new shoes

I had a photo shoot with Theodora the other day and I also snapped a few stills. Whenever the final project is a photo album or a photo book, I try to include a few stills in the shoot. You know, something to have to use as a cover or as a transition element. I don't yet have permission to post any photos of Theodora on my blog, but I hope I'll be allowed to if I just ask nicely. In the meanwhile... just enjoy the still. Is it just me ore baby shoes are the cutest thing ever invented?

rzv update: He's working two jobs. Not much time on his hands. He had today off, but tomorrow... who knows?

Until the next time.. does anyone remember this?

Until the next time,

R over and out!

streetlights

Now there's a pretty long time since I've wanted to experiment with this kind of photography, but, because of different reasons, I didn't quite get to it. Here are some 5-30 seconds exposures I took from a bridge in Hütteldorf:

I varied the colours around in post processing in some cases.

Until next time!

R

rzvn update

Alright. Let's just get to it, shall we?

I'm sick (nasty cold). My application for the master's programme was rejected because I arrived at the admission office one day too late. I hate myself and the people who made me wait for the language certificate. At the moment I'm trying to get better and looking for a cheap rent in Vienna (any ideas? leave them in the comments). Hopefully I'll find something soon. I feel I've taken advantage of my relatives long enough.

Also... I've started tutoring people who encounter problems with the English language and grammar. If anyone's interested in improving their English and learning the difference between responsable and responsible, e-mail me at f.razvan@gmail.com. Why you might think about improving your English?

Alright. Enough with the shameless promotion! What you should take away from this is that Razvan is going through some shitty times and hopes that less shitty times are to come somewhere in the future.

R over and out

TIFIOS cover

If you're not a vlogbrothers' fan or a nerdfighter (if you are not familiar with any of those two terms, there's this thing called Google... knock yourself out!), TIFIOS stands for 'The Fault in our Stars', the new novel of John Green. Here's John talking about the title of the book (and the epigraph of 'The Great Gatsby'):

And here's John talking about the the cover of the book:

And HERE is the yeti (John's wife) explaining why you should like the cover. I needed the explanation. It didn't make me love it, but I like it to some extent and understand why John loves it. Oh... I think John calls his wife 'the yeti' because she refuses to appear in any of his videos. We hint that she exists, but there is no available picture or footage of her. Yeah.. she's just like the Yeti.

I found way to order the book. The people at Thalia.at have it on their website. I'll stop by their shop in Landstraße tomorrow to pre-order the book. The whole first printing is going to be autographed, so I really don't want to miss my chance. I haven't read anything by John Green, but I really like his vlogging style, so maybe I'll like his writing as well.

I also plan to do a few long exposures tomorrow. Hope it turns out okay (it depends very much on the weather and a few other things). Stay tuned.

Until next time,

R

time is fleeting

I got a set of filters for my camera and this is the first 'project' I got to use them on. 3 macro filters and one topaz skylight for 4 euros... not that's why I love flee markets. This is (as you can see) an 8-second exposure and the light source is a candle.

I kept postponing going out and shooting the city at night, as I work nights, but one of these days... 

Until then.. I'll keep having fun with the macro lens.

R

do or teach?

There is this saying that those who cannot do teach and, although teachers hate it because it is mostly used by people with the intent of pointing out that teachers are overestimated and ultimately useless, I do believe the saying is somewhat true. Not because teachers are not valuable, but because the task of teaching stuff is so different from the task of doing stuff, it should be no surprise that those who cannot do, teach. Teaching does not mean doing and we would all be wise to remember that doing does not mean teaching. Like most of the streets in real life, it goes both way. Those who cannot teach, do.

The truth resists simplicity in this aspect as well, but the principle can be successfully applied to most teachers and, by extension, to most people. We generally expect great teachers to perform very well in the field they are teaching and people who perform very well in their respective field to be able to teach it successfully. This rarely turns out to be true. Doers do so that they themselves can excel and teachers teach so that others can excel.

