so this is christmas?

Two days more, and it is christmas again. Have you spent all your bucks and credit cards buying gifts for your friends and family? Or did you created something by yourself? :)

Have you seen this cool picture? Describes the christmas mania well these days :P
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/12795842/

No extra news from last post. Gray and desperate, as always in November.
Fresh snow makes us smile :) Alaska forever :)

OK. Have a couple of beer now - and don't be late at supermarket, otherwise you'll be left without gingerbread dough :P

:)

Today I had a great chance to meet Graham Mitchell today. A selection of his works are represented in Pegasus café in Tallinn, do not hesitate to step in to take look. Mr Mitchell is a high end photographer, you can contact him for your next photography session :)

Here's another site I'd like you to consider to visit - Rūta Saulytė-Laurinavičienė's photography site. Beautiful work, simple but classy web design. I specially like this image :)

cordoba

one of the plazas of Cordoba (Spain) at night. Very peaceful and nice town (city?) with all its narrow old town streets, gardens and of course, the Mezquita Cathedral.

woophy-dot-com

Have you ever had photos of your country found being unused in your hard disk? Woophy.com has a solution for you now! :P - cover the area where you live or where you have been, with the photos you have made from there :)

L' Oceanographic

L'Oceanographic is one of the science centers of Valencia, Spain. It is a part of beautiful science complex called Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències, which is a grand superior complex with stunning architecture.

If you ever visit Valencia, reserve few days to visit it. I had no time to visit all the parts of it, but took a day off to go to a journey to Ocean Center, which was a stunning enchanting experience to be in.

In a picture is one of many underwater tunnels, where you can see what's going on in ocean and sea life. The Ocean center is divided into five different parts, including cinema, dolphinarium, tons of aquariums, shops and underwater tunnels, enriched with little artificial environments (like rocks with waterfalls) and other extremely nice stuff.

Farm

This is where I used to spent my childhood summer holidays :)

Dreaming of living there once again one fine day, however it needs tons of bucks to be built / restored. So I don't know today when I'll be able to be there. Anyway, lovely place enough to mow grass there in summer :-)

Crow's Eye

Little son of a crow. Perhaps 3 weeks old?.. Don't know. Was not able to fly so I pictured his eye. Lovely and blue. My grandma used to say crow is a flying rat (because of the crap that crow eats. Not false, I've seen crows eating dog's shit :P)

strawberry

Hmm how tame colors. Guess IE does not support Adobe RGB?.. Anyway, I'm still not sure is it photoblog or what, just wanted to write you about a fairy tale called "US president to visit Estonia". Go get it :P

Stack Bones

Do you know what these are used for? I name it "stack (rick) bones" as my dictionary does not give me better words. These are used to stack hay so the hay can dry in the summer before getting it to loft :P Still widely used in Estonia, which is lovely in oil-age :)

...

South middle Spain has got some very nice desert (desert-like?) landscapes. If you drive from Valencia to Cordoba, you can meet several that kind of compositions :-)

:)

This is a long exposure shot from Portimao, Portugal. I had luck to visit these beautiful countries again (Spain and Portugal), if you ever have a chance, do not hesitate to go there as well. Probably more shots to come :) .. Anyway the weather is nice and snowy, so it feels a bit like christmas.

that noise

Well as I have no new cool pics to upload I use my endless Spain pics from 2005 this time to illustrate the boring article.



When did you last go shopping?

Estonians are crazy for shopping these days. I'm suspecting it is because of the gray/dark weather, so people get stressed and go in shiny and colorful shopping centres to feel themselves better.

I don't like shopping because after one minute in a mall I feel depressed and tired. Once a year is good enough (new jeans, t-shirt and shoes :P).

I think I also know why I'm not hearing so well these days - my ears might have been damaged in shopping centres! The level on sound/music is SO loud that my head becomes aching.. it is horrible. Why should I visit a shop with a loud level of music? I'd recommend you using nice Peltors in shopping centres.

