My little photoblog

The Golden Sky

2011-01-09T17:52:00.001+02:00

Local Showers

2011-01-09T16:47:00.000+02:00

The local showers were intense, the rain was like a wall.

Manado Tua and the Sunset

2011-01-08T12:52:00.001+02:00

I do love the sunsets. I also love the dramatic contrasts this picture has. Deckboy in the foreground, dormant volcano of Manado Tua at the background, both as silhouettes only.

Pelit.fi community photography contest: Broken

2011-01-08T09:08:00.001+02:00

After a long long pause in participating in the photography contests of Pelit.fi community, I decided to take part with this photo.

The topic of the competition this time around is "broken" ("rikkinäinen" in Finnish as it is in the forums).

It has been so long, too long, that I have actually been even taking pictures, other than random snapshots. Even longer it has been since I have posted any of them here. I will shape up a bit and post some every now and then again.

Butterfly

2009-06-25T22:58:00.000+03:00

Street art with chalk

2009-04-23T23:32:00.000+03:00

Sunset at Agia Napa

2009-03-18T08:47:00.000+02:00

Year of the Ox Celebrations

2009-02-08T21:56:00.002+02:00

Chinese New Year 2009

A walk on the seashore

2008-12-25T18:06:00.000+02:00

I love the reflection of her on the sand wettened by the retreating wave.

A Warming Fire

2008-08-15T18:41:00.000+03:00

Saturday Shootout

2008-06-07T20:49:00.000+03:00

First hair and fashion show in Itäkeskus:

Hair and Fashion Show

And then the Samba carnival in downtown:

Helsinki Samba Carneval 2008

Altogether of 1000 frames shot. Probably my personal record for a single day. And one that I am not soon to break either, I'd wager.

Fashion Show in the Esplanadi Park

2008-06-04T23:17:00.003+03:00

Marimekko - Summer Collection 2008

Yet again a fashion show that I hear about on very short notice. This time all of the clothes on the show were from Marimekko, which is quite understandable for this was Marimekko fashionshow. Was it the 17th annual show? Something like that.

PopFashion 08

2008-05-23T23:28:00.000+03:00

PopFashion 08

The World of Fashion

2008-05-22T23:27:00.001+03:00

Fashion Show at Kamppi

Also an experiment how Picasa Web Albums are displayed on Blogger.

This Is Not a Paid Advertisement

2008-05-17T22:40:00.000+03:00

Nature Shots

2008-04-27T18:12:00.004+03:00

Summer is on the Way

2008-04-26T13:55:00.000+03:00

And the flowers have started blooming.

The Very First Shot

2008-04-07T21:11:00.001+03:00

I got my new camera to replace the stolen Canon 350D and this is the very first shot taken with it.

To those who are curious about the new cam, it is Canon 450D. And oh boy is it so much better than 350D. I didn't see any point in upgrading 350D to 400D since there was so little new in 400D. But even if my cam wouldn't have been stolen I would've been oh so very tempted to upgrade to this one.

Thanks to cheap US$ and a therefore cheap HK$ plus a very helpful friend who conveniently happened to visit Hong Kong I got the cam before it is even available in Finland (without reservation at least) and a whole 200 € cheaper too.

High Voltage

2008-04-06T22:33:00.003+03:00

The Golden Section

2008-04-02T23:25:00.003+03:00

It has to be there somewhere. I just know it has to be there...

-----

I had an marvelous idea! Why wouldn't I add an tooltip to my pictures to clarify a bit when and where each photo is taken? Spledid, don't you think?

Well I would love to, except that Blog this feature of Picasa doesn't seem to support neither alt nor title attributes. Oh well, go figure. ~~I just might have to try and add them post posting then.~~

Added the title attribute afterwards, wasn't too hard. Now I just have to go through the archive at some point and add the thing to all the posts. At some point. In small batches. Over time.

Room for One More?

2008-03-31T09:02:00.003+03:00

Is there?

Longing for the Summer Breeze

2008-03-26T22:42:00.000+02:00

Now that we finaly got some snow here, on the very verge of spring, I most certainly do wish that the summer will eventualy win this struggle. I like snow, I really do, but if I could choose I would go to the snow and not the other way around. But me being a mere human and the comings and goings being controlled by mother nature I just have to adapt.

And to recollect some of the memories from summers past. Like to warm summer breeze that sweeps over me while I lay on my back on the grass of the park and watch the clouds go by. So slowly and so serenily. And the deep blue of the sky. And the warmth of the sun...

Oh, to have the summer here again.

Oriental Charms

2008-02-13T22:38:00.000+02:00

It was the Chinese New Year a while back and such a fan (of sorts) of oriental that I am I just had to participate. Or go and have a look-see was my intentions at first, beign quite tired after a day at the office. We just missed the small firecracker show and saw the Chinese dancers dance from way behind of the crowd and I was ready to go home. I wasn't that thrilled to just be standing out in luckily enough not so cold weather.

But my wife had decided otherwise. She wanted to see the fireworks and the dragons and the whole shabang. So we walked around the little market that had been prepared for the festivities and bought little something to eat. Meanwhile the crowd before the main (and the only) stage had dispersed so we tought to seize the opportunity and get to the first row to see the next round of shows from a little closer.

First we had to endure through couple of interviews of some members Finnish Olympics team but, with all due respect, that was quite boring. You know the interviews are quite rarely that interesting. But after the interviews were over the show continued. There was wushu show, dancers and well, more dancers.

After the show was over it was time for the fireworks and for that the festivities were moved to a different location a short distance away. Well, not really the festivities but led by two dragons the crowd did move anyways. The fireworks display was beatiful and all in all I am not at all dissapointed that my wife convinced me to stay.

Happy year of the Rat people!

Goodness Gracious Great Balls of Fire

2008-01-07T08:52:00.000+02:00

The Way the Camera Bounces

2007-12-26T22:36:00.000+02:00

I had to do little experimenting the other day and here is the artsyfartsy result.

And the Forecast For Today is Half Cloudy

2007-12-20T21:46:00.000+02:00

Things I Miss About Budapest: People

2007-12-03T21:44:00.000+02:00

Given the picture here I know just how you are going to interpret the title. And I have to admit that you are propably right. But I'll get back to my educated guess later. First I want to tell you what the title really means.

The thing I miss about hungarian people, I am not sure if I should say that in such a broad sense since I only have empiric studies from Budapest, is the way they know how to behave. Take the public trasportation for example; trams, buses, metro, you name it. Au contraire to what I have used to here in Finland, yet again maybe I just stretch it too wide since this may actually be Helsinki oriented problem, the people actually let you leave the public transportation before they try to get in.

