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By the pond in Kladruby
My husband drives a lot and some time ago he sent me as a surprise a quick photo of just a water reflection of a building he had just been passing by. I surprised him as well as I recognized which building it was. How could I not? I love the old monastery in Kladruby in all of its shapes and colours. A few weeks later we went for a trip there and I could see the whole scenery, including the old dilapidated house by the pond under the monastery wall. What an interesting view! The monastery is not actively used any more but you can visit guided tours, which…
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Frustrating lilacs
Frankly, my photo project for this year hasn’t been progressing much, I haven’t been feeling inspired at all lately. Yet I admit, I know that good results are much more often achieved based on persistency and regular showing-up than on the famed inspiring sparks, and more often than not there is an opportunity to do something about it. My last photo post featured some lilacs from our garden and though they are long gone, more of their photos inhabit my computer. I chose two more this time and after endlessly struggling through their processing, here they are… You know that frustrating feeling when you see what result you want to…
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Wooden Titans
Not far from Charles bridge in Prague, you can find Museum Kampa, where the sculptress Emilie Benes Brzezinski has exhibited her wooden sculptures called Titans. We came across them while walking nearby and I loved immediately the wooden structure with all its texture, natural colors, intended cuts and iron clamps. It is mostly difficult to say what a piece of art represents but sometimes you can feel the pull towards it and you can hear the whispering telling you (un)believable and never told stories. Genuine art speaks without words and inspires… and that was what I was perceiving when meeting the Titans at the bank of the Vltava river… Some…
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Lilacs
We had an exceptionally warm April this year and lilac bushes burst into flower almost three weeks earlier than usually. Felt sort of strange… But as lilacs are great flowers for any kind of photography, and still life is no exception, I used some of the flowers for playing with still life compositions. Here is one of them, in several editing results. It seemed to me I could get an interesting result when flipping the photo horizontally and adding it to some other version, so I created one more edit… …flipped two of them, and here is what came out of the experiment! What have I done? Now I cannot…
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Magnolia magic
Magnolia trees occur in many sizes, shapes and even colours, and I always love to see one. They are both impressive and delicate and decorate their surroundings beautifully. In their presence, I am sometimes feeling out of breath and could stare at them for quite a long time… The tree in my photos below grows in Prague, in a place above the river Vltava, where you can come and sit or walk in the park, and the vivid colour adds unmistakable magic to the place. Have you known that although Magnolias’ origin reaches far back to history, the trees were named Magnolia after a French botanist Pierre Magnol in 1703?…
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Spring in the woods
Small and tendergrowing above ancient moss and withered autumnal leavesthriving in decomposing tree stumpsand filling the woods with spring beauty I never get tired of admiring them
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Rose, ribbon and heart
I had some time this morning for following my still-life photo project but the mind was not there at all. I took several objects out of cabinets and saw no usage in them so I put them back, and felt absolutely no inspiration for creating a composition. You know that oppressive silence inhabiting your mind instead of burst of ideas, don’t you? Frankly, that’s where I would have left before. But isn’t it the reason why we so often don’t get anywhere – because we give up too soon? We expect wonders from the beginning and when they don’t arrive fairly quickly, we don’t persist in the effort? Yesterday I…
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Birdie and candle
As I promised myself, I started this year’s still-life photo project in the previous days and after the first two weeks I can tell you I find it quite technically challenging (as I expected so no surprise here). Controlling light is definitely not easy but together with visualisation it is the vital part of still-life photography… It is nice to have some helpful equipment but you must know how to use it, so first of all I need/ed So many options and for the moment such unsure results. But I do make the effort and I am really glad about it and already feel intrigued by all the possibilities. The…
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My photo project for 2024
It is here… The New Year… 2024! And in this year I intend to start a new photo project of mine focused on still life, by which I mean manually created compositions photographed either indoor or outdoor. I paid attention to still-life photography back in 2015 and 2016, you can read about that experience here. I liked the style and wanted to continue to improve my skills as it was a genre I seemed to have a sense of. True, in the following months and years I took a few photos here and there after creating some simple still-life compositions but I missed guidance and lacked space, technical skills and…
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Balance, my word for 2024
A few days ago it occurred to me it was time to start looking for my word for the year 2024. You know, I always just start listening to my mind what word will speak to me and this time I was not waiting for long. I heard the idea of BALANCE addressing me… Nevertheless, I have to admit that the word did not click with me right away and I thought I would give it a few more days to see this was really meant to be. Yet the word stuck in my mind and refused to let go so eventually I accepted it is the one I need…
