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.
La corrida – Bosnian way
Traditional Bosnian bull fight. Tradition that is more then 200 years old and mostly characteristics for western and north western part of Bosnia. Most famous place is mountain Grmeč. I went today at Oštra Luka, Popovića Brdo that is taking place every year, first Sunday in august. I wanted to shoot it last year, but it was on my marriage day so… 
It is whole day event with a lot of tents with live folk music, fresh cooked meals, cold drinks… Bull fighting lasts only for an hour or a bit longer but there are traditional games and events that fulfill the day. Throwing rocks from shoulder and pulling the rope.
Click on the image above or click HERE to enter full gallery or go to www.igormotl.com
5am book by Borut Peterlin
Borut Peterlin – Slovenian photographer has a new book called 5am which is possible to purchase over Blurb.com. I know Borut for some time and we were discussing about his 5am project for few times and I saw just a small amount of pictures that he took on his long term personal project. It was just hard for me to visualize it as a concept but right now, after I saw his book (not real book but over Blurb and his web site here – and I will buy this book for sure) I’m amazed of how powerful it really is.
He captured that strange time of night/day with mixture of humor, empathy and with a great sense for dramatization. Well done Borut!!!
Click on image to view 5am gallery on Borut’s web site.
CLICK HERE to buy his book over Blurb
Samarice – a Horse story
Samarice -horses who are carrying a cargo saddle, mostly used for carrying woods.
Yesterday, I followed them through their working day. Family Ritan from small village beneath Kozara mountain. There are four brothers and 30 horses. They work every day, starting at 6:30 am until 4:00 pm. Only very hard rain or extreme cold day could stop them to go in to forest. Their job is to hoist all the woods that cutters took down few days before. Most of these woods are in rough terrain so no conventional transportation method is possible. Horses are carrying woods from forest to the nearest road that is accessible by some truck or other heavy vehicle. Heavy job for both human and horse. Fascinating scene was to see a caravan that rub through snow and mud carrying big pile of heavy and wet pieces of woods. Horses are going through a forest on their own. Humans are there to load and unload their cargo, but from loading to unloading site their are without any help by the humans. Sometimes they are going in pair, sometimes alone and everything you can hear through forest is horse neighing.
Please click on this image to see full story or just click HERE
Many thanks to Mr. Simo Brdar whose documentary film “Samarice” was a inspiration to me and who helped me to contact family Ritan.
Samarice preview
I did a great story today about a family who works in a forest with 30 horses carrying wood that is unreachable for conventional transportation. Great story, great people, magnificent animals.
I would like to share this story here on my blog, but there are too many photos and I would like to make simple and clean slide show.
I love Flickr embeddable slide show but it can’t be integrated here because WordPress doesn’t support Java or Flash.
So, I would be grateful if someone out there could suggest me something.
Soon as I find out how to present it, I will tell the story and I will show some pictures.
More to come.
National treasure
This is the last church in series. In Omarska, some 20km from Prijedor, RS, BiH. Today I finished my tour around Prijedor region. I met some interesting people, and I was disappointed how little, people who lives here knows about these churches.
Idea was to collect all churches in one place and maybe to tell some story about it. I’m not satisfied with the informations I collect but I hope I succeed to inform someone about treasures that are in reach of our feet (at least for people from this region).
Church in Marićka can be seen here, here is church in Jelićka, here church in Rakelići, yesterday I published a story about church in Busnovi and it can be seen here.
Secrets under ice
Village Busnovi (near Prijedor, RS, BiH). Well preserved old church that is built in 1870. Beautiful position at the end of a village on a hill with view on a valley. Story about this church is no different then others in this series.
While I was trying to find some good spot to take picture and to make better composition because of heavy fog and some frost, a guy came and say hello to me. He introduce himself to me as Milorad Maksimović – descendant of original church builder. He told me some basic info about church that I already know and then he asked me to follow him in to graveyard next to the church.
I was amazed when I found out how big and how old that graveyard was. He showed me some old graves that nobody knows how old are they. I also saw a line of graves where 11 priests were buried – and all of them were inheritors to each other.
I wanted to see if anything is written on tombstones and we started to clean all the ice and snow.
On most of them, we couldn’t see anything because of many layers of ice and because of bad condition of the stone. But… we cleaned one… and here is what I saw
I’ve never seen this symbol before in this region. Only thing that I could link this symbol with is Flower of Life and Seed of Life (an ancient symbol that could be found in many religions and represents perfection, symbol of Creator, Seven Days of Creation…). Also, nobody gave me any explanation of this and Milorad (guy that showed me all that) said that graveyard is neglected by local community and there is no enthusiasm for uncovering the real story about those graves. I promised him that I will come in spring when snow melts down and he will show me the rest of that old tombstones.
I’m still under the influence of that strange place. Is there a truly remarkable story or is it just a simple old graveyard with no significance? Maybe some detective work will help.?!
Mystery
Third of five. Old wooden church in village Rakelići near Prijedor (cca 20 km south-east), Republic of Srpska, BiH. I don’t have much info about it. Tried to find local priest but without success.
This church is very intriguing. That’s why I called this post Mystery. There is no any info about it on the internet, people who lives there (at least those I talked to) don’t know much about it. There are many strange things. I was first person who walked around church in some time seeing that snow was untouched. Windows are broken. There is no cross on the top of the tower. And new church which is only few meters away has been visited often. There is a number 1859 next to the main entrance door engraved in wood, so I assume that is the year of built.
Some people asked me about my HDR workflow, so I decided to write it here.
First of all, I take my images on tripod and with delayed shutter of 2 sec. Usually, I’m taking not less then five images with different shutter speed (one full stop each). I generate HDR with Photomatix Pro (it is possible to do with both raw or jpg images). Slight tone mapping correction and after that I open my generated HDR image in Photoshop. I’m using NIK Software Photoshop plug in (which is great) and in it, Silver Efex Pro for BW conversion. Increasing contrast is only thing I do after the conversion. Then, if it’s necessary, I work on my image in Viveza (on of NIK applications) which is great with a unique U-point technology. A bit additional curves adjustment and that is it.
Storyteller
Another old wooden church in village Jelićka near Prijedor (cca 30km sout-east) in Republic of Srpska, BiH. Church is between 200 and 300 years old and it is very accessible on the regional road to Banja Luka over Bronzani Majdan.
Church is currently under reconstruction (internal) and it is under the state protection as a national monument.
Characteristic of these churches are high roof and small entrance door. Why?
Legend says that Turkish soldiers liked to go in to churches on their horses. So… people build small doors to prevent it. Not only that. They built it small so when Turkish soldier wanted to enter on foot, he would need to crouch so he would unintentionally “give respect to God”. Another thing that Turkish soldiers did, was taking women, so that is why high floors. There was hidden stairway next to the entrance door so women were upstairs in secret chamber so Turks couldn’t find them.
Next to this old church is new modern church.
Again, first three pictures are HDRs. I had a dilemma, to shoot classic pictures or try with HDR again. Weather conditions were bad, heavy overcast with light mist. I decided to do HDR because of the snow which is very bright in opposite to very dark wood and trees. HDR gives you opportunity to bring out that light snow structure and gives better texture to image in general.
