One-way road

Do not go in there. It's a one-way road. But tasty one :)

Flying chairlift

Taken on Krvavec ski slope while getting a lift with one of those chairs. The power of the sky and all of the colours comes from the polarising filter. As much as I remember, the day was perfect, cold and sunny.

Dual - 50 - Cyborg

Dual 50 f1.8, Canon and Nikon. The Canon is a little bigger, but much cheaper built. The aperture on the Nikkor stays closed (manual option), which goes even better with the funny cyborg look and the metalcamp T-shirt. Sadly it was taken by the way and it is just an ordinary flashy photo.

Smooth as silk

Taken late one evening at the small plateau of Rakitna, to the south of Ljubljana.

The best insurance

People are victims. Of marketing mostly in our time. I took this one while taking some billboard photos for my friend. The road and the sidewalk above with the damaged road sign come great together with the insurance ad behind. The best insurance is in the first plan ;)

Alpine pond

A lovely little pond (which probably dries up in the summer) somewhere above the plateau of Pokljuka. Taken last fall, around October or November, one beautiful Sunday morning. Ljubljana spent the entire day in fog, above 1000 meters we had tons of sunshine, as you can see.

Auto-portrait at sunset

Taken sometime last year with a wide-angle lens I was testing. Yes, that's my car and my shadow on the window, behind me is a beautiful sunset. Taking photos of sunsets is way overrated: pretty much everyone who has ever owned a camera has a few nice photos of sunsets. The trick is to look the other way and try to find something else that is interesting in the awesome light a sunset gives off. The mountains in the background are the Karavanke.

Bomb :)

A nice back portrait. This guy just must be feeling safe, he's smiling as you see. Lots of reasons for that kind of mood. If you keep reading this blog, you might also see the front portrait. Just kidding, I didn't really have the guts!

Taken in shadow, so the shutter time was quite slow for the telephoto lens I used, because the light was pretty weak.

Arco climbing - part 2

Barbara bouldering during our last day in Arco. Nataša and Uroš found a wonderful climbing area 5 minutes away from our camp. It had a bit of everything, though it was mostly short routes and boulders.

Welcome back to the second part of our Arco climbing trip! I don't plan on writing much, I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

Carabiners are one of the most important pieces of safety equipment in climbing. I was hanging of this shiny nice one while photographing from the wall :)


Nataša in the middle of a route that many of us
would consider hard. She, on the other hand, took some
time off to pose for a couple of photos.
The same route as above, this time on the way down. Yes, those
really are some amazing rock walls in the background.


Life in Italy is just so relaxed. I caught this lady chatting with some neighbor during one of our walks around the lovely little town of Arco.


Mmmm the food in Italy is wonderful. Twice, we bought fish
from the local store (they were half the price we would have paid
in Slovenia) and roasted them on a barbecue at the camp. In the background,
you'll notice some wonderful local wine - again, criminally cheap.


Tadej reaches for a small crack to hold on to. This particular wall was
one big slab with very little to hold on to - just some cracks here and there,
footwork and technique ruled the day.


A minute later, he's gathering rope to clip in. I imagine
it must taste like chicken.


These are my magical climbing shoes which climb by themselves.
If anyone from Rock Pillars ever reads this, the original photo
is on sale ;-)


One last view from atop the wall. Beautiful, I know.

Analog vs. Digital

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten the second part of photos from our recent climbing trip to Arco, Italy, they'll come soon. But in the mean time, here's a nice photo from a few months ago. That's Gregor playing around with the then-new Nikon D90, which I was testing. This shot was taken with my old Konica on black and white film with a 50 mm F1,4 lens. Given these two cameras (the Nikon D90 and the 30 year old Konica Autoreflex T4), I have to admit I prefer photographing with the Konica. Sure, a digital camera such as the D90 saves a lot of time and makes things much simpler, but photographing on film is just so much more fun and just feels better.

Arco climbing - part 1

Uroš climbing some vertical rock.

Warning: Long post ahead. Feel free to skip the text and to just check out the photos. As always, you can click on a photo to bring up a larger version.

As I wrote a couple of days ago, I was away in Italy climbing for five days. Put simply, it was brilliant. But let's not get carried away and go back to the beginning. Four of us (Barbara, Tadej, Blaž and I) left on Wednesday morning from Ljubljana (I was doing the driving), heading towards Trieste. Nataša and Uroš would join us a day and a half later. We stayed on the highway until Treviso, close to Venice. I planned on leaving the highway there for a few reasons. One, the traffic by Venice, Padova and Verona is just murder, two, highway driving is boring and three, the local roads towards Trento are to-die-for beautiful (at least according to my dad, who's been in these parts many times).