What do you think? Would you like to do or to teach? Do you believe they can both be done?

R

P.S. Whenever I think about teaching and teachers I remember this:

along the canal

A photo walk along the canal turned out to be the ingredient of a perfect autumn afternoon.

Sith happens (text on a t-shirt, right under the picture of Darth Vader)

Against the current

One of the funniest graffiti artworks along the canal

Enjoy the sunset... the colours is this one look the way they do because of a new skylight filter I bought at the flee marked the other day.

Which one do you like the most?

R

A few shots of the city

I haven't been as prolific as I would have wanted, but I did experiment with a new technique the other day (new to me, of course). Here are a few shots that turned out from my photo walk a few days ago (and  were edited yesterday):

Among other good news... my tripod arrived. A night shoot is bound to come out anytime now.

Stay tuned!

Until next time....

R

1st year MAL student? This is what you need to know....

Before I get anywhere near any technical info or to gossiping any of my teachers and/or friends and colleagues, I want to be perfectly clear: this post is intended for those who are starting their first year as MAL (or LMA) students at the North University of Baia Mare. The rest of you... you can navigate away now. If you want to read this anyway... who am I to stop you?

Right. So you got accepted at the University and are all pumped up and worried about how you'll manage, how you'll make it to all your classes, how important are the mid-terms and finals and how to deal with your teachers and peers. That's great. You should be. But I am sure your experience already tells you that many things that got you all pumped were not really that exciting once you got them figured out. The same goes for college life. It is great, but it's not what you expect. Here are a few things I've learned along the way and I thought someone out there might find them useful.

1. People are never what they appear and rarely what they are said to be. This remains true if you are a university student, a high school student or a kindergarten student. It just takes time to know people. And another thing. Don't let ANYONE (including me) permanently shape your opinion about ANYONE. You're a college student now. It's time to start drawing your own conclusions. And if you disagree with people... let them know... or not. It's your choice, really.
2. It's all about the teacher. Now you may already know this, but I'm still going to say it. One of the most valuable things I learned during my years of schooling is that how much I study for a certain subject depends mostly on the way it is taught to me. I had teachers ruin for me subjects I once found infinitely interesting (Math, for example. And Mrs. Heuberger, if you ever read this... I'm talking about you. Yep... you ruined math for me, as I am certain you ruined it for a whole bunch of other kids. There. I said it). And I also had teachers that showed me that things are infinitely more complex than I perceived them and that made me curious and hungry for more. Of course this is all subjective, but you get my point. Now let's talk about the English teachers at the North University. I don't know much about the French teachers and the German teachers, if you do get to work with them, are pure awesomeness. Well... they have their peculiarities but, as long as you remember never to contradict Mrs. Turcanu, you'll be just fine.

