City portrait #19 – Rade Stupar

Rade Stupar – an actor. Oldest active actor in Prijedor city theater (although – retired officially). He played over thirty different characters in his career in several hundreds of shows. Very calm and pleasant person as well as expressive actor.
I imagine this portrait as a symbol to theater and that is why to faces on both sides of a photo. Tragedy and comedy. I put two lights setup on both sides of a subject and without any light modifier to gain a dramatic face expression. Put my camera to synchronize flashes on first curtain and through 30 seconds exposure we did two “side” faces that I lit up with small led torch (6 seconds each). Photo is taken in pitch dark so I needed some orientation points for subject where to stand. I used even smaller led torches on the flour.

I’m still here!!!

It’s been awhile since my last post. There are several reasons. Cold and snowy winter prevented me to do some shooting that I planed earlier and also, I’m working on several new series that I’m planing to do in next few months.

Things with “City portrait” series are slowed down a bit but I hope it will be different and changed in next few days.

Almost all the preparations are done and I will start with new series on Monday. I can not tell you what is it about yet because it is something completely new and very challenging for me. Also, concerning these new stuff, I’ll wait with posting it until it is finished, but I’ll continue with posts on other things.

Funky, odd New Year’s Eve

At first, I started this post with some philosophical statements about Balkan, Bosnia and people who lives here, but I realized that all of my statements are cliche and stereotypes that I’m trying to avoid.
The point is that I’m no good with words, and I believe I’m better through pictures.
My wife and I, decided to stay at home for the New Year’s Eve, have a nice dinner and maybe to go out to see some fireworks. I must admit, that last time I stayed home for New Year was some 15 years ago. So, for the first time in some period of time, I’m looking at New Year’s welcoming euphoria from certain distance and more like a bystander.
So, instead of only good fun and party, I experienced truly bad weather (thunders and lightning, ice storm and heavy rain), electricity power failures and lot of noise from fire crackers. Still, we had a nice time, eating, talking…
A friend came just a half an hour before midnight so we went out all together. So, this is what I saw:

city square two minutes before midnight

Ok, now, the technical part.
All images were made with Panasonic Lumix GF1 camera that I bought few weeks ago. I fell in love with it. It is compact, light, well built camera that in combination with 20mm 1.7 lens is producing images that are comparable with DSLR cameras with bigger sensor (ok, not with all cameras and not on ISO values at 1600 and higher).
In short, camera that can go with you literally everywhere but not consuming a space or effort to carry it.
I’m preparing a short (full of images) review of it, so if you are interested what is my point of view and my opinion on that camera, stay on or subscribe to my posts. For now, I will just say that it is great piece of equipment with very few things that could be slightly better. Great camera!!!

Frozen

Snow conquered Balkan peninsula and today was first decent day for going outside. Sunny but cold. While I’m writing this post, outside temperature is -25,2 C.
This Fall, I covered fish extraction from fish pond “Saničani” in Prijedor. They liked it and did a calendar with my images and hired me once more for next year “all seasons” calendar (for 2011), so I started immediately.

2009 is at the end, and I believe it is a time when we recapitulate our ups and downs, our success, our bad or good decisions.
I found mine to be successful more than I was thinking while it lasts. I made some images that I’m truly satisfied with. Made more jobs then in 2008. Self-published a book, had an exhibition, bought some new equipment, and despite economy crisis I must say that this year was successful for me. Not so much financially but emotional and with self satisfaction with tendency to be better (husband, friend, photographer, man).
Feel free to share your view of 2009, in general or in your life.

I wish you all happy holidays and successful next year!!!

P.S. A friend told me yesterday that he would like to erase this year from his life. Too bad!!!
Make every year, a year that counts no matter in which segment but make it memorable. Life is too short to have a year to spare.

All the best to all of you out there!!!

I believe I can fly!!!

This Sunday, I had an opportunity to fly a bit with local aero-club pilots. (Many thanks to Vanja and Nešo)
Some 14 years ago I was on a training to become air glider pilot but after my theoretical exams, I didn’t passed the medicals. I have some problem with my eyes which is not treatable. I can not see a difference between green and red color in spectrum. So, after 14 years of disappointment, I’m airborne. I flew on a Piper and Utva plane.

Flight control

A beautiful experience!!! In all that excitement, I forgot to put a CF card in to my camera and all my reserved cards I left in my backpack. I realized that when we were 300 meters high. Stupid!!!
So, my mobile phone was my only witness I recommend this to everyone, but not to be stupid as I was.

Few more…

Here are few more images from Prijedor city theater rehearsal of Danilo Kiš’s A Tomb for BD.
Premiere is scheduled for 14th of November (Saturday) so if you are around, come and see it. At premier night in theater lobby, there will be an exhibition of my photos that I made during preparation of this piece.

Autumn links

I’m trying to make this “linking post” thing regular, at least once in a season

Idea is to put here some stuff that truly caught my attention.

Few days ago, I was surfing a bit, just to rest from work and, while I was filtering (mentally) my RSS reader, one headline over THE CLICK blog looked like interesting stuff, so I clicked. On second thought…, maybe it was on some other feed but never mind, THE CLICK is great. Headline was something like… someone… on … VISURA, or new something on VISURA. So I went there. Nice looking magazine with lots of good images, features, artists, etc. Worth seeing. At VISURA magazine I clicked on artist ANDY SPYRA to take a look at his Kashmir story. Those images I saw, left me speechless. For some time, I haven’t seen such strong and emotional reportage that instantly drove me in to. The rest of his portfolio is great too, but don’t miss to visit his BLOG that is full with images as it is his second portfolio. Very worth seeing… several times. There is a blog called ENGLISH RUSSIA – a daily updated entertainment blog about things concerning Russia and ex Russian Federation. Sometimes, it’s full of snapshots from some (forever interesting) Russian village from end of the globe and sometimes there are truly quality documentary images. For example, this story is called Star wars clone and this one is Star wars for real.
“The Best camera is one that is with You”. I believe I heard it long time ago, or maybe I read it somewhere…never mind. Lately,Chase Jarvis is using that sentence to promote his book of images taken with his iPhone ant to promote his iPhone application. Ok, he is Chase Jarvis and he is commercializing a quote that I believe isn’t his but that’s not the point. Point is that the quote is clean truth. I found myself, for thousands of times not being able to take a nice photo because my camera is not on my back. It is to heavy, or I just finished shooting and left it in my car, or my backpack is just too bulky to carry it around… even there is no excuse that is my reality. So, I decided to get a small camera with decent picture quality that I can carry around in my pocket or small shoulder bag. Not to do some assignment job with it, but to have it all the time with me (I’m not a maniac or camera addict, I’m just a photographer ). This one caught my attention. And at the same end, I like to spice my posts with some images. Those are my phone images I took sometime through this year: (all post production thing is done in phone editor)

A Tomb for BD – by Danilo Kiš

Prijedor city theater, new show – A Tomb for Boris Davidovich, by Danilo Kiš, directed by Gradimir Gojer – work in progress.

Fisherman

Here are few from todays shooting. Great place that fish pond Saničani.

Fish pond story – teaser

Fish pond Saničani, near Prijedor. They are extracting all the fish from all lakes and transferring them in to winter ponds or on market. I will cover it for several days. These photos I took today. I was amazed when I heard that they extract up to 22 tons of fish from one net – same net that I shot them with today.
More to come.