Surf's up

 Ocean Beach, San Francisco, California. 

The Rock

 Alcatraz Island, which houses a former military fort and prison, lies in the middle of San Francisco Bay. The photo was taken on the same boat ride as this photo of the Golden Gate Bridge.

At anchor

 Another late-summer sunset, taken during our last vacation, this one was during the first days of September. 

The harbour-bay was clear as glass,

So smoothly it was strewn!

And on the bay the moonlight lay,

And the shadow of the Moon. 

-Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Last rays on the cliff

This was taken a month or so ago at the climbing spot at the village of Sisljan, near Trieste, Italy. The climbing spot (or crag) isn't very large but it is right next to the sea, perfect for climbing in the late autumn, winter or early spring. 

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 :)

Tide pool

The tide rises, the tide falls.

Sea anemone

I was going to title this post simply 'anemone', but according to Wikipedia, that is actually the name of a genius of flowers. Sea anemones get their name from these flowers.

As for the photo, I love those deep blue and purple hues. Because of the low light (taken in the Lisbon aquarium), this was harder to take than it seems at first glance.

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.

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 :)

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.

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).

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.

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 :)

Anti social

These are my friends Nina and Gregor taking a nap on the wall at the end of the pier in Umag. We had a great time at the end of September there, the weather was a little chilly, but those last days of summer are priceless. Taken on Kodak color 200 film, this picture is originally in colors, but I wanted the text on the wall to be a little more noticeable. I see the picture with feelings as well, but I think they look great, also for someone that can't hear the wind that was blowing there at the time. Nina's knees breaking the horizon just bring the picture an interesting defect as I see it. The scan is a little poor, especially as seen on the sky, but that's what we get from the photo studio, almost impossible to do anything with it.