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Butter and eggs
I’m way behind with my Be-still-52 assignments but just before we went on holiday, I managed to fulfil an assignment asking us to create an image based on the prompt of “butter and eggs” and I took a series of photos. Before throwing myself into processing our holiday photos I wanted to complete that unfinished work and here I am with two final images I liked best. They are a bit different in several regards but as you can see, I used the same fried egg for creating them. Only one egg actually, it dawned on me much later that there were “eggs” in the prompt so one must do…
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Weekend of open gardens – Part 3 – Meditation garden
The third garden which we visited in Pilsen within the Weekend of open gardens was the “Memorial to victims of evil” also known as a “Meditation garden” or the “Hruška’s garden”. There was a man, Mr. Hruška, who spent more than 10 years as a political prisoner in a communist prison. When he came home in 1960, he started to remodel his fruit garden and changed it into an ornamental park. Though he had a job, he was attending lectures on garden architecture in a far city. He chopped down fruit trees and planted ornamental trees and bushes, created water and grassy areas. He wanted to commemorate suffering of those…
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Four props to be composed
Another one from Kim Klassen’s assignments in the Be still 52 project was to take the following four things and make a photo with them: a loaf of bread * linen * twine * scissors Any necessary additional props could have been used. I decided to keep it simple and added just a chopping board and a piece of paper to wind the twine onto in some photos. Also, I decided to match the colour of the scissors I had chosen with the colour of the dish towel to limit the number of colours in the image and simplify the scene. As many times before with this kind of photos,…
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Weekend of open gardens – Part 2 – Arboretum Sofronka
Within the Weekend of open gardens which I mentioned in my previous post we also visited Arboretum Sofronka and I would like to introduce it to you now. All the following photos were taken in the arboretum. Arboretum Sofronka which is situated in Pilsen (Plzeň) was established in 1956 as a workplace of Research institute of forest management and hunting with the intention of doing research into pine tree breeding. In 2009 the workplace was cancelled and the arboretum was taken over by the city Pilsen. The place itself doesn’t look extraordinary, it feels like just a forest. But when you start to focus on what’s around you, you’ll find…
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Weekend of open gardens – Part 1 – Luft’s Garden
Some time ago I noticed a poster in a street inviting those passing by to visit a garden belonging to a Dominican monastery within an event called “Weekend of open gardens”. As I had never heard of such an event, that invitation caught my attention and I thought about finding more pieces of information on the Internet when I get home. But you know what, soon I had other things on my mind and if it wasn’t for my colleague who reminded me of that event when the weekend was close, I would have missed that. The “Weekend of open gardens” is inspired by the English “Open Garden & Squares…
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Wreath
Last Sunday Catholic church celebrated a “Celebration of flesh and blood of the Lord” which is a celebration related to Eucharist. On this occasion we always get a little wreath made of fresh green leaves in the local church and though I actually need to ask what it symbolises, I love its structure and freshness. It inspired me this year to try and take a few photos with it, these are the ones I liked best. As the wreath actually gets dry quite quickly, I’m pleased I’ll have something to look at and remember. The freshness, the feelings, the spiritual mood. There is no need to explain what “Bible” means…
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Organic
Kim Klassen asked us in one of her Be still 52 lessons what we think of when we hear the word “organic” and I thought of opening an English dictionary to find out the exact interpretation as the Czech and English meaning might not have been the same… When I read the following definition… organic – (of food, farming methods, etc.) produced or practised without using artificial chemicalsorganic cheese/vegetables/wine, etc. an organic farmer/gardener organic farming/horticulture …I knew right away I’d love to shoot cheese. I’ve chosen Gouda with herbs which we buy in a specialised shop from time to time. It’s a bit more expensive but truly delicious. You can…
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Laundry time
I’ve already mentioned the task we got in the Be still 52 course, to try and capture quiet non-stylised real-life moments. We even got a few prompts to help us focus on a particular topic, one of them being “Laundry Time”. Well, there are many possibilities to capture that and I went for shooting our washed towels, dish towels and tablecloths hanging on the washing lines in our garden. Nothing was specifically arranged for the photo and I count this as a still life photo though as you can see, the pieces were moving in a breeze… The first photo is just basically adjusted, the other two images are further…
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Milk and cookies
How much fun do you think you would have shooting milk and cookies? When I read that assignment in the Be still 52 course I’m participating in and saw the images Kim created, I felt eager to give it a try. So many possibilities… I decided to arrange my props outside, as the morning light was so nice, and also I decided to add lilacs into the background as they were in full bloom all around and were complementing nicely the cookies I bought for this occasion. I tried different depth of field, different perspectives, cookies whole and partly eaten… and eventually also a different format of the final images.…
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Peony and other beauties
Quite a few years ago I planted a little tree peony bush (Paeonia suffruticosa) in our garden. I bought it in a garden centre because I liked the picture of its pink flowers presented on a label and based on described growing conditions, I decided the peony could grow happily here. It did and though they say the plant doesn’t tolerate replanting easily, it even survived when we needed to move it into a different part of the garden. It doesn’t grow way too quickly but every spring it is covered with impressive buds and then flowers which I’ll never grow tired of being looking at. In autumn those beautiful…