• Ligia Tomoiaga. She's probably the nicest one in the whole department. And it's not always a good thing. People sometimes take advantage. I asked her to supervise my dissertation paper and the only thing I regret about that is that I did not start to write it early enough so that she could give me advice while the paper was growing. Also. She will miss some of your classes. It's not because she does't care about her students (it took me a long time to figure this out), but because she tends to do too many things at once and sometimes she just gets stuck somewhere else. Try to finish your tasks in time and try to reach as many of her lectures as you can. Even if you're not prepared... you'll find out stuff. And that's what university life is about... finding out stuff (well, not only that, but you get my point).
• Horea Nascu. All I'm going to say about him is that he's a scatter-brain. A big and harmless one. I never felt he was my teacher. I've always associated him with that goofy work psychologist in 'Stranger than Fiction'... you know... the one that says that trees are trees. Mr. Nascu will require  you to do pointless tedious tasks and to read a whole bunch of books, the list of which you might actually receive one or two days before the exam (titled 'You should have already read...'). However, it's not a tragedy if you haven't read the all the books. The important thing is having an above average attendance, knowing your English and doing your best at the exam. I'm not even sure he thoroughly grades all his papers, but that's just a hunch.
• Minodora Barbul. She's one of the younger English teachers at the North University, which means she's energetic and eager to get involved in extracurricular activities and to spend time helping students improve their language skills. She deals with the legal and business side of English and the best thing about her is that she cares enough about her students to actually help them. This is something that I cannot say about every teacher, but it is most definitely true about her.
• Ioan Beniamin Pop. Now this guy is a bit of a legend (among LMA and LRE students). Not because he's a great teacher. Far from it. It's because he's so stubborn he should actually wear a 'Do not contradict sign'. I'm going to go on a bit about this guy, but the thing you should always remember is that, in his view, Mr. Pop is always right and if anything goes wrong, it's not his fault. It's you who misunderstood, who are lazy and who are trying to shy away from responsibility. I mean.. I know that many students are doing this, but I don't think it should be taken a constant of life. I have this theory as a young teacher: 'If you expect the worst from your students, that's exactly what you'll get'. I'm sure Mr. Pop is a very nice guy in every way, but I don't think teaching is for him.
  If you ever fail an exam as an MAL student during your three years of college, chances are it will be something Mr. Pop teaches. He enforces his rules. Although some of his methods seem to be in no way designed to help anyone learn anything, not abiding the rules will most definitely lead to loss of points and trust me on this one... You need every point you can collect. Don't rely on the fact that you know English or on the fact that you've already done the exercises in Galateanu. He only records your participation in his class and the way you learn (or try to learn) by his rules. One of the hardest lessons I have learned during college is this: Whatever his students or peers do or say, Mr. Pop carries on as if he hadn't heard them. Save yourself the trouble and do not try to change him or help him improve his methods. He's not trying to do any of those things. Just do whatever you can in order to pass and be happy when you finish college and don't have to deal with him anymore.
  There are teachers that show you what to be and those who show you what not to be. At the end of the day, they all shape us and a huge part of who we are is the way it is because of our teachers. I'm grateful to all my teachers, even if I don't like them all.

This post could go on indefinitely, but it will have to stop here. I have been procrastinating posting it for too long, anyway. If you have any comments, please leave them and if you know anyone that might find this useful... send them the link.

Until next time..

R

busy long weekend

I arrived in Vienna less than two weeks ago and this weekend I had to go back to Romania for a couple of days. It was a bit of an emergency and  well.. it had to be taken care of. But man, it was a looong drive. Good thing I was only the co-pilot for most of the drive. Also had a bit of time to play around with the camera while my brother-in-law was driving.

Dunno why, but I just can't get enough of these long exposures of headlights.

On a totally unrelated subject, I went backpacking for a day... in the Alps, near Mixnitz. It was pure awesomeness. Here are some shots. Note to self: next time bring a pair of boots. Tennis shoes are not for mountaineering.

Alright... enough of this... I'm going back to job hunting. It hasn't been going well... :-<

Until next time... bleib cool!

R

upcoming articles

Self motivation is something I constantly have to do in order to achieve anything. The first thing to do when trying to self motivate yourself is to find something new and interesting to do. It's the easy part. At first, a lot of things seem worth doing. Going the whole distance with a project (especially with a long-term project) is the hard part of doing anything. I have a few ideas about what to write on the blog and what photo projects to conduct. Moving has given me a sense of starting from scratch. It's one of the best and scariest feelings one could encounter. But enough about that. Here's what I'm working on: an article about my experience at the North University as a MLA student (the dos and donts and a whole lot more) and a photo project + article called 'An untrained eye's walk through Vienna' (or something to that effect). Deadline: the end of the month.

R

P.S. This is the second part of motivating yourself: publicize your intentions. Knowing that someone expects some final results may give you an incentive to work harder.

vienna is an awesome place to be

Man! I arrived yesterday. Already feel at home. Went the other day to have lunch at this Serbian restaurant. Awesome food. The bread in particular caught my eye. Needless to say the taste was just where it was supposed to be. The bread, the meat, the seasoning and the Serbian beer all blended to perfection.

