Photography

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?

Happy Birthday, Katia!

Olga, Maxim, and I joined a bunch of other people to celebrate the 25th birthday of Katia Georgiades. We went up to the mountains for the barbeque and the usual picnic. This was one of the most successful parties ever. Everyone were in a proper mood. There were a lot of drink and food. There was lots of music.

It’s a pity that we had leave earlier to bring Maxim back home for his feeding, change, and the rest of the daily routine. Never-the-less we did have some excellent time.

Happy birthday Katia! :)

Album location: /photos/2005/2005-05-29_Katia_Birthday

Lizards

Today I finally understood how biologists start off with their researches. They don’t do it in universities as other people. Instead they go for walks with their children. It’s been just a few days that I go in the municipal park with Maxim, but I’ve learned so much about lizzards that I’m starting to think it can be enough for a small project.

And today was particularly rich with lizard observations. I saw a lot of them. One caught an insect and ate it. Another one found a bunch of ants who were eating a dead bug. He scared the ants away and ate the bug himself. There was a sick lizard too. Or maybe he was dying or something. He stood in the middle of the road, breathing heavily, with an open mouth, and behaving very aggressively towards anything that approached him. He even tried to bite the wheels off Maxim’s pram. There was another lizard, who was obviously very young and curious. He lost his tail in one of his quests for information. There was a group of lizards sunbathing together. There was this other lizard hiding on the bench. And, sad as it might be, there was a dead lizard too.

I watched all these lizzard for about an hour or so. They got used to me and weren’t getting scared that easy. I made a few pictures too, of course. Fascinating little creatures!

Album location: /photos/2005/2005-05-28_POTD

Flowers on the road

With every day summer feels closer. It gets hotter and trees drop their blooming. Sometimes, these flowers work with environment to create really amazing pictures. Today I saw one of them. There were a bunch of treese with purple, magenta, and blue flowers along the road. When the colors hit the ground, they combined nicely with the yellow “Don’t park, don’t stop” lines of the road and the edge of the pedestrian area.

Album location: /photos/2005/2005-05-27_POTD

Canon baby

I spent some time trying to catch one of Maxim’s priceless expressions. Somehow he can fire them out three a second, until I get the camera. Than it all changes and I have to do all sorts of tricks to make him smile or “think”, or even look in the right direction. As a result of such photoshoot, I usually get close to a hundred of images which are just 10 pixels different from each other. After a few tough choices regarding which images to keep, I am left without about half of the original images. Than I start to postprocess them and after going the half of them, I get bored and start experimenting with filters, crops, contrasts, and saturations. When I finish, I go through all of the images again and see if I can attach a comment to any one of them. And only than I publish them… And only than I look at them and see if I really like anything. Most of the times, I like just one or two pictures. The question is: if I like only one or two pictures out of a hundred, why do I bother with all the rest? I don’t know…

Album location: /photos/2005/2005-05-23_POTD