Category: Cyprus

I live in Cyprus for many years now. It is a beautiful little island in Mediterranean Sea. It features warm weather for most of the year, sea, very kind and hospital people, plenty of jobs in IT industry, good food and plenty of alcohol, stable currency, and more. It’s really a nice place to live if you can handle small towns and villages. It’s also a great place to raise the kids.

Not much happens here. It is a quiet and simple place. Yet, when something happens or when I write about it, I post it to Cyprus category.

Sprinkler

Sprinkler

While Maxim was sleeping I was entertaining myself with the sprinkler photography. I made 14 shots using all sorts of exposures. I was trying to catch the water drops, but failed. The sprinkler was in the shadow, but the leaves around it were brightly lit with the sun. I tried shooting with and without polarizer, with automatic and manual exposure, with exposure compensation, etc. Neither of 14 frames captured the sprinkler the way I wanted. I don’t know if it is at all possible, but if it is, I surely don’t know how. I have selected the single image and processed it a bit in Gimp to make it look better. Still, not what I wanted.

A couple of pigeons and a toilet dilemma are also in the album.

Album location: /photos/2005/2005-06-17_POTD

Rock festival in Nicosia

Once again Andrey Shvachko informs all rock and rock-n-roll fans that there is an event coming soon.

Date: June 17, 2005 (Friday)
Time: 20:00 – 00:00
Place: Amphetheatre of Intercollege campus, Nicosia

There will be several bands performing. Andrey will participate in two of them.

No information about tickets and no map so far. But finding Intercollege is very easy. Here are the instructions: when entering Nicosia from Limassol-Nicosia motorway, go left to the roundabout, than go left again to enter the main road which goes around Nicosia. Drive straight. You’ll pass Orphanides supermarket on the left, Metro supermarket on the left, Jumbo supermarket on the right. Keep going straight until you reach the T-junction. There will be a huge church on your right. Turn right and drive straight until you see Intercollege buildings on your right (about 5 kilometers later).

There is a discussion at the RussianCyprus Forum, as usual. Stay tuned for more information.

One place I shouldn’t go

I have a special relationship with all bookstores. Since I feel an unstopable urge to buy half of the books every time I go in to one, I try to avoid them as much as possible. Actually, I’ve been pretty successful at that. I decided to buy all my books from Amazon, but since I am too greedy to pay for shipping and since I don’t have a credit card of my own, I don’t buy that often. All my book shopping ends with my wishlist.

Today though I made a strategic mistake. I had to visit my bank and instead of driving, I walked. And I totally forgot (or didn’t want to remember) that there is an excellent Kyriakou bookshop on the way. I passed it once on the way to the bank and pushed myself not to enter. It took all my powers, but I passed by. Since I didn’t have any powers left, I couldn’t take another road home. And on the way back, I went in. Ouch.

I spent less than 3 minutes inside, but I managed to buy 3 books, paying over 50 CYP (Now you can understand why I try to avoid these places). Here’s what I got:

  • “Digital Photography Special Effects” by Michael Freeman. It’s been some time since I wanted to buy some book that would explain few tricks of digital image manipulation. When I saw the book by Michael Freeman I just had to buy it. I’ve read his other book “Complete Guide to Photography“, which is still the best book on the subject that I’ve read. The Special Effects book is in hardcover, with lots of illustrations, and costs about 19 CYP. “That’s value for money” I thought and picked it up.
  • “Mediterranean Island Dreams” by Jeremy Horner. This is another book that I picked from the Photography section. It has almost 250 color pictures of Mediterranean islands and I want it for some inspiration and ideas. Plus 21 CYP is not that much for that many pictures. Picked that up too.
  • “Rough guide to Cyprus” by Mark Dubin. This book is very well tested, since my good friend Vladimir has a copy. We used the book to investigate Cyprus and to open way more places here than we could imagine – restaurants and beaches specifically. I wanted to order this book from Amazon anyway, but when I saw it in the local bookshop for a mere 12 CYP I decided to buy it.

Additionally, I’ve discovered that this bookshop has an excellent Photography section with lots and lots of books. I’ll have to revisit it next month for sure. How can I stop this fever now?