It remains to be seen what will come out of me signing up for the masters programme. Colour me nervous.

R

total eclipse

Click for larger image....

I snapped these with my 55-200mm @ ISO 800. 1-2 sec exposure.... camera on tripod. It was a very nice night....


R

P.S. Arnold... thanks for getting me out of the house.. :D

yoyoing on camera again...

Why did I shoot more than half of it in portrait mode???

Anyway... this the only somewhat usable footage I got. I will reshoot this, though... stay tuned!




So far,

R

vrum!

It looks like it's going fast, doesn't it?

I took this one as I was testing a Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 a friend lent me.... I probably don't say this nearly as often as I should, but I LOVE MY FRIENDS!

Oh... and here's something I took with a fisheye lens:

It was a great few days... equipment-wise...

Until next time,

R

oh, nostalgia

Sometimes I think the main reason I take photos is so that I can look through them and go 'Ah!.. that was so long ago. Those were the times!' Looking at old photos always makes me feel like I'm 80.

This was the very first design job did and the first conceptual photograph I took. It was meant to be the cover of our high school's magazine, but, for various reasons, we decided go another way. In retrospect, the cover could have turned out better, but still... a better shot might not be so nostalgic. I read somewhere that scars are great because they remind us that the past is real. I think this principle applies to not so good (it's not really a bad shot, after all) photographs. Is it just me?

Every time look for something in my photo library and I stumble upon this I remember how great it was to work on the articles, have meetings and proofread stuff. Those were the times, indeed.

R

electoral freebie

Walking around town, I stumbled upon this:

This fella was doing a few very nice covers. I mean... he nailed Guns N' Roses' "Don't cry".... and you need some very good pipes to pull off that one.

The whole concert was part of some guy's campaign... he's running for mayor. Nice of him to give out musical freebies. I'm not sure that makes him qualified for the job, but supporting a young talent does make him a pretty decent guy. I passed by the concert as I was doing a shoot... maybe I'll post some of the shots soon.

Until then,

R over and out.

times are changing and so are the templates on my blog

I keep changing the templates and the backgrounds of the blog. Transparency seems like a good idea... for now!

I'm still trying to come up with a nice design for the background... this shot of a Dacia I took a few years ago will  have to do until I have a better idea.

Hey!... is anyone out there willing to lend me some lights for a couple of hours? I know this is a long shot, but still... I have this idea for a photo and nobody seems to have any equipment available. An sb-600 with some kind of off-camera sync would do just fine. Leave a comment if you are willing to help.

R

sheep

Remorse for not writing anything in a while? yep...

Hoping for things to change? yep...

Will things actually change? probably not... (but still... one can hope...)

R

on my own... first entry: Aunts are Lovable Creatures

Living alone is not easy. Maybe this isn't any news to you and it certainly wasn't any news to me when my mother left to live with my sister for a couple of weeks, but that doesn't make the process any easier.

Anyway... I've decided to document the process of living alone... with the problems and advantages it brings.

What I love about this living alone thing is that there's really no one to blame beside yourself... it really makes things easier when it comes to finding a scapegoat to place the blame on. Whatever didn't get done.. you're the ONLY one to blame.

What I hate about it is that you have no one to talk to. Loneliness is a bitter thing... believe me! And the Interned doesn't always do the trick.

This series of posts will be mostly related to cooking, mainly because this is something I don't get to do when my mother's at home. And I really like to wear the apron from time to time. I'm not going to document everything I eat or cook. The purpose of this is to reveal the things I discover on this journey of staying at home.

First thing: Aunts are lovable creatures. Since mother's out of town, my aunts have taken an interest in what I eat and have taken turns in inviting me over for lunch or dinner. The best thing about it is that they also make me take some food with me.. here's a 1,7 litre jar of beans soup and a slice of home-made bread (yum!):

And here's the spaghetti with seafood cocktail I made the other day:

Yup!.... Yum!

