The Vinyl/Analogue Feeling

a turntable

A feeling long forgotten…

The gramophone record starts turning, then you place the needle carefully on it, a slight hissing is heard, a couple of seconds pause follows, and then… the music starts playing. And by the end of the record, you must reverse it, so you can listen to the other side, too.

I like Audio CDs, and the MP3/FLAC music formats, but the feeling of listening to a cassette tape (4.76 cm/sec, Dolby B NR, Fe2 03/Cr 02, 120 µs/70 µs — anyone remembers these strange digits?) or to a 33 1/3 record is… very different.

Light Trails painting (drawing) in Sofia by night…

Night is falling, and it seems appropriate to me to share with you my (our) first attempts at light trails drawing, made with a Canon S5 IS digital camera, which was set up on a bench in the park (settings: 15 seconds exp., F/3.5, ISO 100).

The date is April 23rd, and the participants are: me, Ani, Nixo, Katya (and Raly).

We used a small bottle and a cup to mark the two boundaries of the frame, and 2 lighters (with blue lights). Here are some of the best shots:

Light Trails Photography
First try! (Btw, I think I dropped the “E” from my name, but well… Flick’r also dropped theirs, so I can live with that!) ;-)

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Spring and Snowdrops

A snowdrop in winter
(click the image to see in original size)

Mid-winter, but the sun was shining, snowdrops were showing amid the grass, and we were again on our bicycles in the parc… nice! :)

(the photos is from today, and this is the original, no edit at all)

Red-backed Shrike

Red-backed Shrike (male), Rhodopes, Aug. 2nd, 2009

Red-backed Shrike (male), Rhodopes, Aug. 2nd, 2009Червеногърба сврачка, мъжка (Red-backed Shrike), Родопите, 2-ри август 2009

Photos are from Rhodope mountains, this Summer.

A beatiful bird! And it allowed me to come very close, maybe as close as 3-4 metres away! I got lucky! ;-)

The flower from Africa :)

Thinking of Africa, I remembered also this flower:

South Africa flower

I’ve seen these flowers a couple of times, in South Africa, approx. 5 years ago, in October 2004…

I don’t know how they’re called, even today…

One of them I took with me and after 3 airports and 10’000+ kilometres, it came to Ani, as a present… :-)

The flower withered in a beautiful way. There were some seeds from it, we tried to plant it, but unsuccessfully — it’s too cold in Europe, I guess…

Today, in this rainy day of Autumn, I’d like to give this flower again to Ani… I can’t really do it, but I have it on picture, at least. With its bright colors, maybe it will make the day brighter, more colorful, too?… :-)))

Grass and Sun…

One of my favourite things to shoot, during Summer…

grass & sun

The photo is from July 13th, near Borissov’s Garden… we were on some sort of photowalk, but no shot of mine turned out to be good, with the exception of this one, maybe… :)

(Here’s a variant, with a bit of sharpening applied…)