I love photography. For me, it’s like painting, but better. And more accurate. And unlike painting, I can actually participate. I am not a big success or great master by any means. But I enjoy taking pictures. I also enjoy looking at other people work and sometimes sharing it. When I do, this is the category that I use.
Norman Koren has written a few interesting photography tutorials. His totorials differ from introductory articles that you get on most of the sites. They are much bigger, deeper, and are filled with links and pictures. For example, “Understanding image sharpness: Digital cameras vs. film” (part 1, part 2) or “The Canon EOS 10D Digital SLR:
Impressions and techniques” (part 1, part 2, part 3).
Today we went to Paramli Beach. There are few beaches at Paramali actually. The one we tried today had the most sand.
If you go to the place where kiters are, look to the left (while faced to the sea) and you will see a hill. Behind that hill is an excellent beach. You will know you are in the right place, when your road will be blocked by a horizontal bar. There will plenty of signs about turtle nestings, swimming areas and the like.
I’ve made few pictures, which you can find here.
Olga and I went to the Reptile House today. You can find it near Limassol’s Old Port, next door to the left from the Ladas Fish Tavern.
It has been a while since we wanted to get there, but today we found out that we were not missing a lot. It is a small, dark, hot room with about twenty glass cases. One of these cases is bigger then the others and is filled with midium-sized turtles. There is another bigger one turtle too. A couple of lizzards in two other cases. Everything else is devoted to snakes. All the reptiles make you feel pity. They look dead. Really. No action at all. A couple of snakes lay in the plates with drinking water. Lizards are not any better. There was a lot of excitement from our side when in about 10 minutes one of the snakes started to move a bit to get in the water. That was about it.
There is not a lot of information about these species. There are few printed out paper sheets with descriptions in Greek and English, but they are boring to read due to the small font and darkness. Visually though, there was nothing surprising. I had a feeling that if I would go deeper into the fields somewhere in the mountains that I can find any of these snakes or lizzards. Probably this is wrong to feel. :)
You are welcome to enjoy the Reptile House and make your own opinion for a mere 1.50 CYP. Few pictures from the place are here.
Congratulations go to Vladimir who graduated today with his Bachelor of Computer Science degree from Intercollege. Pictures from his graduation are available here.
Here are few things that I want to write down regarding photographing an event like this. I should read this the day before next time. :)
First of all, it is good to have a scenario of the event. Something that I didn’t have this time. With scenario it is much easier to plan locations to shoot from. Also you will be aware of things about to happen. For example, when graduates were entering the hall, all spectators were requested to rise. This created a kind of coridor for graduates to follow, and kind of walls for photographers around. Timing for throwing hats in the air after confirmation of degrees is another example.
Secondly, one should get full media clearence. I naively assumed that as a guest of the public ceremony I will be allowed to shoot from anywhere I liked. WRONG! I was asked to leave about every place that I tried. Press people were moving around freely though.
Third, but equally important – be ready for lots of people and poor lighting conditions. People are an obstacle. They move around and get in the frame more then you want them too. Lighting is yet another problem. For better visual experience of the audience, the stage is better lighted than the audience, so it might get tricky if you want to photograph someone in the crowd. This time around I had only an on-camera flash with me, which is weak, so I had to use ISO 800 and ISO 1600, which is noisy. Still I had to throw out a few shots. Red eye reduction should be on too (something I forgot to check).
The good tip that was suggested many times – try sticking to gether with press people. They are pros, they know what they are doing and they have full clearence. They tend to shoot from the best places, and if you lucky, you will not get separated from them by the security/organizers.
Yesterday at about 6:00am, just about the time I was getting ready to drive home from my night shift, I discovered that there was a very thick fog outside. It was practically impossible to see anything. So I stayed in the office for few minutes and tried to photograph it. Naive. With the same success I could have photographed a while sheet of paper and then tell everyone that it was fog. :)
After a few minutes the fog started to move away, so I made few pictures, which you can see here. All of them were made from my office window on the 5th floor.