• Places in Czech Republic

    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…

  • Places in Czech Republic

    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?…

  • Places in Czech Republic

    Botanical garden in Prague

    Before winter definitely puts down roots here, I would like to share a few more photos from the botanical garden in Prague. We visited it many years ago and for quite a long time now I wanted to return there. This July we managed to do that and spent a beautiful afternoon amidst its flowers, trees, art pieces and wonderful views. It looked even more interesting than I remembered it… So here is a small selection of what I captured. Not everything looked so good in a photo as it looked in reality so e.g. my photos from the Japanese garden did not make it into this selection as they…

  • Focused on photography

    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…

  • Miscellaneous

    Motivational

    The other day I was watching a video where a guy was explaining how he created a photo, what his intentions were and how he got there both in arranging the scenery and processing the photo and I thought, “well, so much effort invested, and I actually do not feel any excitement about the result…” But he was talking with passion, explaining his art, and I loved that attitude. He was creating something that made his juices flow and that was important enough. Let me take a leaf from his book and present two images I created from a photo taken in a botanical garden in Prague. My husband was…

  • Praha
    Places in Czech Republic

    A few hours in Prague

    About a week ago my husband and I spent several hours in Prague. We had tickets for a concert of “Rodrigo y Gabriela” there and we decided to visit a few places before the concert would start in the evening. The weather wasn’t nice, it was a dreary and rainy day, but eventually it was not as awful as it was forecast and we enjoyed the trip. I’ll show you a few photos that I took but first I’d like to tell you more about those Rodrigo and Gabriela in case you’ve never heard of them. They deserve it. “Rodrigo y Gabriela” are an acoustic guitar duo coming from Mexico…

  • Praha
    Reflections

    Charm of mnemonics

    There are so many pieces of information we need to know, there are so many pieces of information we need to remember. None of us is able to remember everything and sometimes we may get into trouble when forgetting something important. But there are techniques coming to our aid and probably all of you met and used the art of mnemonics which makes it easier for our brain to remember and recall the important pieces of information. There are many mnemonic devices and you can find plenty of them on the Internet but I would like to mention just a few practical uses which have stuck in my (Czech) mind.…

  • Poetry

    Drumming my fingers

    Drumming my fingersNervous in expectationOf coming eventsOf nearing acts Feeling them sharplySensing them fullyBy touching tensionBy denying facts Saying it loudlyAccepting tension’s presenceThrough heart’s decisionThrough reason’s fights Reaching peacefulnessBreathing harmonyWhen there is silenceSoaring to heights