This picture was intended for the parenting series, but due to a technical failure, the light didn't come to match the series, so it was replaced with something else. Still, it was popular enough, probably due to the subject.
Update: if curious about the final product, here is it.
I can only hope that guy has some interesting stuff on his phone, dunno, maybe some porn or so.
I can have only a sarcastic remark here "wake up and smell the flowers"
The sign says (in Romanian):
Professional photo executes
Apparently my turtle pictorial show the happy life of some turtles in the IOR park of Bucharest, the reality is not so bright:
Next time when I have to throw a party I may have the place (it says "for rent super bar, private parties, comfort and discretion, advantageous - low cost")
"The capital [city] grows green" the sign says. Doesn't look much like that, I would add.
The New Year Eve is the perfect opportunity for the photographer to get out of his house and capture some nice fireworks in all their glory. This year, for personal/family reasons, I had to stay home but still attended some fireworks: the closest ones, so we went to the Cuza (also known as I.O.R.) Park in Bucharest. It was as expected from our shady mayor: weak, boring, cheap. Reminder: next time, make the extra-effort and do to Piața Constituției, that is the worthy fireworks place in the city.
Something struck me when photographing a traditional pig butchering, a guy told me with pride "Europe should not tell us how to kill the pig!" (background: European Union tries to impose rules for sacrifices of animals raised in rural households, Romanian peasants refuse due to convenience and price increase).
That is the key to read many recent [in/e]volutions in our society: populist politicians protesting "we are not a colony" when EU tries to push us into civilization, modernization, morals or anti-corruption: we keep the old ways, killing the animals with our hands (and eating their blood), we elect known corrupt politicians and delinquent to rule the country.
And then we drink and wait for an elusive deity to save us all. Welcome to Romania!
Yesterday it was the elections day in Romania, the final results are still counted but all the pools show a decisive victory of the communist coalition, just as everyone expected. The country is bracing for at least 4 years of an authoritarian regime, rampant corruption and dissolution of the order of the law.
The elections were organized by the same communist regime, the one which, back in the summer, tried a coup d'etat (which partly failed, thanks to the European Union strong intervention) and frauded a referendum, of course they used the same tactics. For example, I travelled in the village of Jupănești in the Argeș county. Here, totally against the law, in the elections day, a huge banner of the communist coalition was placed in front of the voting station entrance. Needless to say, it was the only advertising I saw in the entire village and also needless to say, the village policeman was around, keeping an eye on everything.
What is the most pleasant way to spend the National Day? How about having your genitals groped? Bonus: if you are a guy and the person doing it is a blond female. OR you are a girl and he is a man in uniform.
Long story short: 1st of December is the Romanian National Day and traditionally there is a big military parade in Bucharest at Arcul de Triumf, which is admired by a lot of people (I heard around 15.000 were this year). Less traditional, this year the security was a lot tighter.
In all the access routes, there were control filters: some gendarmes in uniforms were controlling everyone: men, women, children, old people by groping the bodies and looking inside the bags (TSA-style pnly low-tech).
The gendarmes were both male and female and the intention probably was for same-gender groping only, but with such an amount of people it was chaos: everybody groping anyone. I saw an old woman protesting, who escaped only with a purse-check and an young man unhappy he was groped by a guy gendarme, not by the blond women gendarme.
After this filters, there were some guys in suits watching, probably the SPP amd some more... After passing the check I stopped, turned around to shoot the groping, but somehow my view was blocked all the time. Breathing, I understood: there was a "normally" dressed guy, most likely a SPP undercover who was moving in such way to be in my view all the time while maintaining a casual appearance. Time to change my lens, put a wide one, extend my arm and shoot from above his head. He tried to extend his arms too, realized is ridiculous, exchanged a few words with a suited guy then dropped his arms. I continued shooting while asking him "is there any problem?" and when done left with "see, there is a solution for every problem".
On the positive side, when waiting in queue for the filter, I was asked if I have a press pass (had my biggest lens mounted) - don't know if that would have me skip the filter or just go in front. Another fellow photographer was asked to take a shoot to prove the camera is working - not sure if because she had a red Nikon DLSR which the gendarmes had doubts is a real camera or because it was early in the morning, before the gendarmes got bored.
If the photographers are busy chasing some falling leaves, what are those girls supposed to to? They take pictures one to each other. Stupid photographers!
It looks like people organizing a marathon care about sports, health and life, but this pile of plastic bottles (and wasted bottled water) make you think twice.
It seems like not everybody cares about the marathon, some, both people and dogs, are completely uninterested.
Hunting for my latest batch of photos for the Wiki Loves Monuments photo contest, I encountered this building, which is not a historical monument, but still an interesting sight. Ans you can probably see is a former shop, which had a "FOTO LUX" sign, if not obvious, that is Romanian for "Luxury Photography". Think of the past glory of this place...
There is a saying "you are not a photographer, you are just a kid with a Nikon" used to ridicule the people who use a camera but not using their brains or learning anything. For some, it can be enlarged with "you are not even a kid with a Nikon, you are just a hipster".
I take part, and I am also an organizer, in the Romanian Wiki Loves Monuments photography contest, where we try to get people contributing photos of historical monuments to Wikipedia. The things are not all roses, photos below, taken in the old city of Bucharest, the most important touristic area from our capital city, are a proof of why something like it is badly needed. Our history, our culture, our identity, they are going away due to carelessness and/or greed. We can at least preserve their image.
If a couple of days ago I had a photo with people sleeping on the street across the street from the Emergency Hospital in Bucharest, this morning I saw some others right in front of it. Everyone's attitude was like nothing out of ordinary.
Cancan is one of the most known local tabloids focusing on celebrities and such stuff (to judge its level, the article I am talking about here is about a Facebook fight between a dancer and the nephew of a rich guy) and I just discovered back this January they used a couple of my photos for an article, here's a screen capture from their website:
Obviously, they had no legal right to post them, neither from the photographer (me), nor the model (Alicia), it looks like they just lifted the images from a Facebook album of mine (stupid them, they could have obtained better quality from the g+ equivalent album) (the model has also a copy, but she put on her profile only one of the two images used by the tabloid).
On the legal side, the photos on Facebook are just put there, so they are full protected by copyright, according with the Romanian law. On Picasaweb/Google Plus, where there is such an option, I have put them under Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike, which still require an user (Cancan in this case) to credit the author and keep the license. Is true I did a mistake: forgot to add a watermark, which I do with images like this which are likely to be misuses, but the presence of a watermark was no influence on the law and copyright (copyright is applied by default) and the tabloid modified the crop anyway. They act like everything is online is free to use, which is false but used by other media outlets from the entire world.
So what I am doing next? Nothing, I won't sue the tabloid (probably they expect that much, people to be busy with other things to sue them), but I will post the pictures here, for reference and for people to be able to see the original, compared with the tabloid editing. I do like to share content and I do it all the time, but under the rules I want, which means most of the time a Free license.
