No sooner had I finished Cuba`s session, when my friends started to ring the doorbell. Every year we meet at my nomad studio in my hometown, 2-3 days before the New Year`s Eve, we have some drinks (mostly that year`s crops, `cause we like wine), tell some stories, play guitar and … most of all … take allot of pictures.

This year was hardly any different, except some of the people couldn`t make it. And the nominees are: Anutza, Zoz, Radu, Gogo and Chircu.

For the rest of you I have a surprise. The people in the following photographs only took a glimpse at the LCD after the pictures were taken so I bet they have no recollection of the things you`re about to see. :hihi:

Behind door number 1: Pinky & Srj (Bonnie and Clyde) – or should I say – The Cepinschis

Behind door number 2: Marius

Behind door number 3: Jo

(Notice how Srj jumps from one door to another …)

Next off I really wanted to show you my “studio” but to better understand the proportions I had to give it human scale.

You can leave a comment using this link.

And the last of the individual winter sessions was reserved for my lovely Jo. She insisted on being photographed while wearing the New Year`s Eve clothes. I must say … she had a very good idea; mostly because she never got to wear that outfit `cause everybody else had everyday clothes on … so she did the same thing.

Many of you will say that I used to much flash. I beg to differ. I`d say two more lights would have been a blessing…

Addendum:
As a side-note, in case you didn`t notice I gave a shot to a popular plug-in for the WordPress platform: the one with the star ratings and the thumbs-up/down. Three days have passed and already I have some hilariously not so witty people thumbing down recent posts and 1 starring everything in their path. “Not so witty” (not to be too harsh) because as long as you`re not using a proxy or **** (classified info geeks like me happen to know), I can track you down and send 30 pizzas to your doorstep every day for the rest of your life or until you move to another country. They will write about you in the local paper and the Guinness Book of FAIL!

Don`t hate the player, hate the game! Don`t abuse the rating system.

You can leave a comment using this link.

Still posting stuff from last year…

Just a few more pictures to show and I can fully be in the present. Today I`m going to show off two pictures of Diana, a good friend of mine who was supposed to shake off the camera shyness by now … but that hasn`t happened yet. I`ll blame that on the cold. I have some pictures of her skin that will make a chicken look photoshoped.

I can barely wait for the summer… No I`m not talking about her in lingerie, I`m taking about my ass in the States!

Le`see, the next entry`s pictures are either Jo`s or Tode`s. Decisions … decisions.

Pink, Srj … hold on just a little longer. They`r coming! Slow … but dangerously hilarious.

You can leave a comment using this link.

I`m writing this entry hoping that it will cheer everybody up including yours truly. The past two weeks have been like Purgatory and Hell. The worst part is that “it ain`t over yet”. The good part is: “only two more weeks to go”.

I`ve been shooting to much with my Leica in the past 5 months. And by shooting I mean: “not using my digital counterpart that often”. It was about time to use it again `cause the camera hardly got any use in the past two months.

So, Dec 17th, school, drawing exam. Everybody was tired and no one wanted to be there, especially for an exam. I guess they were all dreaming about snowboards and show-ball fights, Christmas and presents, food and sleep. Never forget food and sleep!

But I took their pictures anyway:

I won`t write their name, `cause it`s not that important for you.

Click the pictures for the slightly larger version.

Most of all, enjoy, and share with your family and friends. I`ll take some more on the next occasion.

You can leave comments using this link.

One day I get a call from a friend asking me if I was available for a 3h shooting at a beauty salon. I said yes, even though I had no idea of the conditions I was walking in on.

We set up a meeting to find out more about the project and meet the model, but the main thing for me was “what type of light will there be available?”. Once there I noticed the tight space I had to work in and the fluorescent tubes overhead (there was enough window light to get some nice shots for some sort of beauty contest but it was not the case here)

1. I had to take 1-2 good pictures of every service the salon had to offer.
2. To do that I had to rearrange the furniture a bit. (I hope Monica, the owner, wasn`t too upset about that. They offer almost every imaginable service and it`s not their fault the gear takes so much space).
3. I had to refrain from using wides or ultra-wides. I managed to get most of the shots using a 50mm lens @ f/1.4-2.8.
4. The tricky part was to get the green light of the fluorescent lamps to be white again. That you can do in two ways:
   • you either get some really large sheets of green gel and cover all the lights in that particular space, or:
   • you gel your lights (in this case 3 x Nikon SB800) with half-cut green gels and switch you camera`s WB to fluorescent.
5. The lighting solution for this was 1x SB-800 in a large umbrella on a stand as the main light, and 2x SB-800 left and right nuking the walls and ceiling @ half-power (creating some sort of a product photography tent from the inside). These were fired remotely with one SB-900 on the camera. I wish I had 2 more lights for some accents but for this one, it`s good enough.