It is oh so infuriating for example to stand in the metro car next to the doors when the train arrives to a busy station e.g. Kamppi or Central Railway Station and when you try to get off the train most of the time you need to use your elbows to make your way through the mass of people standing on the platform and rushing in the train the very second the doors open. For crying out loud the train is not leaving anywhere before a) the people wanting to leave the train have done so and b) the people wanting to enter the train in the immediate vicinity of the car have done so. Why the rush and rampage? Jeez...

And then my educated guess: Most of you propably thought given the photo that I miss the hungarian women. That is true too. My apologies to both of my female readers but I reckon that the ratio of women in good shape in Hungary and in Finland are pretty much inverted. If 1 in 10 in Finland is in good shape it is 1 in 10 in Hungary who are overweight. Ladies like her in the photo for sure are much more pleasing to the eye than your average finn. And majority of women I saw in Budapest were like her.

Not to mention the differences of the fashion... But I think that'll deserve a post of it's own.

Things I Miss About Budapest: Baked Roll

2007-11-29T08:18:00.001+02:00

Nowhere else have I seen these baked rolls and there are quite many places I have visited. The kürtős kalács really is a delicasy you should not miss when in Budapest. ~~Unfortunately I cannot recall the real name for these rolls right now but it does not diminish their great taste.~~ Thank you christie and Enikő foreducating me on the name!

As you can see these rolls are cooked on open fire (well not so much on fire than embers). After they have baked enough yhey are rolled on sugar or cinnamon or what ever flavour you want (and is available to the stand).

These were just the perfect snack for a casual stroll through the streets and parks of Budapest. For me they somehow have stated to represent the feeling of not being in hurry to anywhere. Damn I miss that feeling.

And those baked rolls.

Things I Miss About Budapest: The Climate

2007-11-27T22:21:00.000+02:00

I know this doesn't look much or anything special... But the picture was taken mid April. Here in Finland I have used to the fact that there is still heck of a lot snow on the ground that time of the year (yeah, well, not here down south in Helsinki, but where I grew up and went school to). And look at that! Trees have so green leaves! And that was the coldest April locals had experienced for quite some time.

Winter is nice. Snow is nice. But it is the cold and the snowflakes on my face that I can't quite handle. I like summer so much better. The warmth...

The warmth...

Things I Miss About Budapest: Presence of History

2007-11-26T20:19:00.000+02:00

There are so many historical locations in the Budapest that just about where ever you are there is something historical around. Now looking back at the summer spent in Budapest I truly find myself longing for all those evidences of past times and the former glory. These ruins in the Margit Island is one good example.

And the Clouds Were Flattened

2007-10-28T09:20:00.000+02:00

Last time while flying to Budapest I noticed this rather interesting phenomenon on the cloudtops. The cumulus clouds that usually have very distinctive puffy and round shapes were flattened like a sheet of transparent foil was pressed atop the clouds.

I am quite sure the reason for this is the difference in the airpressure but thinking too scientifically takes away the charm of certain things. Clouds are one of those.

Two Parallel Lines Never Meet

2007-09-28T23:18:00.000+03:00

How about four?

It Is Not a Dog Eat Dog World

2007-08-26T17:24:00.000+03:00

Every now and then I see things that remind me that the world is not that bad a place as the media seems to portray it to be. One such occasion was a couple of days ago at Ruoholahti where I saw this heart warming sight.

Summersports

2007-08-18T23:45:00.000+03:00

Modern-day Rapunzel

2007-07-02T21:13:00.000+03:00

Stop Motion

2007-06-10T12:59:00.001+03:00

I like this picture pretty much. It looks a bit like there is three pictures of a single brown hare merged into a one picture. Instead it is three different animals as you probably could see for yourself but still the illusion on merging the pictures is there.

¡Ay Caramba! Now We Dance Samba!

2007-06-10T12:36:00.000+03:00

It was that time of the year again. For the 17th time the Samba Carnival took over the city Center of Helsinki and for once the weather was favorable for the event. And to be honest I think this year's event was the best so far.

Lots of dancers, beautiful dresses, dancing, fair ladies (in all the good and bad most of them were Finns), pounding music... And of course the sunshine. I think I got a sunburn to my right wrist. You know, the one that that was all the time exposed due to fact that my hand was almost all the time at the trigger of the camera.

Ah well, small price to pay if you ask me. Besides I do get sunburns really easy.

I'm Gonna Huff and Puff and Blow

2007-05-27T13:49:00.000+03:00

Wouldn't you like to blow the dandelion seeds too?

And the Colourful Painting Was the Sky

2007-05-13T11:35:00.000+03:00

I can hardly remember when was the last time I wanted to tell the driver to stop the car and let me out to take a picture. Yesterday was such a day. Or evening to be more exact.

We were driving back from a BBQ-evening with some friends and heading home when this magnificent sunset revealed itself to us. I told the driver to stop the car and let me out I would walk the rest of the way home I just needed to get a picture of this. A bit puzzled he pulled the over and let me out and I sprang into motion and headed to a close by rock overlooking the fields with better view.

I panted and wheezed when I got up there after having spent an evening with two cats to which I am allergic to but oh it was so worth it.

Freeeeeeedoooooom!

2007-05-06T10:49:00.000+03:00

Freedom of expression. Sure. But one could do it with more style.

The Dark Side of the Moon

2007-04-18T22:35:00.000+03:00

Yes I do know that the dark side of the Moon never faces towards Earth so technically this is not a picture of the dark side per se. But nevertheless it is cool to see the shadowy side of the Moon.

I considered calling this one "Here's the sickle, where's the hammer?" but decided otherwise.

Howl at the Moon

2007-04-15T12:31:00.000+03:00

Latokartano by Night

2007-04-05T08:49:00.000+03:00

The citylights at nighttime have always fascinated me. There is somekind of magic in them. I remember this one time in Norway when I was a kid. The sun had set a while ago and the surroundings were all black. We were driving high up in the mountains and were about to arrive into some town anytime soon.

Soon enough the citylights came to view when we drove around the mountain. Way down in the valley there was this little haven of light inviting us to arrive.

Starlit Sky

2007-03-26T22:35:00.000+03:00

It obviously is spring since I didn't freeze my ass off out there. Huzzah! That does mean more photo opportunities for me due to the sheer fact I once again can face the elements outside.

I decided to go out and try to snap some pictures of the halfmoon and test if I could capture some stars on the cell as well. The moon pictures turned out ok but I do like this picture of the starlit sky on which the moon makes his presence quite clear without stealing the whole show.

For those interested:
Exposure time 30s
f/4.0
ISO100

The Staring Contest

2007-03-18T22:25:00.000+02:00

I lost.

