Balade din Carpati

One of the concerts I saw at Bucharest Days was "Balade din Carpati" ("Carpathian Ballads") by K1 and Felicia Filip: not sure what was their target with such an interesting combination of modern, classic and traditional music, maybe they wanted to cash in on the Nightwish success, maybe they were awed by Therion or something else... the point is: it was interesting but to use a well known expression: "close, but no cigar".

First of all, I should acknowledge the sound system in the street was total crap (it was crap also a night before when Mircea Baniciu performed together with Vladi Cnejevici, and that was folk music, where everyone knew the songs), so the experience was far from optimal.



First of all, the K1 band cannot hide its roots in a boy bad: they sing, move and dace like a boy band and this is ....bleah. They were the lowest point of the show, their dance stuff destroy all the symphonic metal stuff.

Then the "story teller", Vlad Radescu, he can't hold a candle to Christopher Lee in Symphony of Enchanted Lands II by Rhapsody of Fire. But, honestly, who can hold a candle to Saruman? He do not even tried: no cavernous voice, no magic, no nothing. I do not care about the joyful voice of a bald guy.

Felicia Filip did her best, she is a great soprano with an amazing voice, no complaint about her.

What I think was the highlight of the show was Cornelia Tihon, she is really great with the Pan flute (and other woodwind instruments, like regular flute or tulnic, she also has some extraordinary legs and is not afraid to show them on stage.



I will hold a final conclusion until I hear a show in better acoustic conditions (YouTube is full of recorded clips from various concerts, do a search and apply your own judgement), but my initial bias is not very positive, I was disappointed.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

From Malaysia

I didn't understand the purpose of Malaysian dances at the Bucharest Days festivities, but just like the rest of the audience I found them hot. And I guess this is all that matter.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Stop the time

From a visual point of view I know I should have used GIMP to remove the black wire from the background of this photo, but those wires are pretty much the Bucharest's signature these days, even if the old fashioned clock make you think at long go times.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Larry Potter

I am pretty sure his name is not Larry, since Larry is not a Romanian name, but I thought the title has a nice ring. And he definitely was a potter



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Costumes / peasant girls

I started with great expectations and blew everything up with my bad mood, but still managed to snap a few shots with traditional costumes.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Leading the cheerleaders

Given a parade with a pack of cheerleaders in front... of course you must have in fron of them the leader of the cheerleaders, right?



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

You are going to jail

One of the events taking place at the Bucharest Days was the high school students march, with thousands of kids from Bucharest. I searched for my colleagues but no luck... I guess they were smart enough to take place in what effectively was the launch of Oprescu's campaign launch for presidency. Good things guys!



But the thing which clearly stood out in the march was the high concentration of lolita's on sqare meter, which was.... uhm... unhealthy



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Bucharest Days

A round anniversary of your city, like 550 years for Bucharest, is pretty much a one in a lifetime event, so you must take advantage of it at your best.

Unfortunately I am moody and when in a bad mood I have the tendency to screw things up and miss opportunities: so Saturday the water was ugly, grey clouds and imminence of rain, I was tired, those resonated in a bad way, my mood got increasingly negative, I felt like everything goes against me and the photography suffered. Sunday was a bit better, but the day was shorted in events.

However, I will try a few posts highlighting a few moments. Update: here, here, here, here, here, here and here.


depressing grey sky, just like my soul

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Bucharest Days - prelude

This weekend is supposed to be the peak for the 550 anniversary of "Bucharest Days" and I plan to be there and take photos, still the weather will have the final word: the forecast for Sunday, the most important day, with fireworks and stuff is supposed to be rainy (showers, probability 60%) and Sunday is expected to be good.



The shooting opportunities must be plenty, as attested by this preview from last week-end when the festivities began



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Gypsies

After the big pop star Madonna was booed at a concert in Bucharest for giving an uniformed lecture about gipsies. Of course that created a cascade of equally uninformed reactions in the media all over the world and a storm of comments. But like any storms, it came and went away, people forgot about it.

Well, last week-end at ONGFest, the national festival for non-governmental organizations was a good opportunity for me to remember the Madonna incident: the most acclaimed artistic moment at the event (at least from what I have seen) was created by a gypsy organization, they danced, sang and people loved them. Yes, the same people who would have booed Madonna.



What's the trick? They were bathed, wearing clean clothes, smelled good, had jobs, acted like people who attended school and their music was authentic, not manele. Is that too demanding?

