana) - and I only had those five or six shots left on the film that was still in the camera. Oh well, that just ment I got more skiing in.

Rock Star

The picture of Grega was taken when we were driving in some hot weather with the windows down and the wind having taken control of his hair. I've removed the Adidas logo from his glasses, because with obviously sporty glasses he looked like a rock star on a medical treatment. With those pure black sunglasses he looks like a real rock star, driving along the highway, free and cool, enjoying the wind in his cabriolet :)

Festive Ljubljana

Taken sometime around the holidays, this shows Ljubljana in its most festive mood. The bridge in the photo is Čevljarski Most (Shoemaker's bridge), behind it is the center of town. The photo itself was taken on Veliva colour film which is great for showing off the beautiful colours reflecting in the Ljubljanica river. Obviously, I had to use a tripod and a slow shutter speed, which is why the river is so silky smooth. I was thinking of cropping in a bit tighter to show the bridge, but in the end I decided to show more of the reflections in the water. I think it came out quite nicely :-)

Keep shinning

During the winter exam period, January and February, the weather was pretty bad in Ljubljana, I don't think we had more than a day or two of sunshine (this actually applies to almost the entire winter). So when I woke up one Friday morning with no more exams and the sun shinning like crazy through my window, I knew what had to happen. Žiga called and asked if I wanted to go for a coffee - I said sure, want to go to Koper? He didn't need convincing, and we called two other friends - Vlado and Rok (he's in the picture above).

The funny thing is that we just went down for a coffee - literally. We were only there for an hour (and it's an hour and a half each way from Ljubljana), but it felt great. We caught the last hour of sun, but saw a great sunset (I'll add another photo or two sooner or later). Koper itself is much less popular than the towns of Piran and Portorož, since it used to be nothing more than a harbour town, while Piran and Portorož were (and are) tourist destinations. But in the past couple of years, much of the city center of Koper has been rebuild and it's quite lovely. The parking is free (in the afternoon) and there are a couple of nice cafes that look out at the marina and the sea beyond, and there are almost no tourists.

Anyhow, this was taken on Velvia film with my 'new' Canon EOS 10s. This is an old camera (over 10 years) that I bought the same day as this photo was taken - the camera cost a measly 40 euros. Worth every penny.

Over nine hills

Picture taken from Krvavec with tele lens. The sun was going down and the fog under us was looking beautyful until we came in it. Maybe the composition isn't so good, but the motive was amazing.

Chevy Nova SS

This is (as far as I can tell) a third generation Chevy Nova SS. I was driving along and just had to pull over when I saw it - american muscle cars are quite rare in Europe, even more so in Slovenia. The photo was taken on Velvia film, which perfectly shows off the red-purple colour.

Vertical limit

Yesterday we went climbing to Vransko, which is a village covered with free wireless internet and where you can find beautiful rocks just near the village. You can park practically under the wall if you want, so there is no walking to the "crime scene", which is why fathers and mothers who are climbers like this place as well. In front of the wall there is beautiful green grass when you can rest and the routes are quite easy. The hardest one is marked 6a, so Grega mostly went just straight up.

Triglav

Mount Triglav, as seen from the ski resort of Krvavec. Damn it's beautiful.

Making music

Taken at the Budapest Castle during my last trip (last September) to Hungary's capital. But this is so very classic and so very generic it really could have been taken anywhere and at any time in the last twenty, thirty years (the only thing that doesn't quite fit are the sunglasses on the guy on the left). Actually, now that I think about it, ignore what I wrote above - this was taken twenty years ago in New York's Central Park with a Leica camera on black and white film ;-)

Safety above the cool factor

No matter how cool you are, always use safety belt could be the title of this picture. She is cool, wearing all those bracelets, colorful skirt, bright and blurry. But no matter what, she uses the safety belt :) Nice picture that reminds me of a trip to the seaside with Jure, Gregor and Nika, who lended her hand for this photo. The photo was taken with my broken 50 f/1,8, which had a lot of focusing problems and was replaced with one that works almost perfectly. The only problem with this new lens is that when it is really cold outside, I can not turn off the auto focus :)

Ghost of a photographer - double trouble

Picture taken on Rožnik, where Jure and I were trying his new speedlite flash. Shutter time of 20 seconds gave us enough time to easily change the position in the frame. We took a few of these, but I personaly like this one the most because of his mysterious look behind the camera.

In the groove

Another party photo, taken a day or two after the first one. This time the backround has been coloured in photoshop to make her stand out - I think it works great. Looking at this, you can feel the groove in the club and imagine that single moment in time.

From the wall

Yesterday we were climbing at the Casa Cadorna wall which stands above the Doberdo lake. From the wall (the picture was taken from the ground), the lake looked just magnificent yesterday, especially because of the fog, which gives it some mysterious looks, mixed with the strong bright reflection of the sun. Blacks are also pushed up a little from the raw file.