The Frozen Waterfall

2007-03-13T20:47:00.000+02:00

So it is officially spring here. Finally I might add.

At long last I got myself out and shooting some pictures. Nothing much since the main point of the walk was to just be outside on the glorious day but still. Some fresh material to post even if I shot only a 15 or so pictures.

And the weather seems to continue to be nice for a while longer too.

Happy happy joy joy!

Red

2007-03-10T14:19:00.000+02:00

As I might have mentioned earlier I have participated in small community photo contests at the discussion forums of the Pelit magazine. This is one of them and propably the best of them too. And the only one I have put any effort in to building up to composition.

Most of my shots have been more or less just a snapped shot from here and a snapped picture there which is pretty much clear if you look at them. But then again that just seems to be me. I don't seem to have the patience to build up any settings. Propably because I demand way too much from myself. Perfection right away and no slip ups allowed.

And that is just the thing. If I cannot get what I want right away I just give up. I'll have to work on that and just train on making those setups.

Tired Earthwalker

2007-02-27T10:53:00.000+02:00

On long walks taking photos one just might get tired. Then it is time to take a little rest and relax a bit.

The Art of Wushu

2007-02-19T11:19:00.000+02:00

Chinese calendar turned to the year of the pig at New Year, 18th February. To celebrate this a festival was held at Lasipalatsi Square in Helsinki. On the square there were many little stands offering things to eat and information about China and all that sort of stuff.

But the thing that caught my attention was the main (an only) stage on which were different groups performing. There were chinese dragons and lions and a wide variety of wushu performers. Here is one example for you people.

Squirt

2007-02-16T10:08:00.000+02:00

I have seen my fair share of fountains that spout high columns of water every now and then. But this one was inside a shopping mall in Mammuth II, Budapest, Hungary. The column of water reached to the level of the third floor (the floor the fountais is beign floor 0) very easily. And the water shot up so straight that barely any water at all sprinkled outside of the fountain below.

Over the last couple of weeks or so I have found myself longing for Budapest. Despite all of it lacks and flaws that became apparent after living there for 3 months and some odd weeks I actually do miss the city. Yes, the poor city is in sad state of disrepair but it is being renovated. Yes, poor me don't speak hungarian and only a small minority of locals speak english. Yes, my Diners Club card is practically useless there. But still, the city is beautiful, it has beautiful parks and the people are nice even though we might not quite understand each other.

As much as I wanted to get away from there during the last month I lived there, now I just want to get back.

Dock Your Airships Here

2007-02-11T10:55:00.000+02:00

Whatcha Staring At?

2007-02-07T15:16:00.000+02:00

Solar Eclipse By a Sculpture

2007-02-06T13:03:00.000+02:00

I just had to test my camera back in Hungary just to see how it would handle the backlit situation. Pretty well I would think.

This patricular statue is located at Hősök tere in Budapest. I like how well the details of the statue are visible even when taking a shot against such a strong lightsource as the Sun. If I remember correctly I couldn't see any details with naked eye on the site.

The settings for this shot were 1/400s, f/14.0 and ISO100

Until Death Do You Apart

2007-02-04T13:54:00.000+02:00

We happened to stumble upon a wedding party in Budapest. The happy couple was wed in St. Stephen's Basilica, which is quite magnificent church. The whole wedding party, as far as I could tell, was dressed up in pretty extravagant clothes. All that white cloth shined quite bright in the midday sun, lucky me I had my sunglasses on.

But that is one heck of a wedding dress the bride is wearing...

Art of Ice

2007-02-01T12:57:00.000+02:00

We had an ice sculpting competition last weekend here in Helsinki. The competition had participants from variety of countries and the resulting sculptures were mainly amazing. To make the scultures even more impressive than they already were, they were backlit with colored lights.

The sculpture presented here wasn't the winning one, but I did like it quite much. But the main reason I am posting this one is that I think this was the best picture I shot that evening. It is pretty hard to take pictures in dusk. And the fact that I was just about freezing didn't make it any easier.

I'll look through my pictures from the competition again later. Maybe there are some others worth posting. There should be if I weren't so selfcritical about my photos.

Whoa man, look at the colors!

2007-01-25T00:06:00.000+02:00

Way too many buildings look way too boring at night time. Either they are just about pitch black, glow in orange or white. Little more creativity please. Use of colors, besides the orange, shouldn't be that challenging. I mean, take a look at this building here. Normally, I bet, that stairway would be lit with white lights but with a little creative use of colorlights the building looks actually quite amazing.

The Fennia building in downtown Helsinki is another good example of non-traditional lighting of a house. It is lit with lights that change the color every now and then and it is beautiful. But for some reason it feels like it is illegal or something to use any other color of light than white or orange to enlighten (public) buildings.

I should photograph that Fennia building too sometime.

Roof Art

2007-01-23T00:20:00.000+02:00

Everyone living in a bigger town than 10 or citizens (or at least visited such a town) has surely seen some graffitis. Most of them are ugly as hell but there are some really artistic among them too.

But if you are going to art of grand scale on a public building then do it with style. Like this 175-year-old roof graffiti in Vienna, Austria. Now there's style!

What did you say? It is not a graffiti? It is a colorful roof tiling?

Oh yeah, no kidding?

Been Kind of Busy

2007-01-15T11:02:00.000+02:00

First of all I have to apologize for the three or four regular visitors and the bunch on non-regular ones for not updating for quite some time.

The reason me being somewhat busy is this little fella here. He is our litlle five (close to six now) months old testudo hermanni boettgeri or western hermann's tortoise. I have had quite a lot to learn about how to feed this guy what are his habits and so on. But most of my time has gone by mostly just watching him eat, sleep and wander around.

Quite not surprisingly most of my recent pictures are of him so I don't have much new stuff to post. I presume I am to dig to my archives yet again and try to find something worth posting.

Oh, one more thing, we call him Radagast even though it takes a decade or so to know his gender for sure.

In Every Death There Is a New Beginning

2006-12-28T18:18:00.000+02:00

As is the case with the late Riviera Hotel Portrayed in the previous post.

Now that I too have migrated to this new blogger I should utilize the label system. 90 or so posts to label afterwards does not sound too thrilling but sooner or later I will do so.

Nothing Lasts Forever

2006-12-21T10:52:00.000+02:00

But some things leave fascinating ruins behind.

The Great Pharaoh and His Harem

2006-12-12T12:01:00.000+02:00

Every once in a while there are things that I wish I didn't see. And no, I am not talking about the pharaoh, his costume is actually rather hilarious.

Happy Anniversary!