R

Burn the streets.. shots and thoughts

Our fair city hosted a snowboarding competition today... didn't enter the photography contest because... well... because I'm rather lazy and I really have to focus on school these days.. I can only be productive for so much. I did take a few shots, though. Yeah.. great times. The energy drink company Burn was the main sponsor. And they did a really nice job of it... I got my free energy drink and my then warm slice of pizza, which I am enjoying as I'm writing this.

The riders provided a great show which made me stay with them until the end (despite the fact that my fingers were literally sticking to the lens of my camera.. yep... it was that cold) and I really hope the organizers do something like this again... I doesn't have to be snowboarding... I mean... other sports can be just as fun. How 'bout a golf tournament, eh?
Yeah... I'm joking about the golf part. But I do hope something like this happens again. Oh well... 'nuff said!

Some shots:

I'm also thinking of starting a new little project regarding the blog... more to follow.

R

red ink + desk lamp = love ? you tell me...

"Have you ever seen blood in the moonlight, Will? It appears quite black." - Hannibal Lecter

Oh, relax! It's just ink. I did a little bit of experimenting with the desk lamp, some lenses, ink, a syringe and a few other things.
Oh... and I discovered that some of my red ink cartridges have numbers carved inside them.. like this one. I wonder why. Any ideas?

Yep... still reversing lens... Shut up! It's fun.


R

One shot one kill... things I've learned

There have been 7 interesting days, I'll tell you that (there were 7 shots taken). And I did learn a lot from the project... about things I can do and, most importantly, things I can't do. So... here they are.

1. I can shoot everyday. It wasn't as hard as I had previously imagined... grabbing the camera, making sure I had the card inside, preparing the set, thinking about the light... everything seemed so natural.
2. Finding something to shoot is hard. The hardest part of the project was finding something worth shooting. I really wanted to get something out of this project... I mean... more than experience. I would try to find ideas all day... think about things I had always wanted to shoot and then discard the ideas because of the limited amount of time I had, the limited number of shots I had... you know... mostly because I wanted to play this safe. And I did... most of the time. The most risky shot I took was on day six of the project, when I went outside, calculated my exposure, went to the middle of the road, focused and shot. The image is pretty much out of focus, as you can see, and the framing didn't turn out so well either. I was able to somewhat fix that in the post-processing.
3. I'm not a one-shot kind of guy. Which is good. The purpose of the project was not to make me a guy who only takes one shot in one location. It was to help me improve my skills and to help me start shooting something. God knows I needed that. I really enjoy having the possibility of taking another photograph of the subject, of changing the perspective or the composition and being able to make my choice later, in the post-processing phase. I feel I learn more about the subject as I keep photographing it. Of course it's more efficient to take one shot and just use that one, but, as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't yield the best results.
4. I should focus less on the technical side of things. Whenever I try to come up with an idea, I start from a technique or a certain lens I want to use, from technical elements such as bokeh or shallow dof, which is not entirely bad, but when creating a photograph (I'm not really sure I can even use that word when talking about my work, but hey!... thank God there's no Blogger Police), I think I should start from the main idea or the feeling I want it to convey or hey!... even from the subject and then work my way down to equipment and types of light I want to use and the rest of the stuff.
5. DON'T BE AFRAID!!!!! Whenever photographing something or experimenting or taking a photowalk, your courage will always be rewarded. The courage to whip out you camera, even though it might make people uncomfortable or it might get wet or broken, the courage to keep shooting, although you're not really sure about how it will turn out. But, most important, the courage to say... 'Hey! I'm shooting something today'.

Yeah... that's pretty much what I've learned from the project... hope it sticks with me long enough...

More shots to come...

R

One shot, one kill.... day eight (final day.. one day late)

I took this one yesterday, but couldn't upload it... my Internet connection was down for most of the night.

Emergence of darkness

Original exposure

I just couldn't let the series pass without a bit of reverse lens fun...

My thoughts of the project... to follow...

R