Back from "Spring" Break

...a week and over 770 photos later. The "spring" part was a little more winter-like than what I usually associate with spring break. It snowed at least a portion of each of the first three days, and then the weather turned nicer and more spring-like. As I get things organized over the next few weeks, I'll be sure to post photos from all over the Czech Republic.

For now, here are the first and last photos I took on the trip.

Snow Outside WWII Era Bunker "Trvz Bouda" - Czech Republic



Roadside Chapel - Near Znojmo, Moravia, Czech Republic

March Madness

...the first day of spring, started off with winter having the upper hand, but my money is on spring over the long haul :)

Forsythia with Snow - Veliki Park, Sarajevo

A Light Dusting of Snow

Mistletoe - Veliki Park, Sarajevo

Spring Break and Another Waterfall

Spring break is coming up and a week from now we will be road-tripping to and through the Czech Republic. One of the first "spring break" vacations we took as a family was in 2000 through upstate New York including a stay in Letchworth State Park, a stop in Rochester that included the George Eastman House/Museum and later on to Niagara Falls. We really enjoyed Letchworth, it was so early in the spring that we had the park to ourselves, sharing only with the deer. Spring hadn't really "sprung" yet that far north and things weren't really even starting to turn green.

The photo below of the Genesee River plunging over the Middle Falls in Portage Canyon was one of many many slides I took that trip. One night a few years back, I was scanning slides for avisualplanet.com and I thought this might be a good one. Once I scanned it, I decided that maybe it was too dark and dreary but I ended up submitting the photo anyway. Which is a good thing, as it has consistently been the most popular of any of the photos I have supplied to them.

Genesee River Middle Falls - Letchworth State Park, New York

Forgotten Waterfall

You go places, take photos, have fun etc and think you will never forget...well I forgot. I believe I took this photo on the path up to Reichenbach Falls, Meiringen Switzerland, near Grindelwald. But I only remember because I remembered it was a waterfall near Grindelwald and through the miracle of the internet and a few minutes of search, I found enough photos and read enough to convince me this was it. This is a scan I did a about 3 1/2 years ago from a slide I took in probably 1994 or 1995.

Reichenbach Falls - Meiringen, Switzerland

Casting a Shadow

Jesus casts his shadow...

St. Louis Cathedral - French Quarter, New Orleans

Following the Path

This was shot the night before this one. I tried to get the exposures right for an HDR merge but I was never really happy with the results. I do like the higher contrast and the dark edges of this one exposure by itself though.

Fork in the Road at Midnight - Veliki Park, Sarajevo BiH

Žuta Tabija, Fun with the Channel Mixer

This is a photo from a couple weeks ago. I was reading through the PhotoNet forums this morning and one member replied to a question with a quick off-handed one liner about settings using the Photoshop CS2 "Channel mixer". It got me to thinking about these photos again. I haven't spent any time doing the specific editing or masking....the high contrast version would especially benefit. These were produced with just the channel mixer (and a "levels" adjustment in the case of the high contrast version). So here are the results of my "play" today. In a couple cases, its hard to believe it all comes from the same photograph.

Trees on Žuta Tabija (Yellow Bastion) - Sarajevo BiH
Original Color Version




Black and White Version




A Moody Version




A False Infrared Version




A High Contrast, Sketchy Version

Black and ...

white...

I thought of this past entry the other day when I was walking through the park. It was one of those days with the beautiful pure blue sky we had recently. I started thinking how I could take various photos in the park during the year that were essentially only two colors. I was too lazy to run back and get my camera at the time for "Black and ...Blue". Hopefully I'll get another opportunity

However, as chance would have it, the temperature dropped 40 degrees or so and it snowed a ton of very sticky white stuff. So this morning with all that in mind I saw this interesting shaped tree and took a photo...a natural black and white.

Veliki Park - Sarajevo

Shelby's Basketball

Shelby's team played a basketball game this evening. Girls' basketball is just getting started here (boy's basketball is VERY established) so there aren't a lot of teams, not a lot of games, and many of the girls are just learning. The team they played was bigger, older, faster and had obviously been playing together a while. Still, Shelby's team looked much better than their previous outing a month or so ago. Practice 3 days a week must be paying off :)

Shelby on Defense



Shelby on Offense

Cooking, Bosnian Style

Today was a busy day. There was a little group of us that got together a couple times to learn some Bosnian terminology related to cooking. We especially went over recipes for Bosnian pita (pie). Specifically the spinach (zeljanica), ground meat (burek), potato (krompiruša) and zucchini (tikvenica) versions of pita. Today was the culmination of those gatherings. We were shown how to make not only the fillings, but homemade phyllo dough (jufka). I tried my hand at rolling it out and stretching it thin. I think with a little bit of practice I may get the hang of it.

Making the Phyllo



The Results - Zeljanica