2006-11-26T17:49:00.000+02:00

It has been a year since I kicked up this little photoblog of mine. 86 posts, couple of more photos and few comments… That just about wraps up everything there is to tell. Anyhow I think I am going to bore you with little statistics, even though my StatCounter hasn’t been doing its work for a year yet, that’d be in a month or so.

As of November 26th 17:21 EET (+2 GMT) there have been 1618 visits to my blog which is actually quite nice, since I haven’t gone around and advertised my blog anywhere. Thank you all, even though I would like to get more feedback. Tell me what you like about my pictures, please.

Most of the visitors have been from Finland (41,94 %) with a fair share of US and UK visitor too (19,35 and 16,13) of which the latter country is probably due to a friend of mine who moved to London. Cheers mate!

Quite surprisingly 17,2 % of the visits have taken over an hour, did someone forget their browser on or what? On the other hand majority (62,1 %) of the visits were less than 5 seconds. Guess the Google search didn’t have the wanted results.

42 % of my visitors have used Internet Explorer 6.0 to browse my blog, while 36 % have used Mozilla Firefox 1.5 and 13 % have used Mozilla Firefox 2.0 and the rest 9 % is shared with Mozilla (5 %), Firefox 1.0.7 (2 %) and Opera (9.00).

Little over half (50,52 %)of the visitors have used 1024x768 resolution and 34,02 have used 1280x1024 resolution. There have been larger and smaller resolution too, but those are quite marginal, largest resolution being 1600x1200 (4,12 %) and the smallest being 800x600 (1,03 %) and then there is the ~6 % of unknown resolutions.

By far the most popular OS has been Windows XP (76 %) and Mac OS X is at second place with 14 %. 6 % of users have been running Windows 2000 and 4 % some unknown OS.

Judging from the number of returning visits I have some devoted readers. There are two (2) people with 10+ returning visits, one with 5-10 and 9 1-5 returning visits. 81,8 % of visitors have been first time visitors. Ok, I know that this data is quite unreliable since it is based on a cookie. If the same person visits my blog regularly but does that from different comp every time (s)he is always counted as a first timer.

I think this is enough boring data for now. Here is a picture to end this post. This is one of the oldest pictures I have taken. It certainly isn’t my first, but one of the oldest that have survived. It was taken on a beach of Rhodes summertime around 1990 or so can’t quite remember the exact year.

Rise and Shine!

2006-11-24T21:12:00.000+02:00

There was a magnificent sunrise here the other day. I have missed these for quite some time. In both meanings of the word, I would presume.

I tend to sleep long in the mornings, mostly because I go to bed relatively late and because I need more sleep than the average person does. Therefore I get up too late to see the sunrises.

Thankfully winter is coming and the sun will rise later so I am more likely to see the rising sun more often. That is one of the few things I like about winter. And because I have missed the sun rises by waking up too late I have begun to miss seeing them. I think I am over explaining here.

Nevertheless breathtaking sunrises are a more important thing for me than the equally breathtaking sunsets, just because I see fewer of the sunrises. And now I miss the sunsets too…

--

Finally, after a couple of weeks with the Internet connection cut off due to "slight"(* troubles from our new ISP, I am able to post again. Thank you for your patience.

(* It turned out that no one hadn't been to our building basement and switched the cable from the equipment of our previous ISP to the machine of our current one. Way to go!

Also I have had troubles publishing... Every time I have tried to the progress meter stucks to 20 % and never finishes. That kinda sucks. As of now it is 24th of November, I wrote this entry back in October 31st...

Hide & Seek

2006-10-27T16:46:00.000+03:00

Feeling Tired? Take a Nap!

2006-10-25T11:30:00.000+03:00

Sometimes the pace of this world seems way too hectic. Everyone seems to be in such a terrible hurry to somewhere that no-one remembers to take it easy anymore. I for myself have noticed that when ever I go to the town with a schedule the time always just seems to run out. “Oh heck, I gotta run to get in time to these other places!”, “I’ve been here for too long!” and “Now I won’t have enough time to go to that one place anymore!” seem to be very common thoughts then. But when I go out to town to just stroll and visit the same places without any kind of schedule I have no hurry to anywhere. And still I manage to go to all the places I had intended to. Funny isn’t it?

So when I saw this little koala I was kinda envious of him/her. I mean, (s)he looks like (s)he has no worries what so ever. No obligations, no hurries, no pressure. Then again (s)he is caged in a relatively small space, so maybe I am the lucky one after all.

But you people, remember to take it easy once in a while!

The Path of Tranquility

2006-10-24T19:01:00.000+03:00

Eventhough this picture is not taken from any japanese garden it still radiates the aura of zen garden.

The exact location where this picture was taken has faded from my memory, but I can remember that much that it was taken in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The Power Of Thy Sword

2006-10-23T10:24:00.000+03:00

Lord of battle I pray on bended knee conquest by the rising sun
I'll wait for thy command with flame and blood at hand
glory and a broken sword.

I'm the master of the world I have no fear of man or beast
Born inside the soul of the world
Riding hard breaking bone with steel and stone
Eternal might I was born to wield.

Let us drink to the battles we've lived and we've fought
Celebrate the pain and havoc we have wrought
Great heroes charge into the fight
From the north to the south in the black of night

The clash of honor calls to stand when others fall
Gods of war feel the power of my sword

Drink to the battles we've lived and we've fought
Celebrate the pain and havoc we have wrought
Great heroes charge into the fight
From the north to the south in the black of night

Fierce is my blade fierce is my hate born to die in battle
I laugh at my fate
Now pay in blood when your blood has been spilled
You're never forgiven death is fulfilled !

The clash of honor calls to stand when others fall
Gods of war feel the power of my sword

The clash of honor calls
I will stand when others fall
Open magic doors
The will know the power of my sword

There is blood in my hands there is blood in my eyes
With blood in my voice I scream as you die
Thirsting for vengeance and mounds of the slain
Shaking the forest onto the plain

Fierce is my blade fierce is my hate born to die in battle
I laugh at my fate
Now pay in blood when your blood has been spilled
You're never forgiven death is fulfilled !

The clash of honor calls to stand when others fall
Gods of war feel the power of my sword

-----

Lyrics by Manowar

The Rose and a Basin

2006-10-22T17:29:00.000+03:00

I'm Cracking Up I Need a Pill

2006-10-17T22:31:00.000+03:00

Some Notable Features

2006-10-15T09:18:00.000+03:00

Lion's mane:

Cheetah's spots:

Keen eyesight:

Leather wings:

Rhinoceros' horn:

Tortoise shells:

Zebra stripes:

Crocodile jaws:

Panda's thumb:

Camel toe:

Some Friendly Tips on What to Shoot

2006-10-13T13:51:00.000+03:00

Hey you with the camera! Take a pic o' this!

