Dragobetele saruta fetele

Standing for "Dragobete kisses the girls", "Dragobetele saruta fetele" is a photo exhibition hosted traditionally by the Village Museum in Bucharest (Dragobete is a Romanian popular tradition somewhat similar with Valentine's Day).

This year I had again the honor to have a picture accepted in the exhibition and, even better, it received the 3-rd prize (is the same picture which received a prize in the Bucharest Art Photographer Salon 2014).

The exhibition is open until 9 of March (basically, for the entire "love spring" season: Dragobete, 1st March, 8 March) and the access is free.

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Best of luck, Iulia!

My friend Iulia is these days in Bangkok, Thailand, as a contestant in the Miss Grand International beauty contest. I am sure she is having plenty of fun there and a wonderful experience and I wish her best of luck in the contest. Note: for those interested, there is also a popular vote (for which one has to "like" a Facebook page and also provide an email address).

Unfortunately, not everything is perfect: the organizers picked a less than ideal picture of her for the presentation and our special shooting came a bit too late, so they used some stuff from Iulia's Facebook profile. Nothing unusual. Unfortunately, nothing unusual happened when the news hit the Romanian media: Adevarul, a national newspaper, wrote about it. They also used a picture taken from Facebook, this time from a car-themed shooting and, as one can expect from the lame Romanian journalists, they credited the picture to Facebook. Not to the model, not to her employer, not to the contest, not even to the photographer but to Facebook, like it is a stock photography agency. And as a proof of their bad faith, the newspaper cropped-out from the picture a discrete watermark by the photographer. This the level of our press and not the first time I witness it first hand.

Update: ...and it worked :) The newspaper article in Adevarul is now edited with some more appropriate credits and more pictures

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Freeze in the summer hot 2013

I have again a picture in the "Ger în arșița verii" (Freeze in the summer hot) photo exhibition, happening in the Bucharest city center, on the Bucharest Museum fence. It opened today and will stay open until the end of August.

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Street Delivery Exhibition

Foto Hobby Shop, one of the most known photography shops in the city put its windows as a host for a group photo exhibition with pictures from this year's Street Delivery, I was there too with a few images.

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Viral

Unexpectedly, a picture I snapped last week became viral on facebook, the stats below are "likes" and "shares" I can see directly, there were a lot of duplicates copied and uploaded separately by other people, for which I have no way to count them. On top of that, the picture was picked (copied from facebook) by mainstream traditional media, TV and newspapers like Realitatea, ProTV, Gândul, EVZ or RTV.

What was it about? Street garbage and people discarding it is a big problem in Romania and people eating sunflower seeds and spitting them on the ground are a special case. Friday evening, walking in the nearby I.O.R. park I assisted to an unexpected episode: a couple of local police officers confronted a group of youngsters practicing this bad habit and offered them a choice: take a broom and clean the place or pay a fine. This is original and funny and also quite unexpected, since the police rarely react to such things. I posted the image on social networks and the rest is history, a lot of people got enthusiastic over the police action.

There is one more side of the story, the police officers were not alone, they were accompanied by a couple of agents working for the private company hired by the park administration. One of those agents asked me not to show the logo of their company, which was printed on their shirts. I listened and excluded them from the frame. Their excess of secrecy made the company miss a huge free advertising opportunity.

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PHOTO magazine

If you talk about prestigious photography magazines in Romania, then the one is PHOTO magazine and I had the honor to have a picture published in its latest edition, for July-August 2013. It is available on press selling points right now. The picture there was made last year when Bucharest hosted the Europa League final.

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TV CITY

Today all day long I had a set of photos running each hour at TV CITY, this is a regional TV station for the city of Bucharest, it can be seen on some cable networks, online and in the Piata Universitatii passage.

If is too late to see the live stream, I made my own video with all the photos (just images, no music, no other distractions). I believe most, if not all, of the photos were already published on the blog: Actually, this was not my first collaboration with them, a previous one happened shortly after the We are the city photo exhibition, but then I didn't manage to catch it airing. No problem, I made a video with those pictures too.