The picked 25-30 pictures will go on the salon`s website.

Iulia was wonderful to work with, and although it was early in the morning for both of us we managed to be in sync for the whole session. We were out of there in just under 3 hours.

You can leave comments using this link.

Yes, I`ve done it! Here they are. Not so impressive now that I got a good look at them but, hey, as long as they`re done I might as well post them.

These are all resizes to fit 1200px on the long side (that means that you can click on them for a slightly bigger version).

You can leave comments using this link.

As I said a long time ago, this entry`s purpose is to shine some light on some of the lesser photos of my Portugal trip.

Out of ~900 pictures (not counting the panoramas and the HDRs) I chose to show you 25, but there were ~60-70 pictures selected to tell the story.

I can`t post the remaining 40+ pictures but I think you can handle 10 more. (actually 9 decent ones and a dud!)

Enjoy.

(P.S. I`m trying as hard as I can to make room in my schedule to stitch those panoramas I`m blabbering about so “keep your pants on”!)

And this is how we roll … when we`re outside the country.

You can leave comments using this link.

Or Lisboa, as they spell it.

I chose to celebrate my 23 birthday in Lisbon because Jo was there for studies and I thought “why not?”. The target was “travel light” so I did! My backpack had my D200 + just 2 lenses (11-16/2.8 and the 50mm/1.4 AF-S),  6 t-shirts, 6 pairs of socks and enough underwear to last me a week. And o course the heavy stuff was on me: a jacket, a pair of pants, a pair of shoes and a long sleeved top. Money and passport in my wallet and I was ready to go.

Yes, no Leica! I had to shoot digital, `cause it`s just like … if you don`t use it , you lose it.

When I left home for the airport it was freaking cold and raining cats and dogs, and by the time I got there I was soaking wet. I had to go through check in, and the guy there saw me like that, and he said “dude, keep your shoes on, don`t bother, I trust you”.

And after 2h in the airport, 4h on the plane, I hopped of @ Lisbon and it was like 30*C…

The next few days flew by very quickly.

Snapped 1300 pictures (most of them are panoramas so don`t freak out. When I got back home I had to keep up with school so I ended up emptying my memory card about 4 days ago and it was then when I had the time to take a look at my photos. So in a way, I bet I would have seen my pictures faster if I would have shot film.

Ok, out of these I have selected around 60+ pictures worth a second look, and out of those I squeezed out 22, but I like “round numbers” and instead of 20 I figured 25 pictures should do the trick.

P.S. Because I don`t want to write long entrys anymore, the one with the panoramas will follow after this one. And maybe I`ll write one with “out-takes” after that.

And, with almost 11 days overdue, I present to you the Netherlands entry.

We took the Thalys train from Paris with the destination: Rotterdam. “Lucky” for us, they were working on the railroads those days so we hopped of at Utrecht, then we took a train straight to Hague. `Cause that`s were Pinka and Srj are living now. You`ll see pictures of their neighborhood at the end. And yes … they live in a red MVRDV house.

In the 5 days remaining of our trip we visited Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Delft and Hague. (if I forgot something, just let me know)

Given the fact that I`m not in a “writing allot of stuff” mood I`ll let you enjoy the pictures.

Don`t be shy and write a few words yourself … and yes, you can send this link to other people. )

P.S. The song is Red House played by Jimi Hendrix. I wanted to put another song but I can`t really get a hold of it so this one is just as good. Mainly because we stayed at our friends in a red house in Hague and as a side reason: it`s 12 bar blues and Razvan is trying to get the hang of it right now. Bro, I could only wish I could play 10% of what is Jimi doing by the time you get it together, but you`re getting it wright faster than I can learn how to improv…