The Two of Us

2006-10-08T23:56:00.000+03:00

Time to upgrade the hardware?

2006-10-08T12:27:00.000+03:00

In the computer gaming world there is a way to increase the fps rate by adding a fog to the world. This way the drawing distance is lower and the stress on GPU is lower and thus the game runs smoother.

The fog on games starts to bug after a while even though it sometimes is realistic to have ridiculously low visibility. Unfortunately on some games, especially the older ones, the fog is there 24/7.

Nevertheless it is pretty neat to experience such a fog in real life every now and then.

Just don't stand there!

2006-10-06T00:15:00.000+03:00

'Nuff said. Thus in Vienna Austria.

It wouldn't occur to me go standing there. Take a shortcut through? Nah.

But hey, better safe than sorry!

No More Summer?

2006-09-28T09:41:00.001+03:00

So it is autumn already it seems. Where did the summer go? Oh, right, it is September already after all. As a true friend of summer and warmth I am always a bit disappointed each fall when the temperatures start to fall. Autumn in itself is still ok. The colors are beautiful, the crisp air enjoyable and such.

But the arriving of autumn always means that the winter is around the corner. And I am not a big fan of below +15 °C temperatures. And I just about hate the temperatures below +0 °C. Oh well, I got to live with it, after all I do live in Finland.

Prior to Storm

2006-09-25T13:32:00.000+03:00

On St. Stephen’s Day in Hungary there were all sorts of entertainment for the masses. It was the national day of Hungary, the founding day of the kingdom and a public holiday. A Red Bull Air Race was held over the Danube and after that there was a grand fireworks display.

Not only that, the nature herself put up quite a show. A heavy thunderstorm was rising and I managed to snap a picture of one of the lightning strikes.

Unfortunately the storm did induce a panic in the crowd. The heavy rain and strong winds snapped branches off the trees and tiles from the roofs of the buildings. The result being a couple of deaths and a whole bunch load of injured people. Very unfortunate.

The Many Faces of Budapest (part VII)

2006-09-22T17:26:00.000+03:00

I don’t have the faintest idea what this building is. It could be a hotel, conference center or something like that. It has “Johann Strauss Cafe & Caviar House” on the second floor, some shops on the first floor (or so it seemed when I peeked through the front door). What ever is the purpose of this building, I can tell you it looks amazing! Well, I guess you can see it yourself too.

If anyone with the knowledge of this building happens to read this, would you be kind enough to leave a comment and enlighten me a bit?

The Many Faces of Budapest (part VI)

2006-09-22T17:14:00.000+03:00

On my recent posts about the looks and the state of the buildings in Budapest I have focused on the side that is not too obviously visible. That is the sad truth about the city, but luckily there are plenty of beautiful and renovated buildings too. Some of the buildings are covered in advertisements but as long as the ads are of this quality I don’t mind.

For your information, there is no corner in the middle of the building, the wall is flat.

Take a Swim on the Danube

2006-09-16T17:59:00.000+03:00

The Danube might not be the cleanest river in the world, nor the dirtiest for that matter, but I would not recommend you to take dip there. And when the river is flooding its current is pretty strong it isn’t the safest swimming place on that perspective either.

But these ingenious Austrian people have managed to get a workaround for that matter too. In Vienna I saw this barge that was transformed to be an outdoors swimming pool. Now the people can go and take a swim on the Danube, which is without a doubt wiser than taking a swim in the Danube…

Blogger’s Block

2006-09-13T14:26:00.000+03:00

Every picture needs a story. Otherwise they are just some random pictures from random places at random times. Totally uninteresting.

Every picture has a story. But is it a story worth telling? Does it tell anything to anyone else but me? There’s the problem I am having right now. I have plenty of pictures I would like to post but I have nothing worthwhile to write about them. For example the earlier post about Leroy… I barely got myself to publish it. Too little of a story there.

How about this one then? The poor picture was just about randomly selected to accompany my rant about writer’s block. It is a fine picture and would deserve more but what can I do? If I don’t have anything decent to write then I don’t.

This is getting pretty frustrating. Both to write this particular post by force and to have nothing to write about anything.

Experiments with Exposure

2006-09-12T11:58:00.000+03:00

I have tried several times tried to take a picture of the moon at night. All of these have ended up as overexposed pictures where the moon in nothing more but a bright sphere on the sky. Yet again I decided to experiment a little and dug out my tripod.

After a couple of shots with more or less automatic settings I decided to switch to full manual. All of the pictures below have been taken with ISO100 and aperture size 5.6.

The exposure times are from top left to bottom right as follows:
1 s, 1/4 s, 1/20 s, 1/60 s,
1/125 s, 1/250 s, 1/400 s, 1/800 s,
1/1250 s, 1/2000 s, 1/3200 s and 1/4000 s.

Personaly I think the moons 6-8 are the best ones.

Lerooooooy Jeeenkisahhh!

2006-09-06T09:51:00.000+03:00

No real purpose with this picture, the banner just made me laugh. Either you get it or you don't. If you do, you do. If you don't then maybe you should play more WoW (or check this site out).

The Fishermen's Bastion at Dusk

2006-09-05T17:29:00.000+03:00

During the three months I spent in Budapest I came to the conclusion that the city is actually very photogenic. At night. Or at least late in the evening when there isn’t that much light to see and spot the numerous imperfections the city has. I mean, the buildings in Budapest are, were, beautiful but are in miserable shape. The facing tiles are falling off of many buildings; the stone arcs of some buildings have totally crumbled leaving only the supporting frames visible and so on. Sad thing to look at really.

But when the night comes away goes the miserable details and in comes the beautiful silhouettes. And the spotlights. And the decorative lights. And everything else that captures the attention. Like this setting sun behind the Fishermen’s Bastion, pretty much everything in Budapest looks better in night time than during the day. Well okay, this is bad example in such a way that the Bastion is actually kept in good condition. As is the Buda Castle which, alas, was pretty much covered in campaign ads and such during the time I stayed in Budapest. But nevertheless they became invisible during the night time, unless it happened to be at beam of a spotlight.

For all it seems I can quote a Hungarian traveling companion of ours considering the sad state of the buildings: “The Hungarian people just don’t seem to care.” Too bad.

The Bridge That Once Was

2006-08-26T11:48:00.000+03:00

It is somewhat amazing how I find myself wondering over things gone. The Roman ruins of Aquincum (and more here) were a place of marvel to me. The old towns of Rhodes, Vienna, Tallinn, Kotor and so on are the exact same thing. I see some glimpses of things that once were and in my mind kind of rebuild them.

