Min DOF Photography

What a sad day for Slovenian photography! I just returned from Cankarjev Dom, where best Slovenian photographs are supposed to be exhibited. And I was really disappointed. As in the past years one can mostly see series, without any meaningful compositions, many of the photographs are technically worthless and what’s the most disturbing thing of all; there’s really no concept, no story behind them. Nothing to grab on. Top themes were, as usually, middle east, scenes from the gutter and other meaningless snapshots that an untalented 5 year old could take.

Until the photo contest jury will be made of mostly old farts that are favouring analogue technique above all and until the jury will be inclined to choose this kind of “art” photos, we can just forget about having a REAL Slovenian photography of the year contest. I’m sure some “artistic” soul will object in the comment section, saying we don’t get art. That we don’t know what art is really about and probably wrap it up in a complicated, dramatic description that no one understands - this is the way that the Emzin jury always justifies or better said describes why a certain series of photographs has won the contest. The main reason for that, is that they complicate their statements to a degree that nobody understands, but most of the people don’t object, most don’t even say a word, since they don’t want to be treated as morons. Like morons who don’t understand art. So they remain quiet and just nod with appreciation. Because they do understand what they just heard/read. And journalists writing articles about the exhibition are no better. Bullshit!

And we can see that we have the same winners every time. Manca Juvan again. Hear hear! I guess it’s better than having no winners at all, like it happened last year. I really think that it’s time that someone takes over the organisation of this contest. Emzin apparently can’t and don’t want to change. It’s the same every year. Like waking up from one of your worst nightmares!

It’s time to clean out the shelves and make way for 450D . No, just kidding, but I still have a special 400D offer for you. You can get it for 540 EUR and it’s in stock too, so you can get it right away. You can also get a 5D for a nice price, 2,2k EUR, but you’ll have to wait 3-5 days since it’s not in stock. Cameras have Slovenian warranty and user manual. You can pick it up yourself in the store which is located in Ljubljana or it can be sent to your home adress by mail. You can order it by sending me an email (contact form). If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.

EDIT 11.2.08: A 2 GB Sandisk Ultra II memory card comes along with every camera.

Woow! I’ve got so many ideas for sessions, that I feel like my head is going to explode! And I’m so excited, I got an idea today, that I wanted to shoot almost from the day I started shooting seriously. And I’ve finally gathered a crew that I needed to make it work. Everybody from the make up artist, that can carry out my wishes and ideas, to the model that can get into her role, that is crazy and wild enough to do it. All I need is an assistant, but I’ll think about that when the time comes. Or better said when the spring comes. And I need to find a suitable location. That shouldn’t be a problem either.

Man, what a feeling! I really can’t wait…Now I really see, that a time off is needed. For me at least. After a while, ideas start poppin’ in my head, otherwise I’d just do similar sessions over and over and at the end bore everyone to death or in the worst case scenario even stop shooting.

I’m sorry for the absence of new photos, it will go on for a few more months. I just hope they’ll be worth waiting. Untill then occasional snap and test shots will have to do .

This video, more or less an interview with Uroš Uršić (ok, Uroš Uršej, but they messed up ) aka Lucifix appeared on Čarli TV. You can see most of the exhibited photos and hear words of wisdom from Slo-foto’s big boss. It’s a shame they didn’t put any footages from the opening, but I guess the cameraman doesn’t like big crowds .

Yo ass best be in KUD tomorrow, 8PM sharp! The exhibition is about showing the best photos slo-foto has to offer and I’m proud that one of mine is amongst them.

Link to the complete article.

I don’t even know where to start huh. We had a great time and so many bad things happened at the same time. It all started with the gearbox that got stuck on my friend’s car. It happened right before the Austrian border. We called AMZS to get our car towed and none of us had a clue, that we’d have to argue for 3 hours over the phone with their incompetent operator. I won’t go into details, since it would take a full Word page to describe it in detail (I already wrote it, but cut it out). Perhaps some other time, because it’s really one of those stories, that seem to be too unbelievable to be true. While we were driving to Ljubljana, a couple of friends had to be left behind because the truck takes only 2 passengers. They nearly froze their asses, since all the pubs were closed at that time and even got chased by some faggots. After all that drama we took our car and with a few stops came to Prague. The most interesting was in Česke Budejovice, where we stopped to buy local currency (It’s not wise to exchange currency in Prague, since their taxes are pretty high). We were fascinated when we walked across their main town square. It’s enormous for a city that size (95.000 inhabitants), it’s larger than all Ljubljana’s squares combined. It’s surrounded by magnificent buildings, a beautiful and again huge town hall for a city of that size. And in the center of the square there was a beautiful and again huge fountain (at least 3x larger than Robba’s fountain in Ljubljana - so that you can get the picture, since I didn’t take my camera out of the car).

