Little green frog

This little frog almost became domesticated in the space of a minute or so. He was crawling over our hands and beer cans and generally being very relaxed and cool.

Paris Metro Station

This is my picture about Paris. A lot of empty foreign people. The picture is not black&white, just see the bottle next to the white chair. Metaforically of course. 
Paris is, sadly, pretty bad about a lot of stuff. And you have to look for the romance a few 10 kilometers out of the center. But don't get me wrong, Paris is a fantastic city with a great wibe, but definitely not a romantic one. One of my best pictures.

A Very Strong Human

This s a first photo posted here on this blog that was taken by a mobile phone, HTC Desire. White balance has been set to cloudy and my girlfriend Tina was the one who gave me the idea for this photo on a nice walk around the small city Osor, which is located on island Cres. Her comment about the photo was, that it can be seen I had a little trouble with doing this :)

Alpine green

While the last one wasn't very colorful, this one makes up for it. Taken about a half hour after the previous shot, we had already risen out of the valley and had come closer to the alpine meadows. The last few wisps of clouds and fog were rising, and it turned out to be a beautiful day.

The path

 

I've finally gotten around to editing all of my photos from last year's trip to Triglav. When I come across photos I like, I sometimes play around with them on the computer - this one seemed more interesting when given a bit of an old-fashioned look. This was toward the beginning of the hike, and we quickly found ourselves out of the forests and in the high alpine trails. The path we chose is one of the rockier and more dangerous ones, but it was a great two days.

Lovely view

It was indeed. Taken not far below the Grossglockner in Austria.

Swedish girls

From Stockholm. Nice city, though a bit boring for my tastes. Needs more chaos. Pretty girls, though.

Land of wonder

Taken late one cloudy day, looking towards the Karavanke, if memory serves me correctly.

Imposing

The Palace of the Popes in Avignon, France. This was where several Popes and Anti-popes lived around five hundred years ago. Go ahead and read the Wikipedia article, it's really fascinating reading. This was taken just a few hundred meters from the spot I took this beautiful shot (though this second one was taken at least an hour after the photo above).

Maks and his animals

Maks, a wonderful kid, showing off his animals :) Taken in France this spring while on a week long climbing vacation.

Stockholm at midnight

This is as dark as it gets in Stockholm, Sweden, in the beginning of July. The photo was taken around midnight, perhaps half an hour past. This is towards the old town. The light is just crazy - it has much more color than our eyes can see. As it gets darker, our eyes tend to see less and less color, essentially sacrificing color rendition for (still poor) night vision. Cameras don't do this, which is why photos taken at night tend to be more colorful then we expect.

Guitar hero

During the spring, I photographed a few parties which were organized by a friend - Peter. These were the same parties which this shot of Vlado was taken. Anyhow, this guy was in a band which played a concert - and as far as I can remember, he was playing a guitar ;)

Fields of sunshine

First off, we're sorry for the very long delay in posting anything here. We've both been incredibly busy over the summer. Žiga has been diving and I've been climbing - first to Italy, to the Dolomites for a week, then to France for another week. I've spent most of August moving (and I also post quite a bit at my other blog), and am finally getting settled in. I have literally thousands of photos to go through, but I already have a few nice ones lined up.

This is from France, but from my trip in May. The photo was taken in Avignon, looking down from the Palais des Papes (the palace of the popes) towards the river Rhone. The city is just beautiful, as is the entire region. The shot above was taken towards the evening - and I'm still amazed at the beauty of the light.

People who worship beer

End approaching

You Jane, me very very hungry:) 

On my window taken with Raynox macro DCR-250 and Canon 55-250 zoom lens. Its hard to get a proper focus, because depth of field is so small, but its possible.

At anchor

Taken around sunset at a climbing spot overlooking the Italian port of Trieste. The same place as this picture of Miramar castle and this sunset.

Bled Vintgar

A beautiful day in the vintgar near our popular tourist destination Bled. Taken with the new Sony NEX-5 camera.

White Eternity

To those who have lost their loved ones... and to all the people that believe in eternity. Cuba.

Distance Saturation

Colours dissapear in the depth of the sea, but they also dissapear with distance. Slightly modified, but not in a way of processing differrent parts of the picture separately, I find this "distance saturation" looking photo of the wider Ljubljana center quite cool. If you take a closer look of this panorama view from Rašica, taken with Canon EOS 7D I was testing a few days ago, you can see that our boxing champion Dejan Zavec is arhitectural almost as much important fot our city as the Castle :) The lens I was using is super stretchy Canon 18-200, which is not realy sharp and you can clearly see the vigneting in the upper corners. The 18 megapixel photo was useless though, especially out of its center and blogger doesn't allow me to upload a bigger photo also :(

Rainbow Fountain

Last summer in spain at aroun 45 degrees...

Failure I fancy

Sometimes more luck than brain, I made this picture accidently with a compact Pentax H90 I was testing at that time. Dont really know what this is, but it was in the test pictures folder and I'm just writing the article about it. Art this is :)

Sun Lotion

Women use Sun Lotion, men use whatever they get.