Through my minds eyes I saw the buildings of Aquincum still standing and the streets full of life. As do I see this here bridge still standing. This bridge is located just outside the old town of Kotor, Montenegro. Right alongside it is a new bridge but the remains of the old bridge have been left lying in the stream. And what a beautiful, clear watered stream it was. Further downstream, closer to the bay itself there were some small boats anchored. At first it looked like those boats were levitating on the air, I just couldn’t see the water until I got closer.

Such beauty I so rarely see.

A Picturesque Sunset

2006-08-16T20:05:00.000+03:00

As I said in my earlier post, sunsets come and go. They do, but every so often the sunset is something spectacular. This time the orange-red clouds and turquoise sky made a really unusual combination. The black mountains cropped the pale blue part of the sky in the horizon leaving only the most vivid colour visible.

It was truly magnificent. The outside temperature was well over +25 °C even after the nightfall so you can probably guess just how much I wanted to just go to the near by grass field, lay back and just admire the sky.

Too bad I was in a moving train…

...Always an RPGamer

2006-08-15T16:57:00.000+03:00

And this here is an old Hungarian castle on the bank of Danube. Or for the most of the people it is. For me it is pretty clearly a place where my character based on Saint Jerome, portrayed in the previous post, just might live.

It is located somewhere remote on a river bank on the island of Hârn, in the fantasy world of HârnWorld. It is simple yet quite complex and it does have somewhat of a mysterious aura to it, for real too. For me that isn’t just a ruined old castle but it is so much more too.

Just like this castle or the statue of St. Jerome, I see more in the things around me as an RPGamer that what I would see as a regular guy. For most of the people an abandoned old factory is something very dull but for me… I see an inspiration for a RPG scenario or two. Some people see old statues of people long gone, I see inspiration for characters. Some people see clearing in woods with a fallen tree, I see a camping site for adventurers, maybe even the camp and campfire too.

For a couple of years I didn’t register these. Everything I saw was just that, what I saw, nothing more, nothing less. That was because of personal worries of my own and worries about my wife who was depressed, drowning to her work, got burn out and her appendix became infected and she had to be operated. On top of that I myself got incurably sick. So no wonder I myself got quite depressed too.

But now my imagination runs wild once again.

Once an RPGamer...

2006-08-15T16:41:00.000+03:00

If you are an RP gamer then I am sure you know what I am talking about here. Ever since I started playing pen and paper (PnP) Role Playing Games (RPG) I have looked the world around me very differently. For example this statue here, as you can read from the base it portrays Saint Hieronimus, a man who translated Bible from Greek and Hebrew to Latin. This here statue can be found at St. Stephen's Basilica in Budapest, which in itself is a sight to see.

But I digress. What I was going to say was that when I saw this statue the first thing that came to my mind was that “man, some day I will make a RP character based on this statue. That man has the looks of a mage!” And that I will do. Most likely as a non player character (NPC) in my HârnMaster campaign. Or maybe I’ll let this statue represent a NPC already created. Who knows. One thing is certain though, I will implement him in some way.

In Tonight’s Episode of Raw Nature: Exhibitionistic Flying Fox!

2006-08-14T22:42:00.000+03:00

We were at the jungle house of the Tiergarten Schönbrunn, the Zoo of Vienna and found these large bats hanging from the ceiling there. All of a sudden my wife started to giggle and pointed at one of the bats “Is that a boy or what?”

Yes, he was a boy indeed and quite randy one too. For a long time he hung with on leg only and covered himself with merely his other wing leaving him half exposed. And then all of a sudden he stretched his wings wide open. The sight was quite something different. I mean the sight of the bat with his wings spread wide open making him look big was astonishing while in the same time his private parts… Well they just launched the little boy and girl reaction in both of us. “Look a penis!” Tee hee hee!

Oh for crying out loud, Batman! Cover yourself!

The Versailles of Austria

2006-08-14T21:20:00.000+03:00

Schönbrunn palace the Austrian equivalent of Versailles is actually quite a sight. No picture really can do real justice to since no picture can capture the whole of the palace and its vast gardens. Or actually an aerial picture could but that is a different thing altogether since in aerial photo either the details are way too small or the picture in itself is way too big.

Anyways I visited the palace twice and at first time really didn’t have a possibility to try and find a way to take photo of the palace in any other manner than the regular tourist slash guidebook way. On the second visit to the palace grounds this friendly gentleman was doing some yoga exercises. Maybe he wasn’t friendly I don’t know but he did have a good, sculpted body and gave me a perfect opportunity to take at least a little different photo of the palace.

Besides I know my wife liked the fellas body, so having the opportunity and good excuse, I decided to get two flies with one shot. Especially since in Montenegro I saw this good looking guy with muscular body, nice six-pack and well formed chest and biceps. After explaining to my wife what she missed when she didn’t come to take a walk with me she asked me that why didn’t I take a picture of him, since I did have my camera with me.

Well indeed, why didn’t I?

Ready, STEADY, Shoot!

2006-08-14T15:55:00.000+03:00

What to do when you have no tripod on want to take a more artistic shot during night time? Have a very steady hand and/or look for something to support your camera against. I did the latter and I suppose the former did help too. 2 seconds of exposure time is quite a long time to keep the camera steady even with some support, which in this case was widening in the lower part of a street lamp. Not too good, since it was rather smooth and in about 45 degree angle. In fact you can see part of it in the lower left corner of the picture.

I rarely have any good opportunities to take any pictures of this kind. I have been playing around with the idea of drawing with light to the photograph but haven’t been able to find a suitable light source to do that. It would need to be small enough for me to be able to draw with it. It should have light bright enough to be visible but dim enough to not … Well, be too bright and ruin the picture. Gotta keep looking for something suitable.

And Then There Was Storm

2006-08-12T20:18:00.000+03:00

Sometimes the Mother Nature gives you a real show and in sometimes a good shower right afterwards. I have many, many times seen a wall of rain but those walls have been somewhere far away. Far enough to see the area of the (rain) shower as a whole, I bet you know what I mean.

But never ever have I seen such a wall of rain coming straight towards myself. This time I did. Veni, vidi, lavi (hope I used the online dictionary correctly). The rain was quite heavy for over half an hour and then little by little faded away. But as you can see it began quite abruptly.

Sunsets come and go but occurrences like this… Oh so rare.

-----
Edit: Had to reupload the picture since the "small" setting in Picasa indeed did make the picture small. Both the thumbnail and the actual picture. I hope this manual upload works better. I'll leave the version Picasa did here:

Ahoy Down There!

