Midnight fastfood

A hamburger stand in Ljubljana, which (as far as I know) only works during the summer. Taken sometime late at night. Notice how many photos here are taken early in the morning and how many late at night? Yes, Žiga and I are both night-people, not morning-people. A bit like Batman :)

Orchid

Not much to say other than I love orchids. Not enough to actually have them around (the only plants I do keep are cacti and a single Venus flytrap), but they certainly are photogenic.

Elegance

Another storefront window, late at night.

Upside down

Taken just a few days ago, though I fear autumn is on its way.

Window of blue

Taken in Lisbon's Archeological museum, the same place I took this similar shot.

Deep down

A small tribute to all the divers out there - Žiga is probably somewhere underwater as I write this. Taken in an aquarium, since I'm not one for diving. I just love the colour of this little guy.

Colorful umbrellas

I love this shot - I took it on Velvia film during a walk through Ljubljana. The only reason I even took this walk was because I had a few more shots on that roll of film to take, and I was on my way to get it developed. But being in the right place at the right time worked out well.

Fujifilm's Velvia film is probably the best for something like this. It has beautiful, strong colours, some of which are very very hard to capture with digital. Deep reds and purples are the hardest to get right on digital - overexpose by just the tiniest bit and that beautiful red Ferrari gets an orange tinge (speaking from experience).

A big thank-you to Primoz Gabrijelčič, who scanned this and a few other slides for me. Oh, and I've also written up a post at Monitor's blog (slovene only) on the topic of scanning.

Dark streets

Ljubljana is a beautiful city which we usually take for granted. The streets above are part of the old town of Ljubljana, I just love the old buildings (most of which have been renovated and look very nice indeed). I caught these two walking what I presume to be home sometime late at night - nothing more than nameless silhouettes.

Just a roof

...disappearing in the distance, or maybe darkness... Taken while resting on the balcony in the evening.

Afraid of something?

...of a dog maybe? The truth is just the orange on the orangetree that this college of mine wanted to eat :)

Ford Mustang

For some reason I can't quite fathom, our post with the Chevy Nova SS is one of our most popular posts (at least with regards to Google hits). Well, I've recently started seeing another classic muscle car in Ljubljana, this beautiful Ford Mustang Coupe (hardtop). It is a first-generation Mustang, though I don't know from which year. According to Wikipedia, the lights would suggest it's from at least 1969, but the placing of the emblem in the center of the grill, the square mirrors and the emblem on the sides would lead one to believe it is from 1966 (possibly also 1967 or 1968). I took the photo at night with my camera on a tripod.

Quick!

I got lucky with this one - Peter (that's him on the photo) happened to move almost exactly the same as I did with my camera. This left him sharp, while the background is nicely blurred (though part of the blurring comes from using a fixed lens with a large aperture). I took this with a digital camera which I set for black and white. I usually prefer to shoot in colour and change to black and white later because it gives me more options, but sometimes you just want to keep things simple.

Grounder

I couldn't care less for watching sports, but baseball is one of the exceptions. Maybe it's just a bit of nostalgia :)

Afternoon in the park

Sometimes I'm looking at a photo but I just don't know what to say about it. In a way, that's good, it means that the shot speaks for itself. This one seems to explain everything - yes, we were just relaxing in Ljubljana's Tivoli park one afternoon. This is Eva, who happened to be in the right place at the right time - that is, in front of the camera :)

This photo really stands out as being taken on film. The colours are a bit muted but still nice (I think they look classy), things feel warm, it's hard to say why exactly, but it just doesn't feel digital. The out-of-focus background also looks nice, if you like that sort of thing. The square crop keeps things simple and focuses attention on the subject, at the same time the photo follows the traditional rule of thirds.

People often feel that expensive cameras are the key to good photos, yet don't spend nearly enough time thinking about more basic things such as composition. The technical aspects of photography can be taught in less than a day, but making art is something completely different. Yes, you can break the various rules of composition, but you need a lot of experience to know when and how - I don't know if I'll ever get there. It's quite annoying seeing amateurs completely disregard the basics and call the results 'art'. For anyone who wants to improve their photography, I'd say skip photography exhibitions and go see paintings instead. I was blown away by the exhibition of Slovene Impressionist painters held in Ljubljana's National Gallery not long ago. I think Žiga and I spent a couple of hours there - something that would probably never happen with a photographic exhibition.

Out of the dark

Another jellyfish from Lisbon's aquarium, this one was almost impossible to focus on, since it was so dark. The auto-focus gave up altogether so I had to do it by hand.

I usually come up with the title for each blog post when I see the picture itself, specifically when I re-size it in photoshop and save it - I save the file with the title I use for the blog post later. The title for this one, 'Out of the dark' reminded me of a quote from a Batman comic I had ages ago. I couldn't remember the exact quote, so I asked Google. The funny thing is, there's not nearly enough Batman quotes on-line. This isn't exactly unusual, after all, the character has been around for 70 years. In the end, I actually went and found the comic:

"The darkness welcomes me like an old friend. Its silence is my only answer"

Where is the lady?

I know nothing about birds, but I've heard that peafowls spread their tails when they want to get their female. I hope that there was no misunderstanding, we were quite alone in that park :)
The tighter crop could also be used, that gives the peafowls tail some "explosive" look, because the beautiful blue "eyes" explode away from the bird to the edge of the picture. But the bird is so beautiful that I prefer the whole one, less artistic, but more bird :) The focus is sadly not just right, but this is the only picture I have of completely opened tail.

Above the valley

I think this photograph was taken in Osp or Vipava, I'm not sure, since they are very similar (and not too far apart). Both are well-known climbing areas, though they are usually too hot in the summer.