Like I said before, looking thru albums (in paper or digital) of really good photos, you get inspired and mesmerized. This video is the best possible example.

More will be posted later.

Tags: 100 Days of Earth Shots, best nature pictures, earth beauty, earth shots

When going out of the city to the country side, every photographer has a few subjects in mind: domestic animals, old farmers, rusty old objects, fruits and vegetables, landscapes with old houses surrounded by cultivated lands and trees. And each of these encounters different shooting conditions and specific issues.

Domestic animals: usually represented by cows, can be photographed in groups or alone, or, with a farmer by their side. A normal lens will do just fine. But close-ups are not to drop away. Think a little about a cute fluffy chicken baby under the mother’s wing.

Rusty old objects can vary in size from an entire abandoned building to a pair of shoes. These pictures will be full of emotions and symbolism. Generally, the idea of old is well enhanced in slight sepia tones.

Farmers, if photographed at work, will contribute to the image as an attraction point of a bigger image. If you can talk to them, get close and shoot a portrait, you will be amassed by the natural honest expression on their faces and the amount of details of a skin exposed to hard weather and farming. Also, take a good look at the clothes.

Fruits and vegetables can be focused in macro or normal mode with narrow DOF to obtain the best out of it.

If you want to make a documentary about country side, you must know that most of the activities start very early in the morning. In Romania, in summer, around 6-7 am, the farmer milks the cow and gets the horses ready for a ride in the field. Around 7pm, the wagon returns full of dry grass and one hour later and the cows return from feeding around the village to be milked once again and go to sleep.

Off topic: try out traditional food and pay attention at the local dialect.
At the end: a panorama of the village where I took my shots.

Tags: country side, fruits and vegetables, rusty objects, house picture, old man, cow picture, horse picture, farmer

Happy Easter dear reader and friend!

In this article I will show you some pictures taken in the ancient places where Jesus once walked the Earth. A journey deep inside Israel and the nearby states where the Jordan River flows make me fell closer to the meaning of the Easter Celebration. I hope, through this photographic documentary you will also get an insight.

The city of Jerusalem, capital of the State of Israel, located in the Judean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea and the Dead Sea, contains a number of significant and ancient Christian landmarks.

Ancient Roman artefacts left standing as well as some Greek ones too. This means that by visiting this place you get in contact with many cultures, local Muslim and Jewish as well as Europeans.

In the Judean Mountains, and more precisely in the Mount of Olives, is the Gardens of Gethsemane where Jesus was captured by Romans after the Betray. A picture of 2000 years old Olives is shown in this article.
The presents of olives and palms is a prove of the Mediterranean climate of this region (relatively mild winters and high temperatures in the summer).

A bit farther, in the desert, over the cliffs, there is a place with big chances of becoming the Earth’s 8th Wonder: Petra is an archaeological site in Jordan, famous for having many stone structures (ancient houses) carved into the rock.

As some final words, the pictures were taken with a Sony Cybershot DSC-T3. As you can see, the colors obtained with this camera are vibrant; the sharpness and the low noise also add to the beauty of the images. I did made some brightness/contrast adjustment.

Tags: jesus christ, easter, petra, jerusalem, jordan, mediterranean, Gardens of Gethsemane, mount of olives, Israel, travel photography, documentary photography

Documentary photography usually refers to a type of professional photojournalism, but it is rather described as a type of photography depicting a story about a particular subject (no matter if person, city, flowers, animal or whatever) in more than one single shot. So if photojournalism can stick to 1-3 photos for an article, in documentary photography the situation is up side down: fewer words and more photos. Therefore, such photos are meant for publication, but are sometimes only for exhibition in an art gallery or other public forum.

For higher resolution video click here

Rosia Montana
The latest method of such a documentary is a combination of picture with text and music. What a nice piece of art made of 3 different types of arts . Later on I will write about some software that helps you do that, but now, let’s take a look at a simple Documentary I made about “Rosia Montana”. Rosia Montana is a city in the mountains, famous in Romania because it is built upon a mountain of gold and a Canadian company now wants to effectively move the city in order to get the gold out. But the people living there will not move: they stick on the tradition (including old roman archaeology sites) and natural environmental protected sites. This is why the documentary is going to show the beauty of the place in 4 parts: the people and buildings, the landscape, the macro world, the old mine gallery.
On RosiaMontana.org you can find more detailed informations about this subject:

Gold has been mined at Rosia Montana, in the Apuseni mountains of West-Central Romania, since pre-historic times.The project proposal is that by blasting and pulverising the landscape, the invisible gold and silver could be exposed to hazardous cyanide compounds that would separate them from the rock.
The scenery would be devastated, hills transformed into massive craters in a toxic, sterile desert.
The illegal process of forced resettlement has already begun.Will these unique historical and archaeological remains be obliterated and people forced to leave their homes?

Tags: rosia montana, documentary, documentary photography, photo slideshow