Looking the other way

Sometimes we're more interested in the future than in what's happening in front of us. Even if what's in front of us is a Formula 3 race car. I took this shot quite a while ago in Barcelona, where I spent a weekend - the main race of the weekend was a DTM race, and the European Formula 3 series is a partnership series of the DTM. 

Simon Bolivar

A statue of Simon Bolivar (his entire name was Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar Palacios y Blanco) who was a very important leader in Southern America's fight for independence from Spain (he helped Bolivia, Colombia, Panama, Peru, Ecuador and his native Venezuela). He served as president for Venezuela, Peru, Colombia and Bolivia, even serving for three countries at once (Bolivia, Colombia and Peru). The photo was taken in Lisbon, Portugal.

The woods

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

~Robert Frost

Guitar blues

Vlado, performing in front of a nice crowd at Ljubljana's K4 club. The only thing I did with this shot is resize it - other than that, it's straight out of the camera. I realize we've slowed down with posting here, I spent a week in France (climbing, a photo or two will come soon), and Žiga has so much on his plate I don't know how he can handle it.

Party hard!

Another photo from my party series (here's the previous one). These are loads of fun - here, I just held the camera over my head and snapped this crazy moment. Plus, these party photos need no post-production at all. With most normal photos, I usually have to adjust the white balance a bit (since I don't feel like doing it in-camera). This basically means that I make the colors look normal (instead of too warm or too cold). But with party photos, the colors are crazy anyways from all of the colored lights, so it doesn't matter. 

Surrounded by the Sky

Taken in Rome. A lovely City:)

Miramar

The castle of Miramare near Trieste, Italy, taken from the Napoleonica climbing spot during sunset. The name means 'sea view' in Spanish, and the castle itself was build for the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian. The name itself, however, always brings memories of another Miramar - the US Marine Corps Air Station featured in the movie Top Gun. Yes, the place exists, and it really did host the Navy Fighters Weapon School - the famous Top Gun.

A party of colors

A friend of ours organizes a series of parties once a month in Ljubljana, and he recently asked me to photograph them. Photographing parties can be a lot of fun, though I need some time to get in the mood - both to remember the settings I prefer to use (these depend on what I'm trying to achieve) and to get into the groove and to feel the party itself. The best photos are usually taken after an hour or two, when people relax and let loose. When this happens, the photographer usually goes unnoticed, this leads to better photos. 

There are a few annoyances to photographing parties. One is the fact that you have to be careful with your gear - with so many people around, there's always a chance someone spills something onto your camera, lens and flash (or crashes into you). Another thing which can be annoying is people who ask to have their picture taken... then demand to see the results... and ask for you to take more pictures because they happen not to like the first one.

Moonlight Rainbow

Yes, it's noisy and yes it's quite a bad one, but the rainbow in the moonlight yesterday was magnificent. I never saw the clouds so thin and transparent! The noise gives it a little more "nebula" look :) And with some imagination it actually looks like a photo of some galaxy.

Porto

One of the most interesting cities in Portugal. Taken with my broken 50mm f1.8 Canon lens. You can clearly see the sharp lower part of the image and very soft upper part. I fixed it later:) Lens with a great optics, but very bad build quality and autofocus.

The night approaches

Taken minutes between this shot and this one - all three of these are some of my favorite photographs I've taken and show how important beautiful light is. I have another similar shot of this building, but I really like the diagonal that the clouds make - not to mention the small moon in the background.

I was going to post this earlier, but Žiga's last post is just so awesome, I wanted to keep it on top for a bit longer :)

Apocalypse

The World War 3 would look something like this.

Tide pool

The tide rises, the tide falls.

...and the total opposite

And the total opposite, filled with tourists and tourist employees that play the role of regular people in this kind of places. This is why salsa and other parts of well known cuban culture looks so made up to me, most of the regular residents rather listen to 50 cent and the Rolling Stones. Half of the people at tourist areas like this are salsa teachers or just your friends :)

Just a street of Havana

A typical street of Havana where you don't meet any, but I mean any turists. People here are much much better, not so kind, but not so made-up kind.

Framed triangle

This is a relatively new building in Ljubljana, behind the main railway station. I never really noticed it until one evening when the last rays of sunlight lit it up in this beautiful orange-yellow light.

Radio Siberia Office

This is the radio antenna located on high mediterranian hill Nanos, captured a few days ago. It was damaged during our liberation war in June 1991. I remember those childhood days clearly and walking up here with my father to take a look of the holes in this structure.
I also took a few better pictures up there, although it was extremly cold up there and the wind was strong, but I like this one because of one small detail, that makes the construction a few metters higher. This is the moment when the fog was dissapearing and I caught it only at the top of the antenna. This somehow connects it with the clouds above and makes it higher, sky high.
And yes, sorry for the anomaly on the right if you notice it, it's not because of the sharpness, but because of the lens.

Dancing in the rain

This is the Dancing House in Prague designed by Frank Gehry (you can also check out more about him at Artsy.net).Yes, the one who made the famous Gugenheim Museum in Bilbao! And the red cars in front are dancing with it in this rainy day.

i?

i?

i!

i.