So we leave the highway behind, my passengers weren't very excited at first. But as we approached the foothills of the Dolomite Alps, things became very beautiful very fast. We stopped for a beer close to Levico, then continued on to Trento. I'm not kidding, this area really is breathtaking. And the roads! Italians not only know how to drive, they know how to build sports cars and roads for sports cars. Imagine a narrow highway with fast curves surrounded by mountains in every direction. Seriously, these roads were made for Maserati's. Not Ferrari's, not Lamborghini's, this is pure Maserati territory. If you have to ask why, forget it, you wouldn't understand. I got pulled over by the Carabinieri at one point, but it was just a regular inspection, we chatted for 5 minutes on how beautiful the mountains were and they wished us a safe trip.

The view from our campsite towards the north - towards Trento.

We soon go to Arco, our destination, a town on the northern edge of the Lago di Garda. A small town well known for adventure sports. The campsite was compromised of 50% mountain bikers (with serious bikes, I'm talking 2000 Euro Cannondales, Specialized, etc.), 30% climbers with the remaining 20% made up of surfers and hikers.We were pleasantly surprised with the native Italians and their excellent English and German - though I prefer the Italian myself :-)

Where shall we climb tomorrow?

This really was heaven on Earth. When we asked the receptionist at the camp if there were any climbing stores in town, he replied with (and please, imagine a heavy Italian accent): Yeeess, there are seven. Seriously, what more do you need?

So we spent the next four days climbing every day, always somewhere new. There's all kinds of different rock for all tastes. Easy grades, hard grades, slabs, friction climbing, overhangs, you name it. And now for some more photos (there will be more in part two, which will come in the next two days, I promise).

Barbara looking like a glamour queen on the rock face. I took this by climbing up, tying
in and waiting for her to climb up after me. Photographing from the bottom up doesn't give
a nice perspective - basically, the higher up you are, the better the photos.

Two minutes later, she had reached the top and was on her way down. Well done :-)

The view was just fantastic pretty much everywhere we went. Driving to
various climbing areas, we'd usually go through a small village or two
and at least one olive field.

This dude doesn't need any rope, free solo all the way!

Nataša was by far the best climber among us. She
somehow made everything look easy.

Tadej learned an integral part of sports climbing - clipping in with quickdraw
carabiners. This was during our last day - every day we were more tired,
but every day we climbed better.

And Barbara spent the last half hour hanging around on some
boulders. Closer to the ground but no easier than normal climbing,
bouldering as it's called has its charms.

Well, that's all for today, but as I mentined, part two is coming up with more pictures soon! I had two cameras with me, but we spent so much time climbing, I didn't take a single photo with the second one - the one with film. Oh well, next time.

Mighty wings - 100th post!

I can't believe we're already at our 100th post on this blog. It really seems like we started this just yesterday.

Anyhow, I just returned from a climbing trip to Italy where I took tons of photos, but I haven't had time to go through them yet, so expect a long post with a few climbing photos soon. The bird above was taken last year while hiking at around 2000 meters.

Brothers probably

I think so. Some people are complaining over the photos with no person on. Here you can also see the relations. Or probably just the twin towers.
Taken near river Sava in Črnuče when I was hanging around with Nina and doing some stuff for the magdalena festival. The focus and depth-to-field aren't just right and the light could also be better. Damn :)

Everlasting

Another nice one from the narrow streets of Pirano, small city at the seaside of Slovenia. For me, these are the kind of pictures that you can here the silence in and it feels like the time has stoped for a moment. An everlasting chopper in an everlasting city, waiting for his master. Taking a rest, but always ready for a nice ride.

The Beast

I noticed this AMG Mercedes-Benz C-Class lurking in a garage at Barcelona's race track. It's from the german DTM series, similar to the car Ralf Schumacher now drives for team Mercedes. This thing weighs just 1050 kg (with the driver inside) and has a 4 liter V8 which puts out around 500 horsepower at 7500 RPM.

"... as you can see, these are not Honda Civics. This is one of three brand-new Mercedes ... "

Aqua Porsche

Sadly nothing special about the photo, it's the motive which is special. A Porsche speedboat. In my opinion it's custom made by some fanatic owner :)

Waiting for her sailor

Taken in marina Portorose, about a week ago, from a parked boat. The lady was waiting to board a boat and staring at this beautiful sunset. Looking like waiting for someone on this pier to come back from the sea. I like the ropes, giving a sailing spirit to the picture, but sadly, a friend of mine jumped in front of my camera, so you can see his sholder in the right bottom corner :)

Parlament photographer

Photography at night is usually more about trial and error than about light meters and such. Usually, the best way to go about it is to take a few test shots (with a digital camera) and find settings that are as close as possible to what you want to achieve. This was taken from a tripod in front of the Slovenian Parlament, that's Žiga on the left trying to sit still for the few seconds which I needed for this shot. Taken with one of my old Konicas with black and white film.