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Glassworks still life
The other day we visited glassworks in Harrachov where we participated in a guided tour. Imagine a large hall with old furnaces in the middle and several glassblowers showing how glasses are made manually and then tilt your head back and look at the humble “exhibition” of glasses, sitting high under the ceiling and creating a serene still life… Amid all that activity, this quiet spot felt like a touch of eternity.
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Like a bad dream
A few years ago I read an article whose author was thinking about how relatively peacefully we had been living in Europe since WWII and how that could not ever be a permanent condition. He warned that a war would come sooner or later because that is what history teaches us. His thoughts made sense but who would want to dwell on them… Not in vain our brains try to protect us by means of not thinking about all those things that could go wrong so that we would not live in constant fear. Now Russia attacked Ukraine and suddenly the war is real and not so far away from…
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Still life in an old hammer mill
While looking for photos for my project Technical last year, I came across quite a few interesting places I might not have visited otherwise, such as this nook in an old hammer mill in Dobřív. I love the contrast of the two ways of processing this still life photo, that dreamy imaginary on the left and the reminiscence of the old times on the right. What a different world many of us live in nowadays…
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About changes and beginnings
Sometimes, when I make a change or begin something new, I wish I could go back in time and apply the change to the past as well so that all the previous occurrences were tinted with it. Yeah, I know, it’s nonsense. How could that ever be a change or something new, if it was there all the time? But sometimes I find it really difficult to resist and make a bold line between what was and what is going to be…. even in the smallest unimportant things. For example, I’d like to go back through all of my posts here to improve their photos based on my current skills…
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Hydroelectric power station
Last year I started a photo project I call “Technical” and one of the places I visited when looking for interesting technical views was an old hydroelectric power station “Čeňkova Pila” in Šumava mountains. It is not used anymore but you can visit it and have a look at its Francis turbine to admire the technical work. As a visitor without special rights you usually have quite limited options when taking photos. I wish I could have had more time for extracting interesting details and I wish I could have used a tripod because there was little light and I had to shoot with ISO values climbing to the stars……
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Sometimes I need more colour
There is less light during winter here and not so many sunny days. Without snowy whiteness, such a winter’s day can be absolutely dreary. Why not bring some colourful atmosphere into it by focusing on available sources? That was my reasoning when I was choosing for processing the photo with those colourful chairs below, a photo that I took on one of our trips and that was waiting in my files for the right time to shine. But listen, when we are talking about colours, I have to tell you that my favourite one is green these days, the green in the Wordle game. It is the one below and…
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Fulfil, my word for 2022
Another New Year has arrived and made me think about the previous year. Is there anything I’d like to change this year? Is there anything I could have done better? There is, of course, and I could start writing quite a long list with many items on it, but the one that speaks to me most has made it to be my word for this year, please give a big round of applause to the word FULFIL! You can plan, you can promise (to you or someone else) to make changes, you can muster whatever visions you’re able to come up with, but without completing the intended, you’ll never fulfil…
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My new bullet journal for 2022
Bullet journaling is a matter of love and hate for me. I love its style, flexibility and possibilities it offers… There are so many and you can adjust them all to your needs! …and I hate my inability to fulfil my expectations when it comes to the appearance of the journal. My drawings are not good enough, my writing does not look elegant enough, my imagination is soooo limited. Being a perfectionist does not help. And yet this method of keeping a planner makes me productive, creative and efficient and even when I ran away from it, screaming and swearing that it was too much to put up with, I…
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Inspiring food for thought #1
The other day I was listening to an audio English lesson on business English and I felt intrigued by its topic, which was dealing with difficult people. I had to think a lot about what was said because it felt genuinely true and applicable to our lives generally, not just to those professional ones. In a nutshell, the thing is that there are quite a few people in our jobs, in our neighbourhood and generally everywhere we find ourselves, which we find hard or almost impossible to put up with. We usually blame them and although in many cases we may be right, sometimes – and probably more often than…
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Assignment for using blending modes
I’ve been participating in a course on Photoshop recently and one of its sections focused on using blending modes. What I like about the course is that the last lesson of each section includes an assignment requiring usage of the techniques that were explained and practised in that particular section. Sometimes also photos and images are provided to make completion of the task easier. The theme assigned for using blending modes and relating techniques was defined as MYSTERY, and the following set of photos was provided as an inspiration or a part of the final image with the freedom to choose whatever other image needed. My first impression when seeing…