After we arrived in Prague in the evening we went out to grab something to eat and to find a nice pub. We thought we got the beer for a really nice price. It was 1,5 EUR. Wrong! That was the priciest beer that we drank in Prague, the normal price was 1 EUR. And ofcourse I’m talking about first class beers like Pilsner Urquell or Staropramen - I was told that the latter is not recognised to be a top class beer, but it’s still my favourite Czech beer. The days went by, we were partying at night, wondering around the city during the day, shopping (there were -60% sales all around the city center). On the new year’s day my car got stolen. It was parked right under our window in a very well lit street in the city center. Noone heard a thing, we just found out it was gone in the morning. I reported the theft to the police, fortunately the Tourist agency employee translated everything for me, since there was noone on the station who could speak english. I knew that my car was already in a chop shop waiting to be sold for spare parts. So we went on partying like nothing happened, we just had to cancel the new year’s eve dinner in the castle, which we wanted to attend, because we still weren’t sure how much money we’d need to get home. All the other planes weren’t canceled, we went to a hip hop party for the new year’s eve and sightseeing the other afternoon.

Photography wasn’t a priority on this trip, so I didn’t take that much shots and I never managed to get to take any sightseeing photos during the day. Here are a few:

Gunpowder tower

Since I’m a fan of sushi, we went in a Japanese restaurant.

Sake:

Sushi (the colours are off, but that’s what you get with multiple “light” sources and pushing it all the way to ISO 3200):

Charles’s bridge:

New year’s eve hip hop party. The music really sucked, I heard 5 good songs at best. But we had a great time never the less, and the beer was still pretty cheap .

Leprechauns were all over the place:

And weard waiters…

Subway:

I really tested his limits, lol. I had to be annoying to see if they’re well trained and self-restrained:

Check the banners in the sidebar and click on them to get full details on the offers. And get yourself (or someone else) a perfect christmas gift, damn it. Even Santa orders from me .

It’s been a year, my dear readers. There are currently 194 posts and 1,134 comments, contained within 12 categories . I’m sure some of the posts are missing as well as some of the comments (lost during the export/import process, when I moved the blog to my own domain), but there is - I hope - still enough material to read and look at. I know that my blog has become more of a personal, than a photographical lately, but it’s just that time of the year that I don’t shoot much - yeah, winter time. So I guess that’s how it’s going to be ’till spring, when I usually start shooting more often. I’ll do some sessions during the winter, but most of them, when I’ll need new photos for the covers or when I’ll get payed to shoot something (and those photos are rarely posted here anyway).

Yeah! And I was really surprised when I looked at the phone box. A wayfinder sticker was on it, meaning I was getting the GPS module as well for no extra cost. When I opened the box, I found out that more surprises are following. I could believe my eyes. So many goodies inside . Besides the usual content, which is usually including the phone, charger, battery, documentation and with some models also headphones, USB cable and a memory card, I got also a pouch, a deckstand used for charging and connecting to the PC and an extra stylus (pen). The phone is charging at the moment, but I can’t wait to start playing with it (using it, would be an understatement ).

EDIT: I got it on bolha, for only 350 EUR (it costs the same if you sign a 24 month contract with Simobil or Mobitel) and it’s brand new bought today, I got the receipt and warranty.

I’m thinking about buying one. I find Sony Ericsson P1 fulfilling most of my demands. It’s packed with all the goodies (WiFi, touchscreen etc), yet it’s still relatively light and small. The LCD display is supposed to be very good, as well as the user interface. QWERTY keyboard is supposed to be excellent it just needs a bit of getting used to. The only thing I miss is built in GPS. And last but not least, it also looks pretty good.

What do I want from you? To correct me if I’m wrong. I haven’t had the chance to use it (I’ve just held it in my hand briefly and played around with the menus), so all I know about this phone is from one of the reviews, specs and user reviews/opinions. So all of you that own it or have at least used it more extensively, please fill free to fill me in, at least about the most important pros and cons. Does it support an external GPS module? Is it even usable on such a small screen (2.6″)? Or advice me to buy something else. But not Nokia E90, it’s a freakin’ brick! N95 also doesn’t feel right, it’s abit too thick for my taste, but it does have GPS and nice player controls. But no touch screen and that really sucks. I can’t find any other phones in this range. But then again, I don’t really know that much about (smart)phones. Just don’t suggest iPhone. Because it’s pretty “dumb” compared to these smartphones. I don’t even consider it as a smartphone - how stupid is it to have bluetooth which is usable only for using the wireless headphone (you can’t transmit files), to not be able to load your own melodies, to lack UMTS, MMS, SMS functions are so limited…There’s really to much to write it all down and you’ve probably already read in this post that I wrote a while ago.