Anyway, I enjoyed the moment and took a lot of photos.

At the end of their show, they started a "penguin dance" and everybody joined them. Is that racism? discrimination?



With this being said, I will reiterate: I have no sympathy for the smelly and dirty ones who refuse to get a job and instead send their children to beg and steal for them, milk the social security and use the school only as a source of food (the "corn cu lapte" program).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

...sword in hand...

I am a big sucker for swords and fantasy, no from my point of view, the swords tournament offered by the knights from Țara Bârsei was the highlight of the ONGFest. Too bad I didn't know about it, I did'n plan shooting it, didn't expect to say so late in the night so I didn't have an external flash unit on me, didn't have a secondary battery for the camera on me and as a result the photos were not the best and not as many as I would have liked. And I missed their following fireworks.



Beyond the scenario, the fight was spectacular, they were putting passion into it: sparks on clashing swords, real kick throwing the opponent 2-3 meters away and making it roll in the dirt, all the audience enjoyed it.



And where are knights and sword fight, there must be also princesses, balancing the male violence with their grace and providing the guys with a reason to fight. And maybe a prize, what I know?



So the old city of Bucharest, knights, swordplay, princesses... what do you want more? Oh, yeah, some drinks... they had that too :D

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Work complete

In a large effort taking a few weeks I had to repair the missing images on this photoblog
after the massive data loss caused by the yahoo bastard. A few photos were lost for good, but the majority of content is restored properly.

Now I can focus on finding an alternate gallery solution (self hosted, I won't trust something else after getting burned) and taking more photos.

Eat my dust Yahoo... I said it before and will say it again: I hope you get cancer and die. You deserve it.

Moustache

I found this guy figure interesting enough for a portrait and he was cooperative, giving me (I think) an portrait-worthy look.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

That ambulance! Chase it!

No, I didn't became (yet) an ambulance chaser, it is just a demo for the rescue team ("crucea rosie") intervention, simulating the intervention after the explosion of a gas pipe.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Free Hugs / Fairies

So, as promised, a series of photos from ONGFest and Bucharest Days, what is the best start for it? How about some free hugs by the "Bucegi Mountains fairies"? Pretty neat, no matter how you stretch the definition of a "fairy" and to whom you apply it. And you must be content with what you get, right?



note: "îmbrățișări gratuite" = "free hugs" but it can also stand for "gratuitous hugs"

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

The "beautiful" city of Bucharest is almost 550 years old

I am undergoing a big operation of repairing my blog, these days it looks pretty much like the photo below: after the yahoo bastards closed my flickr account I have to manually fix all the articles (I am close, stepped into July 2009).

But the city is much worse, see how the old city (Lipscani street) looks one week before the 550 anniversary of its written acknowledgement by Vlad Țepeș (AKA The Impaler, AKA Dracula), no chance in hell it will be ready in one week for the event:



My initial plan was to post photos again only after the blog is fixed and I have a gallery solution, but I can't sit on a ton of photos waiting, will take a small vacation for fixing and post a few images from Bucharest Days and ONGFest.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

To beer or not to beer

Even if for the moment I don't have a place to host my photos (the long process of repairing this blog is ongoing, will take some more days) I still shoot when I get the opportunity, hoping will post when everything is settled.

So when I saw the big media splash about the Tuborg event held with free entrance in the Izvor Park, I figured it may be a good opportunity for some photos, even if I was not interested much in the music or their beer (like 10 years ago it was probably my beer of choice, now it tastes like the recipe was changed for the worse).

At the entrance a big poster informed you are not allowed with professional photo/video cameras, with food or drinks brought from outside, not even with you own plastic glasses. And a number of agents performing body searches, to ensure you don't have any of those on you.

Seeing that, my first reaction was to turn back and leave, but I though there is no harm in trying and approached the gate. I guy said: go there, the guy with black sunglasses will look at your camera and decide. OK, trip to the guy with sunglasses, who looked at my entry-level DLSR with zoom lenses mounted and decided: "this is semi-pro, you can't go in".

No point in arguing about what is "pro" and "semi-pro" or that the poster said only "pro", there are a lot of other things to shoot.

And what about beers? My current favorites are imported Czech beers, the Tuborg products are like that: Skol - poor and cheap, a lot of alternatives in this area; Tuborg - worse than it used to be, you can get better at the same price; Carlsberg - this one is passable. Too bad they also the importer for Guinness, the other ones are not missed...