Near the sunset, when the sun is low and if the clouds are also low, it can happen for some rays to escape, painting those light pathways climbing to the sky and beyond.
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Red sun, red sky, red light, dark clouds covering the sun: that is the drama, that is the sunset. I know I posted already a few sunsets, but I can't help it, if the light is just beautiful.
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Is spring, everything goes alive again, including those gulls here, floating over the I.O.R. lake in Bucharest, in the warm light before the sunset.
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When somebody dies the family will hold many requiems: right after, 6 weeks after, 1 year after, every year after, at some special days and so on. And a Romanian requiem has to include a large, sumptuous food serving, almost like a party (but no music and no dance, of course). In this village apparently someone rich died, as the requiem was excessively large, even the photographer received a bread.
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Like it or not, is a reality people around here like to drink, some a lot, some way too much :) So of course an important place in the village is the distillery where they make țuică (usually moonshine). Here they make it from apples, since the region is surrounded by apple orchards.
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Romania is a country of shepherds, it was even since it was called Dacia, from shepherds we have a lot of traditions. Sure, in modern days the country changed a lot, but you can still see the flocks in the mountains or the remote villages near the mountains.
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This lady is 80 and she has the stone wall of the Corbi monastery in the backyard. She also has a blue house, which is a traditional color for houses in some parts of Romania. She's also used with tourists and photographers and have no problem posing for them :)
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Not sure what happened here, but the orchards were covered with fire and some firemen fighting with it. I wish I wasn't in a bus going to full speed, but in the middle of it, better capturing the moment (I know, the photo is bad: made trough the window of a running bus).
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This is a very traditional well as you can see today if you are lucky in a remote village. I have to witness, I didn't drop any coin in it and didn't make any wishes, but would like some photo sessions in this type of scenery.
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Upside view of the Cetățeni village, as seen from the Cetățuia Monastery. Is the village zone near the monastery, it is poorer and inhabited mostly by gipsies.
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On the old stone wall of the Catățuia/Negru Vodă Monastery there is this ancient mural painting representing a Thracian horseman. I wonder how it escaped unerased by the later Christian monks, but I am glad it happened.
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Praying at Peștera Moșului (Old Man's Cave) at Cetățuia (Negru Vodă) Monastery. This cave is a medieval Romanian (Vallachian) church built on the place of an older, ancient Dacian holly place and for a long while there were hermits living in isolated caves around.
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This is a very Romanian meal: beans soup with smoked pork (Romanian: fasole cu ciolan) and papanasi (doughnuts with jam and cream). The soup was served in a bread, to attract the tourists (myself included) and there was also a glass of boiled wine, which is not pictured, I drank it long before the soup was brought to the table.
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Returning from a mountains trip, close to Bucharest, there was this beautiful sunset on the side of DN1, so we stopped a little for a few pics. Probably we could have stayed a bit more and capture this image on the spectacular mountain scenery? Unfortunately no, the mountains are tall, the sun goes fast behind them so early in the spring.
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I needed a pictures with water drops for a little photo contest among a small group of friends, this is what I tool the roses, skin and water drops series, but unfortunately I had some publishing restrictions suddenly appearing on it, with no time for new pics, there is a "plan B" to activate: get an old pic and make the best of it for the contest. So here's the old pic with today's editing:
And if curious, the old version from about 3 years ago when I was a newbie photographer with beginner's gear and a lot less editing experience:
However, I expect some (trolling or not) to prefer the older version (these days I am reading a book about "extreme" editing makeover, so is not impossible I went overboard or was misguided).
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Roses are red
Water is wet
We don't see any thorns, I bet
Me is definitely no poet :D
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I am a vocal atheist, but at the same time I know a bit about religious traditions around (you can't be an atheist without being familiar with the religious dogma) and I enjoy some of the traditional food (does it make me a hypocrite?)
Mucenici or Măcinici is a traditional for for the Christian-Orthodox holiday celebrating the 40 martyrs of Sebaste with takes place on 9 March. Is a dessert of two sorts: in Muntenia (south) is like a soup of "8" shaped little pasta, sweetened and traditionally flavoured with cinnamon and walnuts, in modern times we also add for flavour rum essence and lemon or orange peels. In Moldova (north-west), again some "8" shaped bigger dough pieces, baked in the oven, then dipped in honey syrup and flavored with walnuts (those are also called "Saints")
This year I only had the southern sort, the soup. The pasta was bought from the store, the rest is home-made. Hopefully for the next year I will have some photos with the other one too.
Another tradition for this holiday is to celebrate all the saints, so if there were 40 martyrs dying... you have to drink 40 glasses of wine, one for each saint. Not bad... but way more than I can handle :)
And there is yet another tradition: if your name don't have a patron saint (your given name is not the same as the name of a saint officially celebrated in the religious calendar), then 9 March is your name day. Another opportunity to celebrate, I guess...
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After I bored everybody with my Indian adventures, is probably the time to breath a bit and celebrate the spring - those little fellows, snowdrops from my garden, appeared a couple of months ago, in the middle of the winter, but the snow buried them. Now they are alive and kicking (well, not exactly those, the flowers in the image were cut and offered as a present, but there are some more in the garden).
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The very last tradition in the Indian wedding I witnessed, just before the husband and wife are allowed together for the first time it was the ceremony where she had to was his feet. In their culture feet are considered unclean, and doing this is the sign of great humility. A good part of the groom's family assisted.
And with this the wedding ceremonies ended, it was the time for the photographer to go away :)
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Finally, two days after ceremony (one of which they were not allowed to even see each other) and after the last reception, the bride and the groom had their first night together. In a special room, with a richly decorated bed. But before that, she was received by her father-in-law.
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If in the western world the "official" photo session with the bride and the groom is a must and the bride may kill the photographer if she doesn't get her pictures with the bridal dress, I discovered that some Indian brides are not the same, in this case she didn't want photos... and made it in the most Indian way, not saying "no" but "yes" and then avoiding it in various ways.
In fact this is the thing that annoyed me the most in my Indian experience, people there won't say you a firm "no", they consider it disrespectful, they will say "yes", "maybe", "later" or "we'll see" and then try to do everything to avoid it. They don't know this is even more disrespectful for us, Westerners, who prefer a straight "yes" or "no" and then keeping your word. This may be the cause for some of our cultural conflicts.
So, back to the topic: we had the "official" photo session planned for a full morning in a park, then it was moved for something short in the evening at the temple, then for something even shorter at house on the roof, then it didn't happen, all we did was a few shoots at the reception place.
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The groom's reception was like the bride's reception: people come, eat and go, leaving the place open for the next round of guests to come, eat and go... This allowed for a high turnover of guests... if I recall correctly they were expecting around 800 people.
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Is a long process for the bride to make herself beautiful but the result is showing, after all the preparations (make-up, hair style, clothes, jewelry) she was really shining.
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The ceremony happened to the bride's home so it and the reception after was organised by her family. Two days later it was followed by another reception, this time at the groom's place, organized by his family. Here's the bride making herself beautiful for the reception:
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