The Edge of Autumn

This very morning, I left Prague at 4am to go to Jested aiming to again weigh my Linhof camera in my hand after what was almost six months. Martin Rak made me a pleasant company so here we were, driving a steep little road that leads right on top of the hill. Extremely comfortable photography from a parking lot with 360 degrees views. I have never been there before hence I wondered and hoped for some good conditions. The weather is promising, actually amazing - we saw autumn leaves still on trees here and there, and rather warm colors in valleys while noticed snow on top of mountains. We pass fogged foothills and it is freezing healthy.

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Sony NEX-5n - More Than a Scrapbook

As I slowly climb my learning curve with the technical camera, I'm being introduced to its stumbling blocks of various kind. One of them, and quite major, is that I find difficult to compose and eventually focus with a wide angle lens in low light conditions. The converted reflection of a scene on the ground glass is simply too dark to work with it. Also, when I want to preview how the image might look like, there is no viewfinder for almost an instant feedback. It obviously takes considerable amount of time to set the system up, put a dark cloth over my head and see what the final result could look like. If I don't like what I see, I need some 5 minutes to pack it back. For these reasons, I decided to look for a small camera to use for sketching designs and previewing scenes.

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From the Air

There are things in life that money can't buy. I love spending time with my kids as they both are quite funny little midgets. And I have to admit that not too much less I like photographing. I have been (and still I'm) dreaming of how to combine the two the earliest possible that is actually impossible now since when I go shooting, they have to sleep and vice versa. On top of that (and somewhat off-topic I know), I hate heights. But when I somehow manage to overcome my fears, I feel a vast euphoria.

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Czech-in Time

I have been living in the Czech Republic for the past three years. I was also here between 2003 and 2006, which makes the total period spent in Prague 6 long years. All this time mostly working and enjoying free time with my kids and wife. When I recently browsed through my archive, I realized that I had very few images of Czech landscapes that I am happy with. It's perhaps because I actually did expose just a few rolls of Velvia in here. The very most of my photography happens on the trips out of the country, be it photo expeditions to the north of Europe that I started to travel to couple of years back, or journeys home to Slovakia where I do not need to work and can leave my family behind with their family and go shooting. :-) But that's not the end of the shame, I have to admit that I have not tried to photograph anywhere else than in the Bohemian Switzerland, which I urge myself to change no later than within the next 2-3 months when testing my new Linhof Techno kit. The learning curve seems to be steep enough to look for any opportunity to get out of home not just wait for the next trip.

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