Taken from a nice climbing spot near the Italian city of Trieste - about an hour's drive from Ljubljana. We were walking up towards the car when the sun started to go down and this scene unfolded for a couple of minutes - just enough time for me to pull out my camera.

Wow, forgot!

Sorry, no picture today, but for a reason - both Žiga and I have completely forgotten about this blog's one year anniversary! Time for some statistics, yay!

We started this blog more than a year ago, January 19th of 2009, to be exact. Since then, we've had a total of 222 posts (this is post #223 :)). In that time we've had 8,872 visits and 14,488 page views. 77,55% of visits have been new visitors, the rest are people returning to our blog. I should mention that most new visitors (and those who only visit once) come through Google, mostly Google's Image Search. All in all, we've had 6,901 unique visitors. It's startling to think that almost seven thousand people, mostly complete strangers, have seen our photos.

The blog itself has been an incredible experience. A blog (or other similar site) is a great stepping stone into the world of on-line... well, everything, basically. It's easy and quick to setup and you learn quite a bit along the way. Also, I think it's made us look at photography in a new way. I take less photographs, but they tend to be better than before. I often look at scenes and think to myself if they are blog-worthy, and if so, how exactly to take a photo of the scene in the best way possible. I think we both try a bit harder than before.

For the past couple of months, we've slowed down with our posting - from almost a post a day to about two per week. This is because when we started, we already had thousands of photographs each - and out of those, we've pretty much used up the best ones (at least I know I have). So now the posting is in a more natural time frame - neither of us has enough time to photograph every day, and even if we did, we couldn't produce blog-worthy shots so often.

Anyhow, enough of that, we'd like to say a big thank-you to everyone who follows along, and we hope you'll stick around :-)

Mr. Zweistein

This picture was taken on the streets of Prague. When I saw this guy I imediately got an association of the physicist Albert Einstein. :)

Superman's Metropolis

Photography, when you get down to it, is simply the capture of light. Sometimes the light can be so beautiful it knocks the breath from your lungs and leaves you speachless and dumbfounded. The interesting thing is that you often don't even realise the complete magnificence of the light - our eyes tend to adapt all too well and decrease the contrast between the light and dark, in effect making the scene less powerful. Also, as darkness falls, we see less and less color. This doesn't happen to cameras (be it on film or digital). So sometimes, the image from the camera can be even more powerful than you remember it.

This image above reminds me of the strong, beautiful colors present in many comic books - Superman being the most iconic. Whereas many newer comics tend to be darker (must I really mention the legend?), Superman has always had a bright, punchy and highly saturated (at times even cartoon-ish) color palette (as can be seen when comparing the first picture on his Wikipedia page with that of Batman's).

I first considered naming the post just 'Metropolis', but I decided to be specific. After all, it is the name of a very iconic film as well as a generic name for a large city.

"High" house

A little to the left Mr. Architect...I think. Maybe the problem of this house is the thing that's growing in the windows :) Amsterdam.

Cracks in the dark

The view from Šmarna Gora. This one is from the times when I used to walk up there alone in late hours. Scary some times, especialy in windy days :)

Last climb of the day

 

Blaž climbing in Verdon - this was taken right around sunset, which is why the colours are so warm and inviting. It's moments like these that make climbing so rewarding. I can't wait for some sunshine so we can hop down to the seaside and climb on rock again. Spending all winter climbing on artificial walls gets boring pretty quickly.

Oh, and the photo was taken on film with my old Konica.

Edit: you've probably noticed the large size of the photo... Blogger has increased the maximum size of the photos and I'm trying it out. I like it so far - comments are welcome!

Missing his mommy

Ain't that cute, but it's dirty. Me and Nina found this little doggy in Trindad (Cuba). He was so lonely, so young he didn't even see things clearly and lost his mom. We bought him some caramel milk, because that's the only milk we found in a spoilt-turists market nearby. You see, thats a 2dl cup, the puppy was really young. And so tender. Hope he found someone to take care of him, because otherwise... If he found us, he must be lucky and got some more caremel milk I think!

Standing by his office

This is also Gibraltar, almost at the southern point. A man who dedicated his life to God, looking in the infinity of the sundown above sea.

Sitting around the campsite

Gregor, sitting on the hood of his car this summer in the south of France (which I've already mentioned twice: click click). We spent a few days in this wonderful campsite which was not much more than a farm with a permit to host a few tents and caravans. The nearest tent to ours (since there was 11 of us, we had quite a few small tents) was around 50 meters away, if not more. We even had a huge clearing all to ourselves, where one could stare at the stars all night long. Because this area is far from any large cities, the stars are huge and very bright.

The middle of the day was usually a bit too hot for climbing so we spent it just hanging around the campsite and doing nothing in particular. Since Grega isn't exactly familiar with the concept of being still, he was literally all over the place - at one point he climbed up a tree and we tossed some rope up to him so he rappelled down. Oh, and the rope-walking was also pretty cool :)

Just to note, this picture was taken on film with a camera that's older than I am.

White Power Factory

Why are there so many white Toyota Hilux pickup trucks? Because the desert is hot in summer! Actually taken from the top of the Rock of Gibraltar.