I blame it on the blogger who stopped to shoot a barn and then got side-tracked with macro shots. I’m on to you, just a moment…
The same happened to me yesterday in Terme Saturnia. There were water droplets. Nobody ever warned me of water droplets in connection with the flower button.
Here is the unassuming original.
And here are my droplets.
I’m very pleased with how this one turned out.
And yes, it was you, Mrs. Gray. 🙂 Macro addiction is real! (As is Marco addiction, but this is another matter.)
For this week’s Monochrome Madness, I took a happy bird…
…and turned it into an ominous bird.
I hope those lines are aligned just how some 19th century photographer said that it was cool. Now please click the link below for many other photographs.
As cities go, Siena is not really one, but I’m used to little towns and to me it looked vast. And just divine, as my previous post shows in more detail.
But let us zoom in on one church.
Below you can see how an image is made: the first one comes naturally because the view is striking.
The second is vertical because the street points this way.
Then the subject is located but on the third photo other people are obstructing it.
The fourth – bingo. Here is the photo as taken. Upon choosing it for this week’s Monochrome Madness, I decided to crop it and lose the bird. Not to mention colours. Ah, well. One can’t have it all.
How did it come to me explaining photography? Good question.
It has been possibly the busiest four days in my life. I had nothing to do with it, but this one got caught in the spirit of Leanne Cole’s Monochrome Madness.
I mean, how much more black & white & mad can one get than by getting married? 😉 Spotted under the Ponte Sant’Angelo in Rome. Here is first the original untempered photograph and then a few others.
My this week’s contribution to Leanne’s Monochrome Madness challenge was shot just around the corner, on my daily walk to the station.
And here it is in colour as shot, since I don’t view things around me like a dog (or is it just a fable that they can’t see green?). Not that it’s anything wrong with that. But boy, are they missing out.
This is the first week of another year of Leanne Cole’s Monochrome Madness photo challenge, and my contribution doesn’t exist any more.
At least not on this location. This is a pair of sculptures “She-He” by sculptor Jakov Brdar that used to stand on the wall of Piran’s pier. This photo was taken at the start of last year. When I was this January again in Piran, this Slovenian coastal town, I was looking for them in vain.
I heard about the protests but I didn’t think they would win. Unless the temporary nature of this project was a given throughout.
This week Leanne Cole celebrated two years of her Monochrome Madness challenge. Congratulations!
The themes this week were close up and two. This is my contribution.
Even though my photo is not a close-up technically, the game of chess is almost as close up and one on one as two persons can get. I’ll always take things semantically rather than technically.
Below is the same uncropped photo in colour (I see now that the crop was maybe not the best idea) and some others from that hot summer day. This was an open-air chess tournament in Piran on Slovenian coast. Even though I can’t play chess myself, I know many who do. What can I say… I was very pleased to be just a photographer. And to have mom hold the dog while I take photos – priceless.
There is a story about the man in red, from another kind of tournament. I planned to tell it but I don’t hold grudges now, do I.
It was two years ago today that I posted my first Manja Mexi Movie blog post. I can’t believe it’s been two years already.
(I know this, even though WordPress has stopped informing me about the number of posts or anniversaries and things like that a while ago. I don’t know what happened. – ADD-IT: The notification came at 11pm. WordPress never forgets, thank you!)
To think that the main impulse for starting the blog was lack of feedback from my family and friends upon sending them heaps of emails with photos from my new life in the new country!
To keep us company in this post, here are some of my favourite already published photos:
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Obviously the world is indeed big enough to find a variety of people who are not too lazy to tell you when you make them smile, busy schedule notwithstanding. Thank you all so much for that! I know how precious this is: even I with all the time in the world have trouble following everybody I’d like to. There are just too many brilliant people around!
It’s not just laziness, some friends back home are saying they don’t understand my blog because it’s in English. Hmmm, as little as I write? Photos are in English as well, are they? Whining like some Italians! Aren’t Slovenians known to brag how good we are at English? Because, compatriots, no matter how much you whine, this blog is NOT turning Slovenian any time soon.