The situation can be even worse in terms of sound levels. I had luck to visit Alicante's (South of Spain) one of the most gorgeous shopping centres (in terms of style it was pretty much like Kristiine Keskus in Tallinn, but a lot larger). So some young-oriented shops were not shops at all, but discotheques where you can buy clothes. So the process is like you scream to the seller: "HOW MUCH??!!" and she shouts: "WHAT?!" ... and so on.

Why can't we shop in quiet (OK with nice quiet music). Because then the naighbour shop volumes up their music, and people go there because they think there's something on sale, or just more life :P So if you want to sell, rent a nightclub and your sales will grow :P

3 weeks

have passed, what's new?

First, Estonia has a new president, mr Toomas Hendrik Ilves. I think he is OK, I also think former president of Estonia in 1992-2001 mr Lennart Meri (1926-2006) was the best president ever. Ilves is regarded to be west-minded president, so will we get visa-free relationship with USA? I'd like to go to get some pictures from Grand Canyon in this life :P

According to one of the most popular weekly report in TV called "Pealtnägija" ("witness"), estonian police is so corrupted that when your car is stolen, thiefs and police work together. Thiefs gets your number from police to call you to sell you back your car about a half price of what it's worth. So when you come to visit estonia, be sure you leave your car home. Of course we don't know the truth :P

I have not uploaded a picture within more than a month. Here's one, pure Estonian fall:



I'm lucky to have lovely Sigma EX 15-30mm lens these days, which is hell sharp at F8, and which is a good unit for some serious landscape shots (and city shots also, as the wide angle @ 22,5mm has some essence for urban photography).

We have had successful days in sports also, mr Heiki Nabi has won world champion title in Greco-Roman Wrestling :) Nice to see young talents to rise.

We have had lovely days also from other fields of sports, our world-champion 2005 mr Andrus Värnik has published three smart statements which are:

- if you win gold medal, you rule. If you only win silver in championships, you are no-one
- when people greet me with no title "world champion" I get offended.
- I'm not too arrogant after winning the world champion title in Helsinki in 2005

People got pretty angly with him as with the "no-one" he directly meant mr Gerd Kanter, #1 discus thrower in Estonia (#2 within many seasons lately, as mr Virgilijus Alekna rules so much :P). So we have a bad boy in our sport world, too.

Also what do you think will Michael Schumacher makes it to snap gold from Fernando Alonso in the final F1 event? :) I hope Alonso wins :P

---------------------------------------

here's another picture, sunset in Nõva Beach, august 2006

Gobotoru

When I entered: "define: Gobotoru" in the allmighty google that most probably sits comfortably in everyones computer today, I got zero result.

However Estonian photographers may know that alias as one of the most skilful photo editor having his work represented in many online sites, also having his works being awarded a price in terms of digital photo etiting/manipulation. This man is mr Anton Novozhilov. I'm 200% impressed how easily he can make his simple but brilliant ideas work together with stunning skills with after-editing the photos. Cheers, Gobotoru, and now everyone, did you click the link?

(haha, do you know the sentence "MoVe ThAt BuS?" - It seems I'm demanding to click the links I recommend, too heavily, completing each article with the bloody words Did-You-Click-The-Link?) :P

"lomofying" your photos

there are many ways to "lomofy" ( = to make your photo look like it was made with legendary cheap and not-so-high quality russian camera named "lomo") your digital photo, one of them is described here :P - happy lomofying! :P

ha

I'm busy these days so I don't know when I'll be able to write new articles again here in this blog :P

artist acknowledgement - Billy Bussey

When the talent of Billy Bussey was discovered a few years ago, his 3D demo and also three dimensional web page is still top of the line art today. Though the site is more than three years old now, it is hard to find a condign site today, in terms of the build quality and innovation of the site, also how simple it is to use and navigate. The link.

Rotlicht Score

Whed did you last listen to something different? Estonian scene archive is a funky site to surf in, start with this track as an initial one for scene style. The music will tell :)

Recommended photographer

Very classy images at Lev Dolgachov's live blog. If you are intending to work with models (photographing), or you already do, you have no choice but to click the link in one way or another :)

:)

Estonian nature can be beautiful, too :-) (Nõva, Läänemaa, Estonia)