• black&white
    Miscellaneous

    Along the path of blogging

    UPDATE: I wrote this post on my Blogger blog before coming to this WordPress website a year later so its contents are not relevant to what I have now. Yet I decided to keep the post here as it shows the history of my blogging and where it took me. I started my first blog about fifteen years ago on the Yahoo platform for the sole purpose of learning English and keeping in touch with my online teacher. Slowly but continuously the blog was getting a new face and finally I was sharing photos I took and thoughts I was pondering over. Then Yahoo came with the announcement that it would…

  • still-life
    Focused on photography

    Inspiring tablecloth

    The other day I was shopping and spotted a tablecloth in sale which caught my eye. A few moments later I was leaving the shop happy about buying a new prop for my photography, expecting to use it sooner or later. Surprisingly, it took just a few days… When I brought home the hydrangea I mentioned in one of my previous posts, it felt like a nice combination with the tablecloth. The lace is part of the tablecloth and it’s beautifully contrasting to the linen material the tablecloth is made of. I added a few matching buttons and experimented for a while with perspective, arrangement and depth of field and…

  • Places in Czech Republic

    SOOS abstraction

    Do you wonder what I’m getting at with the title of this post? I hope so… Read on and you will see. Photos presented in this post were taken at and inspired by SOOS, a national nature reserve that is situated just a few kilometres from Františkovy Lázně, the spa I wrote about in my last post. SOOS is a peat bog and fenland area that was declared the reserve in 1964. You can get to know part of it by following a 1,2 kilometres long nature trail that takes you through the reserve and lets you see some of its marvels. The trail goes across a dry lake bed…

  • still-life
    Focused on photography

    Vessel, flower and string

    Time for another assignment from the Be still 52 course I’ve been participating in. The assignment was to grab a bottle or some sort of vessel, a flower and some string, hang the vessel and take a be-still photo. I didn’t have any suitable bottle available so I took a jar and I think it served its purpose well enough. It felt just like another start and I would like to try it again, differently. So many possibilities… It’s a great exercise when it comes to practising the “right” depth of field, which is very subjective here but enormously important.

  • Places in Czech Republic

    Františkovy Lázně

    About 15 years ago we spent our holiday in the spa Františkovy Lázně which is situated in Western Bohemia near the border with Germany. We were accommodated in a cabin in a camp called “Amerika”, which is situated at the outskirts of the town, and made trips in the town’s surroundings both in Bohemia and Germany. We liked that holiday and this year we decided to return to that camp for a few days and revisit some of the places, starting with the spa itself.  It’s a small town but it’s quite impressive. After our arrival and checking in, we spent the afternoon in the town, walking in its streets…

  • still-life
    Focused on photography

    Out of place

    Let me tell you right at the beginning that this post was inspired by a comment my friend Linda made on the previous post. She mentioned that the flowers in the photo seemed out of place in that setting and that they provided such a bright spot of colour in an otherwise dreary setting. When I was reading that comment, the words “out of place” stood out from the text in my mind and I had to think about them. I saw them in capitals. I answered Linda that the flowers do seem out of place but at the same time, they belong there. They are placed at the side…

  • still-life
    Focused on photography

    Tagetes

    Sometimes your eye catches a glimpse of something that subconsciously attracted your attention but at the moment you’re unable to say what exactly it was. It happened to me with these tagetes. There was something in that place that one day told me to stop and feel it and frankly, I just felt confused. It was a very strong perception. I came with a camera a day or two later, tried to capture the essence of that perception and got this result. It may not be easy to understand the photo and you may not like it but I want to share it anyway as for me, there is more…

  • still-life
    Focused on photography

    Moody buttons

    I feel so much inspiration these days and will to turn that inspiration into something tangible, no matter how imperfect that might be… You know it. It’s uplifting to strive for perfection but it’s also tiring because one can never reach that destination. So when I was sorting the props I have for my still-life photography and their colours inspired me to arrange a few photos with a chrysanthemum I got a few days ago, though it was quite late (again) and first I wanted to postpone the idea to better time and better light, I changed my mind and started to play. These two final images are the ones,…

  • still-life
    Focused on photography

    Barn inspired

    I guess everybody sometimes feels a sudden urge or need to do something particular, no matter what, and the last time I experienced that feeling was just yesterday when I got home from work. I felt a desperate need to go and create a still life image, and though I had just a vague idea about its contents, I knew I would bitterly regret if I dismissed that feeling. So I decided to answer the call and though it was already late afternoon, I went to explore our barn to find something interesting enough to shoot. I found a beautiful welding apron and ironwork on the barn’s door and added…

  • Places in Czech Republic

    Technical and musical Vítkovice Ironworks

    My husband comes from Ostrava so from time to time we go there to visit his mom and the rest of his family and often we also choose a particular place to visit. Last autumn he suggested we could have a look at the reactivated area of former ironworks and as I work in a company producing steel and steel/cast iron products, it seemed interesting enough to me to agree to that plan. I didn’t regret at all as the area is enormously interesting, fascinating. We even took a guided tour that provided additional information and enabled us access to some parts that are not freely accessible. At the time…