Roman springtime

Since it's springtime, I figure I can get away with posting another photo of flowers. This was taken last year in Rome, specifically on the path up to the Calle Palatino. I had to climb up on some fence to take this, I was lucky that the weather was perfect for such a shot - cloudy. This meant that the light was very diffused, very gentle and soft.

Regatta

This weekend, we attended the University Regatta in Portorož and I was sailing for the first time in my life. At the beginning when I was told what to do, I didn't know anything else other than which rope I have to pull, I lost all my orientation and had no idea where the wind was blowing from. So many ropes to figure out. But then a few minutes later, when I was familiar with most of the important stuff, I began to enjoy the freedom of the wind in the sails. Slowly I also started to think about what we could do better and got my orientation back.

Our skipper was great, she is a friend of a friend and she slowly educated us newbies. I thought that sails are for people who don't understant the speed on the speed-boat, maybe because we had a small rubber motor boat during my childhood and those were the boats I loved, small and agile. But all of us are still learning in our lives and now I live in doubt. On a motor boat the top speed is the speed you can get, but the feeling of having such an influence on it, with trimming the sails and getting the best direction is so interesting... I am quite confused at the moment. I love the speed, but I hate the feeling when you can't do anything about it. And just squeezing the pedal doesn't fit in this dictionary.

Taking photos while sailing requires protected equipment, especially if you also have some tasks to do on the boat. You can hit any kind of hard material with the camera on your back and when you put it in the cabin it must be fixed. Otherwise it jumps from left to right when changing directions and it takes time to get it out at the right moment again. And then there is the salt water. After some hours the problems disappear a little and the polarised filter becomes a must-have.

My balloon

This is probably as good as it gets in life - you are four years old (five?), you get a balloon and you spend an afternoon looking at some weird old cars. There are adults all around getting excited about these old cars, you're not sure what the point is (after all, aren't new cars better than old ones?), but it doesn't matter, you have a balloon.

Anyhow, this was taken with my old Konica on black and white film at a old-timer meeting in the center of Ljubljana sometime last year. With photography, you can usually tell the time period of a photograph by small details such as cars. But with photographing old cars such as these with an old film camera, I could probably convince people that the photos were taken thirty or forty years ago.

Frequent flyer

This is Gregor, catching some air on a recent ski trip to Austria (the same trip this photo was taken). This wasn't the easiest of photographs to take. First off, I only had 3 shots left on the roll of film (Fujifilm's Sensia Dia/Slide film), and I had forgotten spare rolls in my car, back in Ljubljana. Besides this, these conditions are not easy to photograph - shooting into the sun with shadows in the foreground and on the main subject isn't easy, especially with the simpler light reader in my old EOS 10s. I metered off the shadowy snow in the foreground and hoped for the best. Also, I had no clue where exactly Gregor was going to come over the hump, since I didn't see him until the last minute.

All in all, I got lucky that the metering was as good as could be, and that I caught him in time to be able to get a nice composition. Though it might look like a small jump here, it's actually quite high, especially if you're not ready for it.

A look

Black and white photography is special because it removes one layer of visual information (the colour) and thus makes the story behind the photograph that much more important. It is most often used in portrait photography for this very reason - it makes the person in the photograph take center stage. It is simple and to the point, and because of this, I find that it takes a bit more effort to get it right. Though when someone gives you a look such as this one, it doesn't take much to get it right.

I have often mentioned to people who ask me how to get better at photography that they should make things as simple as possible. By eliminating colour you concentrate on other, usually more important things - both technical (the composition and perspective) and artistic.

I almost forgot to mention that this was taken after climbing the same day as this similar photo of Žiga.

Dolph Lundgren

This is a portrait of my faculty colleague which reminds me of a caricature of movie actor Dolph Lundgren :) And I also see the flat color specter as interesting, just bricks and skin.

Is this what they really want :)

Here are some folks from the Alfa Romeo club slovenia. And this picture was taken on top of the highest mountain pass in slovenia, Vršič. But these guys just don't look so sure that they want to go on :)

Bum from the blur

One of my spontaneously taken personal favorites. Taken on Šmarna gora late one afternoon a long time ago. The log has such a weightless look, just staying in the air without support, the only support seen are these weak branches. And suddenly it just kicks out from the blurry background.

Springtime

Taken last year during the spring. Notice the little caterpillar inside the flower :-)

"Signorina" in blue blouse

Walking on the lovely streets of Florence, so tender, but so passionate. "Signiorina" and the "Cita". I wonder towards what dream that iPod is helping her. I kind of love this picture. It reminds me of some typical Italian movie.

