moving and staying still

just two more pictures from Somerset (again, no particular order obeserved)

when we first came to Dulverton, there was a lot of old cars around, coming over the Barle bridge. Some of them stopped there, drivers presumably going for a nice cuppa. I've asked one of them what was going on. He said that these are "trials" - won't pretend I knew what it is up till few minutes ago - but now I sort of do. Looks like we saw something called "Exmoor Fringe" - you can click through if interested. The format of those events explains why the cars were so dirty, anyways. There were apparently over a hundred cars participating, and we saw a few since our road coincided with theirs for a while



What was unexpected for me about this shot is that I did a following with the lens without realizing it. It's probably not visible at this resolution, but everybody in the car is in perfect focus - including the kid on the backseat making a victory sign. Everything else - including, strangely, the car itself - is motion-blurred. Another surprise was the make of the car - it was an old Ford apparently. I would have never guessed.



there's no particular reason for pairing moving car picture with this one. but let me

old-fashioned tea

we are back from Cumbria. Stayed in a cottage close to lake district. Weather weren't that great, but we did have two ok days, so not too bad

Cottage was full of old stuff that just asked to be photographed. Some of it I ended up not photographing due to lack of light and this and that, but this kettle and old tea things asked the loudest

figs

I am not great fan of them, I do eat them but I can just as happily eat something else. The colors are beautiful though, especially on black

black mirror images at shutterstock

black and, er, sort of white

It seems that I am slowly but surely going off monochrome images. I used to convert to monochrome a lot, which was not altogether unconnected to the fact that my very first digital camera produced an awful lot of digital noise and incorrectly exposed images (well, the last bit was my fault too). Monochrome conversion was a handy way of hiding those defects.

Sure, there are situations where pictures are asking to be converted, but it happens less and less somehow. Even in where the color is very difficult to handle, it feels a shame to destroy it altogether.

apple juice and skylight

yesterday we came back home (to a lot of rain) from extremely hot Croatia. We stayed in Zadar area, and for two nights in two different apartments in Zadar itself. The pictured place, in the converted loft of one of the old houses, had two good points - very central position and two roof windows which gave beautiful spotlights in the morning.

When Timur went to have his apple juice on scratched-glass-topped table, it looked like he's having is out of a torch.

On the last night we've left our Rough guide to croatia in the (different) flat, figuring next time we go we'll need a new book. So if you stay in Zadar and find 2007 edition laying around somewhere, it's probably ours

fly-in sunflowers

I rarely put my lensbaby on camera, which is a shame, but explainable by the fact that I tend to shoot with image stocks in mind and they are somewhat suspicious of unusual effects. but this sunflowers asked for it, I think.

Timur's attitude to posing is normal for majority of kids and many adults I know - that is, once you point your camera at them, they make a face (they won't describe it as making a face, but that's what it is). So to make him to change his expression to something more natural, I had to tell him something funny, which was "nobody expects the spanish inquisition!", and produced desired effect

cannibal pacman

it's not really my idea - I was minding my own business, photographing lemons on our brand-new blue plastic cutting board, when Kirill took my models off me and made them do his bidding.

picture came out nice and cheerful though

pear-shaped

well, they have little choice in this matter