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By contrast
We encounter many contrasting places, objects, thoughts and people in our lives, some of them more prominent than others… In Giant Mountains, there are many nice old houses typical for the long-gone era of our ancestors. The houses look lovely and cosy, such as this one in Rokytnice nad Jizerou. In my opinion, there used to be different roofing material, this one looks too modern to me, but the house itself radiates the history. And it definitely shows a stark contrast to the contemporary houses in its surroundings. The new may not suit the old yet one day the new will become old as well and another level of contemporary…
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Learning to work with WordPress Block Editor
When WordPress team first introduced the new block editor, I panicked. I was quite happy with my WordPress blog and the way the original editor worked and switching to the block system seemed unnecessary and intimidating. Why the change? Fortunately for all of those unwilling, a plugin was offered featuring the older (classic) editor, so I had it activated and calmed down. After some time I thought I should give the new editor a try and created a post using it. Well, how to say that… The experience felt not quite awful but definitely unconvincing so I happily reactivated the classic editor… What was spoiling my happiness though was the…
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Lost beauty of old factories
You must have seen them. Old factory buildings that used to be full of machinery producing all sorts of goods but after the companies lost their success at the market, all that remains is emptiness and a state of gradual dilapidation. I came across one of those buildings during our holiday in Giant Mountains, in the town Rokytnice nad Jizerou. The building housed one of the textile factories of the company SEBA, a company that used to employ altogether more than four thousand people. The local textile industry did not survive all the changes happening in the ninetieth and many of the factories were abandoned. There were some plans to…
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Colouring folders in Lightroom
There are many ways how to organize your digital photos and the workflow of their editing… Long time ago I chose for organizing my photos that highly recommended system of creating folders for individual years and inside them folders for individual months and finally inside the months folders for particular days when the photos were taken. I had been faithful to this system for quite many years until some time ago when I decided to change that. On the one hand I had too many folders, some of them with just a few photos, on the other hand photos from the same place were scattered among several unrelating folders. As…
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Birds on the roof
When pictures tell their own stories, one should not interrupt them with unnecessary questions but should listen to their language rich in shapes, patterns and encounters. Shh… Can you hear this one?
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Rose inspiration
I have a small rose bush in my garden which burst into beautiful flowers this year. It made me feel inspired and willing to experiment with the photos where I captured it. You see, using textures in editing might have been fashionable a few years back, yet I believe that using a technique is not just a question of fashion, it is also a question of what you want to achieve and where you want to arrive. The texture I used and the photo I applied it to let me mold their expression to something that speaks to me. Although I am not generally a fan of bright colours and…
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Do you like lupins?
Lupins are in full bloom in our garden now and that is a joy to behold, I love them. But the truth is that if you didn’t restrict them, they would force out and displace other less expansive flowers. I’ve learnt that in gardening as well as in life one needs to remove even what is beautiful when it’s out of place and doesn’t add to achieving balance…
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Sempervivum fantasy
I used to think that life has to be crystal clear and sharp, with obvious edges and unambiguous shapes. Yet gradually I’ve learnt that life can also be fuzzy, with undistinctive curves and curious colours, and still be nice and enriching. One simply needs to grow to appreciate some aspects of the existence…
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Decisions, decisions
When you start reading a book, do you always finish it? Or do you sometimes put it away because you don’t like or understand its contents? I rarely stop reading a book as I always expect it to lead me through its plot to something revealing, satisfying, interesting, thought-provoking. I even read in English the whole unabridged book Les Misérables by Victor Hugo although I did not understand lots of its contents as the vocabulary was too uncommon, I was so stubborn to make it to the end. And when you start pursuing an activity and you are not as good in it as you would like to be, do…
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Free to have a vision
Sometimes we see or understand things that others do not recognize but we are afraid to share our vision not to be laughed at or misunderstood. And if we muster the courage to share and do not get any positive feedback or encouragement as our vision may not be interesting enough for those around us, we may feel to be let down or not appreciated. But that does not change a thing about the fact that the freedom to have a vision and follow it is still there. Follow your visions. They may not be always breath-taking but they will let you grow…
