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Mayrau Mining Museum in black and white
I wanted to have my project “Technical” completed till the end of 2021 so I am a bit late with this post. Nevertheless, the photos presented here were taken in 2021, during our visit of the Mayrau Mining Museum in Vinařice, only they were sitting in my files waiting for my being ready to tackle them. It is an interesting place to visit, a piece of history but it feels lonely and somewhat depressive… … and the photos captured it mercilessly. Eventually I decided to go with the somewhat artistic black & white depiction as it seems to add certain tranquillity to the original shabby look… Frankly, I am so…
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Magical
Some places feel magical without any obvious reason. While you might be bored and wondering why I am staring at a spot or an object, I might feel a pull towards it not being able to take my eyes away. Another time it might be vice versa. Me wondering and you staring. I experience such a situation repeatedly on photo walks with my husband as we are often attracted by quite different sceneries and objects… The triptychs below are created from two photos that I took at the end of last year – one of an old cemetery and the other one of a garden in the same village. Both…
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Mirrored
I took the photo above based on several reasons: And funnily enough, look at the resulting image, where it all ended. Colours are gone, patterns and textures are partly sidelined, and the overall tone is quite dark. And yet this is a much more expressive scenery than the one captured in the original photo. The same and yet not the same, mirrored in my thoughts, feelings and expectations. Sometimes it’s not good to stop just after you started. Sometimes you need to make a few more steps to arrive where you wanted to be in the first place. Sometimes we perceive more than we realize and it takes time to…
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Construction imaginary
It is relaxing to try and see images where there are no obvious ones and it is enriching to try and transform their raw shapes into something more. You have the tools, yet you need to add your own vision to tell an interesting story. A story that may not need words, only deep and quiet perception. I find the process healing… “The technology you use impresses no one. The experience you create with it is everything.” – Sean Gerety
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Playful water lilies
Yesterday I was asked what definition I would assign to a “photograph” and after some pondering, I came up with this: A photograph is a rendering of reality that may be documentary but also emotional, abstract or even somewhat imaginary, yet still preserving the core of that reality. Well, but what is that core, you may ask, it sounds sort of vague. And I would say that it is the hard-to-grasp distinction between a photo and an image… and we would be at the beginning again. You know, some people say that photography excludes digital art. But digital art has many faces, right, and some of it may preserve the aspect of…
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Structured
Sometimes I find my surroundings way too showy, chatty, loud and unstructured, almost to the point of hurt. It’s a relief then to create images like this. Images withstraight linesclear directionminimalist contentcolours limited to shades of black and whitejust some grain and wispy patches to let the scenery breeze Sometimes I struggle to add text to my posts but fortunately a picture is worth a thousand words…
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Glassworks cutting room
As I mentioned in the previous post, last summer we visited old glassworks in Harrachov. It was interesting to see how the glasses are produced manually by men blowing into hot glass pieces and forming thus shapes of the glasses but the part of the glassworks that got my full attention was the room where the clear glasses are decorated manually by cutting their surface by a grinder, creating so various ornaments. I was absolutely taken aback by the quiet atmosphere of that room and I wished I had opportunity to spend at least an hour or two by absorbing the light, the colours and the objects and their mutual…
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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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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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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……
