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Expressed in Black and White
Do you like b&w photography? Do you create b&w photographs yourself? I have to admit that fulfilling the theme of b&w photography which I had assigned to July in my 12-month photo project was a real challenge to me. Black & white images can be really powerful and can both express and arouse profound feelings and thoughts but my experience in creating them has been very limited. Actually, I had never taken a photo with the aim of creating a b&w image before, I just tried and transformed a few of my photos when the b&w transformation seemed much more expressive than the coloured version. When a friend of mine asked…
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Park of Blatná castle
At the end of my post about the castle in Blatná I promised to take you to the castle’s park so here we go. The park is open to the public all year round, free of charge. At the beginning of 19th century, the front part of the park was remodelled from a deer-park into an English style park, the back part remained preserved in its original form. Today the park is not as large as it used to be but it seems to have retained its charm. There used to stand several buildings in the park but today there is only one, an Empire style house, where Hildprant family…
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52-week photoproject – Week 27
Encounter Canon EOS 500D, 55-250 mm, 1/400 at f/8, 0 EV, 187 mm, ISO 400
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Farming festivities
Have you known that the United Nations Organisation declared 2014 to be an International Year of Family Farming? A few weeks ago, while walking in a near town, we were passing by a notice board where various local actions were announced. One of the posters was inviting everybody to come to Roupov to farming festivities where activities for (not only) children would be prepared. We found out on the Internet that Roupov is actually a village situated just a few kilometres from where we live and a visit to a local farm seemed very appealing to me. I took a quick photo of the poster with my mobile not to…
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Added value
In the first January week I started my 52-week photography project which should help me to use my camera on a regular basis and become more practised and experienced photographer. Thanks to this project I visited the town Švihov a week ago where my husband wanted to show me a nice cottage on a river bank. We were strolling along the river for a while, went to the near cemetery and eventually arrived at the local castle. The castle is moated and before we left, I asked my husband to go to the water with me so that I could try and capture ducks swimming there. It was getting dark…
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Trip to Lhota – Part 1
Winter has been enormously persistent here this year, here as well as in many other parts of the world as I can see from my fellow blogger friends. I find it increasingly harder to manage my duties at home, let alone all the challenges I face, I’ve been longingly waiting for warmer and sunnier days. I know, whining doesn’t improve anything… it even doesn’t bring any relief. It’s necessary to be looking for a source of energy. Sometimes it comes from unexpected directions and I found one when our former colleague visited us at work a few weeks ago. I was dressed in blue jeans and a dark blue sweater…
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Making up a story
Two years ago I made a decision to take an exam in English and in its “Writing” part there were several options one could choose from. One of them was writing a story which must have begun or ended with a specified sentence and was limited by certain number of words. While preparing for the exam I tried to make up a few of those stories but as much as I liked it, it was quite challenging to me. One thing is to come up with a story and another thing is to confine it to defined space. Have you ever tried that? You might end up finding out it…
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Meeting llamas
My father-in-law has a brother who owns a company producing agricultural machinery. His factory is situated at the edge of a city and to promote his products he built a small restaurant facing the factory right across the road. He presents the products on the restaurant’s premises and to attract customer’s attention he started to breed a pack of llamas there. He visited Peru some time ago so perhaps that’s where his inspiration came from. My mother-in-law feeds them and every time we come to visit her, we don’t want to miss out on helping her. The llamas always notice immediately that we’re coming with buckets full of fruit and…
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ZOO seen a bit differently
Two years ago I visited the zoo in Dvůr Králové. This zoo has always been known as the only one with safari in the Czech Republic as part of it is available only by busses with open decks which are going among animals that are moving freely around. Some changes have been made lately regarding the safari to attract more visitors. There are cottages prepared for photographs who can rent them and I think that you can also enter the area in your own car now. Nevertheless, the safari is not that big and inhabited, it seems to me that a lot needs to be done yet. The zoo itself…
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At the eleventh hour
Some time ago I read in English “The Woman in White” by Wilkie Collins and really liked the story and its characters. I met there – for the first time – an English phrase “at the eleventh hour” and understood from the context that it meant “at the last moment”. I looked at my dictionary and browsed the Internet and found the following explanation: “The eleventh hour is the last possible moment at which something can be done, or which problems or solutions might arise. The phrase, “at the eleventh” hour became popular in the 19th century, but was in use much earlier. It alludes specifically to the book of Matthew…