Karavanke

The Karavanke, as seen from Šmarna Gora one sunny winter afternoon. The highway leads towards the part of Slovenia which is mentioned in the Slovene translation of John Denver's best known song. Google away :-)

Drunk on motorcycle

Nobody was hurt (hopefully). The people from the slovene village of Osp (known mainly as a great place for climbing) created this instalation for the Carnival in February. They did some crazy stuff in their village, such as this and the bad ass Yugo I posted.

Sixtyfive with annoying wife

Here is how it looks like if you are 65, but you are just not gettin any older :) Or maybe it is just the air of Tuscany. Wish them luck! Taken with a tele lens of course.

Tired?

I love this photo of Žiga, it just looks so old-school. It was, of course, taken on black and white film after we finished climbing one sunny day. He looks tired as hell here, which is about what I'm feeling right now :P

Florence - Ponte Vecchio

This is the crazy bridge Ponte Veccio in Florence that is covered with houses, and as you walk through you can see a lot of people selling arts and jewelery in the shops, as well as on the street. These are poor people, arguing about why you are taking photos, physically strong people, but afraid of everyday life. In the evening we had a glass of wine there that our professor brought with him. He actually brought a lot of that from Slovenia :) It was nice, after three intense days in Florence, so peaceful, despite the street market. The photo was taken a few hours before, twice at 55mm with a telephoto lens and I think it looks like it should, as it does when you are there. As I remember it :) I was taking portraits of the people on the street at the time at long focal length, so I forgot the ISO 800. But I think there is no problem with that.

Pisa madness

I've been to Tuscany these days. We were sketching every famous ancient arhitecture that came to our way, including Pisa with it's famous tower standing at the Piazza dei Miracoli. We were a little tired, the rain was destroying our sketches, but I still wanted to take the standard picture from this location:) I gave my friend Sašo the telefoto lens and posed... and I've bought those sunglasses for 6 euro:)

The Boxer

In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of every glove that laid him down
Or cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame
"I am leaving, I am leaving"
But the fighter still remains

This is Žiga. Yes, both of them are Žiga, and again, no Photoshop. This is done with two flashes, much like the photo directly below or this photo from a while ago. The lyrics above just fit the photo, you can figure out the song on your own :-) Oh, and the photo was taken on Rožnik, the hill above Ljubljana's Tivoli park (on a completely unrelated note - I can't believe Wikipedia has a page on Rožnik).

Confusion

Let's start of by explaining that this photo is not photoshopped or digitally not manipulated in any way. Yes, go back and read that one more time. No, I couldn't tell you exactly how it came to be, though I do understand it a bit. I was photographing a party (the same party this photo was taken) with my flash and I used a very long exposure (one or two seconds). In between, other strong lights came into the photo - either other people's flashes or the lighting from the club, I don't know. But this is what makes this photo look like a mash-up of different pictures - for every flash, the camera was in a different position and recorded something different. In the space of that second, it recorded everything you see above. Had I been using film, the photo would still have been very very similar. Žiga and I sometimes use these tricks on purpose - such as in this photo of me.

In a line

Again a photograph taken on film. Seems like that's becoming a trend here on our blog, but we don't mind. Anyhow, this was taken in Koper during the sunset, these streetlights are placed just along the pier facing out towards the open sea (this was taken about an hour after I shot this ship entering port). Yes, the sky really was that colour - and I have the slide to prove it (though it looks even better on the slide).

A penny for your thoughts?

You know how you sometimes wonder what exactly is going on in someone's head? It's even worse with photography, especially on film. Because you take a picture and only see it much later - sometimes days, sometimes weeks or even months after you took it. I have an especially terrible memory and often forget many of the photos I take on film. So when you see a photo such as the one above, you often wonder exactly what was going on during that moment in time.

As for the photo - our friend Nina at a small photography exhibition in Ljubljana's Celica Hostel, taken on black and white film with my 30 year old Konica.

In the club

Somedays, the camera just doesn't obey you - no matter what you do, the pictures just don't work. Other days, you don't seem to be able to take bad photos. You know the exact settings, you feel the composition, things just click. And somehow, photos like the one above come straight out of the camera. I'm not joking - there's absolutely no photoshop here at all, I only used The Gimp to resize this so I could post it here. How, you ask? I used an external flash to take the picture, but left the exposure for around one second. This way, the camera collects surrounding light - such as the green light above.

This was taken just a couple of hours ago in KMŠ, where I was photographing a party for the student association known as MEOS.

One cold winter morning

Sometimes, photography is being in the right place at the right time. The trick is to know, to feel, where this place is and when to be there. This is usually much trickier than it sounds, and it is often the difference between amateur photographers (like Žiga and I) and the pros. People like Galen Rowell knew (and know) when the light was going to be just right and where to be to show it off. The rest of us just try to get lucky as much as possible, as in this shot. Taken on the same morning as this previous photo on the shore of the Sava river, the sun was just beginning to rise and it showed of the rising mists very nicely. Taken on film, of course.