And lest we forget, at the beginning, for much of the first year really, there were just about 7 followers, all family and friends. Only after I started joining photo challenges, many more of you came over and some stayed. Among the challenges that have achieved this are (in each line three links lead to three posts for every challenge):
Soon I will reach the upgrade limit for this one and will start another WordPress blog. Nothing much will change (other than the theme), I quite like it as it is. I hope – I always hope – to do more writing, but just like the rest of the world I’m getting lazier in this regard, posting more photos and less words. They are easier on the eye, it seems, or is it brain. It’s not that words are lacking, I always have a bunch, they are lurking JUST behind the corner. Beware.
Here is a recap of my writings that I posted last June. I find it very telling that only father, Snow Somewhere Else and Badfish commented. Well, I do say it’s for the organised and the mad ones. 😀 (Love you!)
What is alarming is that I’ve only added very few writings to Own Words category since.
In short – nobody has a truly good excuse for not following me. But I cannot and don’t want to force anybody either. Everything I said on this day last year in my first anniversary post is still true: we have strawberries and if you don’t want them – your loss.
And as they say in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels: “It’s a deal, it’s a steal, in fact…
…I think I’ll keep it!” 😀
Truly, from the heart, thank you all for every minute spent in my virtual company.
Another week, another Monochrome Madness challenge. This one I caught by the tail.
Below is the same photo in colour. (As usual – not a very big fan of taking b&whites yet, I’m afraid, but I’ve seen a short Anselm Adams video and now I’m trying to get all those 11 zones in. Such a scholar. Me! Not him!) It is followed by a few images from the same cycling giro. Pictured again our Lake Burano. Well, it IS just around the corner…
I remembered the photo above taken last summer and sent it to Leanne Cole for this week’s Monochrome Madness. Below is first the photo as it was taken, in colour, followed by more photos of Piran’s boats and sea. Photography-wise, Slovenia will certainly not waste your time, merely steal it. (Seeing that the Croatian National Tourist Board proclaimed on social media recently that Croatia will waste your time.)
This week witnessed a Monochrome Madness landmark: for the first time my contribution below was actually shot in black and white, rather than made to appear this way. Can’t see much difference, frankly speaking.
Ever since I first heard of it, I wished to visit it: Cala Violina, a hidden beach in Maremma, named after a sound effect that makes sand sound like violins (if you believe it – strangely enough, the sound of the video shot by my sister has all kinds of instruments in it, produced by waves hitting the surf, as for the violins, it’s a stretch).
But even bigger surprise was approximately 2.5 km it took to reach the beach from the parking which in the summer is payable. Last summer when we passed by it, we saw a heap of cars and the price and promptly turned back again. Even though the road to the parking led strangely uphill, I had a feeling the beach was just over a little hill.
Now we walked and walked and the sea refused to meet us half way. We had to go all the way down to it. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t imagine the horde of Italian beach-goers walking this stretch in the scorching heat, especially up upon return. Italians and walking do not go hand in hand. A transportation of some kind must be provided, or nobody would pay that much surely after driving a few km on the dirt road, only to walk.
As it is, I cannot promise to return in the summer and report on it. It was perfect now, with no heat, no people, no wild boar and no rain.
This week’s Leanne Cole’s MM theme is “straight” and above is my contribution, taken in Portorož, Slovenia. I guess it is straight-forward enough.
Below is first the original uncropped photo, followed by some other images taken on the last day of last year in Lucija and Portorož on the Slovenian coast. It was a lovely dogless walk (no matter how much we love out bestia), and we encountered a chameleon, palms on sale, a bear-horse face-off and hair philosophy, among others. The walk ended in a sea food meal with a most peculiar tri-hair-colour blind shot. I only aspired to capture the flowers.
The Mexi Movie I. (closed) 