2006-07-28T00:22:00.000+03:00

Have you ever had an irresistable urge to just yell to somebody you most definitely do not know, just to get their attention and no other reason?

Well I have. Such was the case this time too. I did resist the urge this time, as usually. One reason being the height, I would've had to really truly shout, the language barrier, the girls were most likely hungarian and then the simple fact that I was on Margit Hid, a bridge with heavy traffic, even louder shouting required.

But I did take a picture though. This bird's eye view is actually very cool. There aren't too many changes to take pictures just about straight down from a reasonable height. I'll have to find more opportunities to shoot more pictures like this one.

A Repellent Shared Victory!

2006-07-26T20:35:00.000+03:00

Once again a photo contest victory in the gaming community of Pelit.fi discussion board. Well a shared victory actually. Sami Möttö gathered equal amount of votes as I with this photo.

The topic was "luotaantyöntävä" in finnish which translates to forbidding, repellent, repulsive or unapproachable in english. Most of the people had an approach of something disgusting like mold on cream cheese, bugs and such.

I on the other hand took the topic a little more freely. For me the picture came more as "luotaan työntävä" which translates to repellent according to FinnPlace dictionary. The slight difference in finnish words of "luotaantyöntävä" and "luotaan työntävä" is that the former is more of something disgusting and latter is more of something that pushes something else away. Former being more of metaphorical and latter concrete way of pushing something away.

Besides the tree in my picture reminds me a little of Dr. Zoidberg. It can't be that repulsive!

Just some random pictures

2006-07-25T12:49:00.001+03:00

Just a quick check how Blogger handels the way it posts pictures when the at upload differenct sizes are selected. The first is small, second medium and the last is large. Earlier I presumed that it would affect the size of the picture shown after clicking the thumbnail. It actually seems to affect the tumbnail size. Now that explains a thing or two with the problems I have had with the layout of the text in my recent posts. Now all that remains to be checked is that if the picture behind the thumbnail is resized too.

Oh, I do like the way sun shines through the clouds. Not quite just random pictures after all.

Edit: The size indeed does affect only the thumbnails. I guess I could've found that one out by reading some help files, readmes or stuff like that. But hey, I am an engineer, if I need to open a manual (or something related) something has already gone wrong...

Return to Aquincum

2006-07-17T17:12:00.000+03:00

As I promised earlier here are some more photos from the ruins of Aquincum.

First of all is the map of the excavation site and what is what in the ruins. Shop streets, public baths, forum, court of law and such. It was actually quite surprising how many baths this small area had. And yet the romans were not the people who brought the bath culture to Hungary, it was the ottoman turks, if I remember correctly that is. Please do rectify me if I am mistaken.

And now to the ruins themselves. This time we went to the excavation site itself to take a closer look of the ruins.

The area itself seems a bit too small for 40000 or so people, but then again the town of Aquincum streched on a far wider area than has been excavated. According to a guidebook of mine there are more ruins of the civilian town a kilometer or two to the south from these ruins. Although I don't know if the town itself was couple of kilometers in diameter I wouldn't think it to be impossible either.

The picture here, taken from a shadow of a column, displays part of the law-court building (basilika).

And here are the ruined remains of the so-called Butcher's house. It does take some imagination to see about anything supporting of any functionality for this ruined building but I trust the archeologists have made, at least, well educated guesses. I am not quite sure but I preume that the different coloured sand indicates what part of the ruins have been at one time the indoors (the red) and what has been outdoors (the white). It seemed pretty reasonable almost throughout the whole excavation but on some areas there was only white sand around the ruins.

Here on the far left side of the picture can be seen what remains of the north-south main road (cardo) and row of shops alongside it. right of the column are artisan societies' (collegii) headquarters in the front and artisans' houses further back. Even further back are the ruins of market-place and behind those are the ruins of the great public bath in the center of town.

Then follows a picture taken towards the place the previous picture was taken. This is the so colled E street. On the right side is the so-called merchant's house and on the left side of the street are some residental buildings with gardens.

And here is one of my personal favourites. Ruins of a large residental building with colonnaded central courtyard (peristylium). I can only imagine how beautiful that courtyard might have been "back then" in the roman days. Even ruined it looks peaceful and serene and made me want to just go there and relax. I could almost see and hear the flowing water in the fountain.

Amongst the ruins were, as I mentioned earlier, a few bath houses. In one of them the pool was quite clearly visible after all these years. When I was there I could imagine roman people taking a bath here. Someone stepping down the steps to the pool and other sitting on the edge of the pool one leg in the water. When looking at this picture I still can see them but I don't know just how the image relays through the picture.

Then this here picture is taken from the northeastern corner of the excavation site. The ruins are yet again of a bath house, public bath. If the shapes of the ruins in the other buildings tell anything then the semicircular shaped parts of the ruins are where the cold, hot and lukewarm pools were. The ruins have not been dug out completely, as you can see, because just outside of the right side of the picture is a paved road. Not heavily used but obstacle to the excavation anyways.

And then some examples of roman engineering. Here are the remains of underfloor heating. This kind of constucting was used in the bath houses to warm th water in the pools and steam rooms. Some more information about this can be found in Wikipedia under the topic of caldarium. Basicly the construction circulated hot air under the pool and warmed the water in the pool or in the case of the steamroom it evaporated the water to make the steam that heated the steamroom.

And last but not least, the aqueduct. While not quite as grand as in the wikipedia entry, pretty amazing still. It was rather tricky to get here, next to the aqueduct, since it is located between an eight laned highway. Outside the excavation site there is a pedastrian crossing leading to virtualy nowhere. Except between the roads where this bit of the aqueduct is located.

This picture here gives a little better idea of how the aqueduct bits are located. This bit here is not the same as the one in the previous picture, as you propably had already guessed. Here in Budapest are more of these ruins among modern stuctures, freeways, apartment buildings and such. Luckily enough some of those have remained to this day.

Danube by Night

2006-07-09T17:31:00.000+03:00

Ok first off, taking pictures at nigh without using a tripod… Well that is quite challenging. Thanks to the image stabilizer and ISO1600 the exposure time could be kept in reasonable limits. In this case a whopping one third of a second. The picture isn’t the sharpest one and the amount of noise in the picture is tremendous but still I’d dare say the picture is good considering the amount of light available and the lag the tripod. I did brace the camera to the bridge railing which did shake every time a car went by.

Ok enough with that and time for some wonderings. While walking around the town at night you can witness some pretty weird things. One was a couple of lads taking pictures of each other. They had one compact camera and the other fellow stood astride above a light that was dug into the ground and shed light upwards. And the camera was apparently set to timer and positioned on the ground between the fellow’s legs. Hmmm. Strange. I had to double check that the person photographed thus was not a girl and wearing a skirt. No, they both were dudes.