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Color

Organized by the Danaart Gallery the "Ipostaze Urbane - Culoare" ("Urban Stances - Color") photo exhibition is open at the Dristor 1 subway station in Bucharest until of the end of the week. Myself, I have two pictures there, one is a night view of the Prater park in Vienna and the other is a sunset over the city of Targu-Jiu.

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Exhibition opening for "We are the city"

As promised, the We are the city photo exhibition opened this evening at the Odeon theatre in Buchares. I has there so my picture don't feel alone. Being there I was interviewed for Radio Romania Actualitati for a show to be broadcast tomorrow morning.

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We are the city

Tomorrow evening at the Odeon theater in Bucharest Dana Art Gallery will open the We are the city photo exhibition where I have the honour to have a picture. Everyone is invited.

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Interview

Our photoclub, Asociația Bucureștiul meu drag (that's 'My beloved Bucharest Association' in English) has a magazine published online. In the last edition, March 2013, I was invited to contribute with an interview and some photos, they can be read starting from page 166 in either the PDF or Flash version. It was a honor to be there with a large piece (I had some pics in previous editions too).

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Dragobetele sărută fetele

"Dragobetele sărută fetele" is Romanian for "Dragobete kisses the girls", where Dragobete is our local fertility holiday, pretty much alike Valentine's Day or Lupercalia, now used as a celebration of love. And for this holiday, there is a photo exhibition, now at the second edition, hosted by the Village Museum in Bucharest.

The tradition foe every exhibition opening is to serve the visitors some food ad drinks, the choice for food was interesting: bacon, onions and bread. I am not sure how the onions are related to kissing, you eat them before or after.

As for myself, I had two pictures accepted, one made last spring in the Herastrau Park, the other in the summer on the beach at 2 Mai.

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The Edge of Love

Last week I had the pleasure to work with Irina Irimia, fashion designer, and Raluca Geambasu, model, on a photo session for Irina's project, called The Edge of Love, which is based on various collages.

preparing for the shooting, Irina in charge of hair and make-up

Is February in Bucharest, so Raluca endured with heroism a cold winter day, but we managed to take a bunch of outside photos with clothes intended for a much warmer weather (anticipating the spring and summer to come).

outside photos, trying to ignore the winter

Finally, Irina edited the photos according with her vision, as collages.

final imaged, as edited by the designer (Irina)

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Two for Dragobete

Two of the three pictures I sent made the final selection for the photo exhibition for Dragobete (it's all about love and couples, like a Romanian Valentine's Day). The organizers jumped the gun and announced "the top images to be exposed" but we, the participants, are still supposed and think if we participated and, if one has multiple images, which one (the price is proportional with the number of images). So those are my two pics and I have to make a choice: two, one or none? I will surely participate and kind of like the second better.

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Black and white reloaded

When I visited the Sector 6 (that's a district in Bucharest) city hall, I had the opportunity to see the photos from the Bucharest in black and white photo exhibition again. For a while our photos will make more lively the cold walls of this public administration building. Probably photos in colors would do a better job with this, but black and white was the theme.

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To the subway

Together with a good number of photographers from the "Asociația Bucureștiul meu drag", I am part of the group exhibition that opened yesterday evening in one of the most active subway stations in Bucharest, Piața Unirii 1. The theme is our city and the pictures will stay there for all of you too see for a month and a half. Even from the first day many heads were turning.

I know I was expected to have a picture of me in front of my own creation, but so far I have no such photo, but I have something not bad either: a picture with a young couple finding the vicinity of my picture the proper place to kiss. That was one of my highlights of the event, as another was when another couple got close to my pictures, trying to identify one of the marathon runners, who may be their friend (but he was outside of the DOF).

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City Lights reloaded

After last December at F64, this evening the City Lights photo exhibition opened again at the Carturesti books store in Bucharest. You can find our pictures hanging from the ceiling at the photography books section. Be fast, as the exhibition will stay open only for a few days.

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Last but not the least?

This happens all the time: I had to send pictures for an exhibition, the rule was "up to three", the first and second choices were easy picks, but to make the number and maximize my chances, I picked a third one, an image from the 2012 Bucharest marathon. Of course, the jury selected the third one, which was, in my opinion, the least representative. But as said above, this is not unexpected, it happens all the time. More on the exhibition near the end of the next week.

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