The second weird thing was an elderly man who walked along the bank of Danube, between the road and river where there was no sidewalk. Well that ain’t that strange but the strange thing was that he started to undress himself. After a couple of minutes of taking his pants off we got bored and went on our way.

Third, there is a pedestrian bridge festival going on here when Széchenyi Chain Bridge, the oldest bridge here, is shut off from the traffic. There is supposedly all sorts of events and program late into the night, but I didn’t expect to see a glassblower at work around 00:15! He did make very good looking glass ornaments though. Oh, and at the Pest side of the river I at last found a nice café called the Festival Café. The name, unfortunately, suggests that the café is there only for the duration of the festival. Luckily the festival takes place on every weekend thoughout July

And fourth. I know being an entrepreneur is a hard job and that as an entrepreneur you can decide yourself when you are going work and such. But seriously, keeping a flower booth open at 01:00 in the night? Come on, we saw just half a dozen of other people walking the whole street! There were no customers at sight and they kept the booth open! Or so I thought. When we got to the booth, indeed there came a couple who stopped to look at the flower bouquets and I understood correctly they did buy something. Maybe if they didn’t have customers they wouldn’t keep the booth open. And since the booth was open apparently they do have customers late at night too…

Go figure.

A Blast from the Past

2006-07-02T19:51:00.001+03:00

Now this is something I have been waiting to see for almost 20 years now. Genuine ruins of an ancient civilization. Welcome to Aquincum, capital of Pannonia Inferior, part of the Roman Empire.

Although not quite the fulfilment of what I was hoping to see this still is the best so far. I have seen some medieval ruins but nothing from the ancient times. So this, what we, my wife and I, saw as our first glimpse of the ancient Roman Ruins was pretty exciting. It funnily enough looks like the ruins are at some backyard but I am pretty sure that it is the backyard of a museum. Not much of a ruins of a city but impressive enough.

Further down the road I peeked through a gate and saw more of the ruins. Now this started to look more like something big. I don’t have a clue of what that might have been. It was a big building some 2000 years ago (boy that sounds like a lot!), that much I can tell from the size of what remains. The guide book says that here in the ruins of Aquincum are ruins of villas, workshops and all sorts of public places. Here once lived 40 000 people who came with the roman legions. The legions themselves resided further away from the town of Aquincum.

Even further down the road we found out that there was a lower fence which allowed us to see more of the ruins. Now this does look like something really big. Those two ruins earlier apparently were of smaller buildings. But this one here, this is of something bigger. It seemed to have at least six rooms where as the two earlier had three or four, although they are not completely in the pictures. Not that a building of six or so rooms would have been quite that big, I recon, but who knows how many story high it was. And for being a building in a town six rooms on a ground floor is pretty big if you ask me.

And finally we did see more of the Aquincum that just a ruins of a house or two. Now we were able to see what the town plan had looked like. There was even one lone wall still standing and one Corinthian style column too. This is more like it! I still am waiting to see more of the genuine, real, buildings of ancient times that I do know to be there. I mean Colosseum, Forum Romanum and such in Rome and Parthenon in Athens and so on.

The guide book mentions ruins of a roman spa under some motorway, about a dozen lone columns in the middle of apartment buildings built in the 60s, part of an aqueduct near a supermarket (which I did see from the window of the local train when returning to the hotel)… There is much more to see. The town of Aquincum did spread over a large area and there are ruins here and there in the Óbuda region which is just about built over the roman ruins. When I do go back there to do some exploring be sure to have another photo coverage.

Wroooooom! Or a Lucky Shot!

2006-06-30T16:14:00.000+03:00

Sometimes, every now and then, people get lucky. Someone might find a 20 euro bill from the floor of super market, other might find a rock with resemblance of Jesus and someone just might get a lucky shot that just so happens to look pretty good. I am one of the latter kind of people (ok, I did find the 20 euro bill too).

I saw this neat looking retro style sports car standing in the lights and took a picture of it. Then I switched my camera to sports mode to be able to take more pictures while the car passes by. Unfortunately there was another car blocking the view for quite some time when the light turned green. Fortunately it was some old station wagon and accelerated way much slower than the sports car. Fast enough, though, to block my view long enough for me to snap only this one picture when the car was closer. And of course I wasn’t fast enough to zoom out the picture to make the whole car fit into the picture…

But after all the result is actually a good one. A lucky shot.

Sheet Lightning

2006-06-29T13:23:00.000+03:00

Yesterday evening while taking a walk after sunset I spotted some flashing lights “somewhere over the buildings”. At first we thought it was somebody taking pictures with flash-light and we gave it no further thought. But after walking a few block more and the flashing light still being visible over the rooftops we decided it was something else, maybe an outdoors concert light or something. When we got to a bigger street with better visibility, no more apartment buildings all around us, we realized it was a thunderstorm in the horizon.

The lightning strikes flashed but we heard no rumbling what so ever. We then decided to walk to the Heroes’ Square to take some pictures of it. While walking there we marveled the light show the mother nature gave us. It really was quite something. I mean bright lightning striking behind the clouds, lightening up the whole horizon with the clouds casting shadows of the lightning strike. Phenomenal.

When we got to the square we looked for a darker spot so that the light from the streetlight wouldn’t mess up the pictures. I set the camera to Shutter-priority AE, the ISO value to 1600 and the drive mode to continuous shooting. Then I support the camera against a hand rail and pointed it up to the sky and started shooting.

Couple of hundred frames later I was able to get only one decent picture. The one posted here. Somewhat frustrating but shooting a lightning strike is more about luck that anything else when you are only able to take a maximum of three (3) shots per second.

A Barrens Giraffe!

2006-06-24T00:08:00.000+03:00

As promised earlier here is one more picture sneak peeked outside the zoo fence. Once I saw that giraffe I made my mind that I want to visit that zoo and see those animals even closer! The Hippopotamus and elephant were cute also but some how this giraffe was the one. Maybe they have some zhevra runners there too!

--

On a side note as you might have spotted from the couple latest posts I seem to have a little problem with the exposure of the pictures. During daytime the pictures seem to get over exposed very easily. Even though my camera is set to automatic the exposure isn’t quite right. I have worked around that by manually setting the exposure compensation to -1 step. That seems to be enough to prevent the white areas from getting way too bright but then I should try and remember set the compensation again when I am shooting after the sunset.

I’m not quite sure if the reason for the over exposure is the camera or the bright sunlight here in Hungary but either way it is annoying. Be it as it may I’ll just have to adapt and learn to remember to set the exposure compensation…