Enjoying some time off with family and friends. Trying out grandpa's chair...he may need to work on his balance a bit...

Chance in the Big Chair

Maya and the Afghan

Maya likes blankets and pillows to curl up on...she seems to like Elesa's latest project before it is even finished...

Maya and the Afghan

7 - 10 Split

Luck wasn't with dad on the bowling alley earlier this week...

The Creation of a 7 - 10 Split

Shelby Graduates!

Congratulations to Shelby and all the graduates...QSI Sarajevo's largest graduating class ever, 4....

Shelby Receives Her Diploma

Jeff Takes People Pictures Too

They are a very small percentage of what I take, and I'm not particularly good at it (especially not good using flash), but occasionally I end up quite pleased with some of my informal, non-posed portraits.

Elesa Remembers What it is Like to Have Little OnesCzech Republic, Spring 2008

summer vacation

If you haven't figured it out by the lack of posts, I"m taking some time off... so if you just have to see photos, you can see what is playing on some of the digital photo frames in our family. After receiving one as a Christmas present a couple years ago from my kids. we all enjoyed it so much that we gave one to both my parents and Elesa's....the last load of a card for theirs can be found at my photobucket site, HERE.

Bosnian Cooking, Jeff Style

A follow-up to this past entry. Today I tried my hand at making "Jeff's Gourmet" version of pita...Bosnian pie. I didn't make my own phyllo, but I made up my own filling recipe. Shelby was quite aghast..."Burek doesn't have walnuts in IT!". But I was not to be deterred. I followed along similar to the zeljanica we did in out little class a while back. but....no spinach. Instead I added chicken, gorgonzola cheese and walnuts to the egg/cheese filling mixture. It was quite tasty if I do say so myself. Ema, who had joined Shelby in teasing me about my recipe, did ask for a bit more :) and Carl seemed to like it.

Jeff's Gourmet Chicken Gorgonzola Pita with WalnutsOn the left, ready for the oven, on the right fresh out of the oven

Self Portrait with Shelby

A "fun" photo I probably would have never taken just a couple years ago in the days of film. When Shelby and I were out with our cameras in Prague, on our way up to the castle, I noticed our reflection in a menu written on a mirror across the street. I zoomed out to 200 with my 70-200 and focused on our reflection vice the written menu....and shazam!

Self Portrait with Shelby - Prague, Spring 2008

A Beautiful Day in Konjic

I drove down to Konjic today where Shelby had a basketball game. It is a very beautiful area of the Herzegovina part of Bosnia and Herzegovina. All the more beautiful on a gorgeous spring day with bright blue skies and puffy white clouds. The Neretva river which also runs through Mostar further downstream, is very popular for rafting up above Konjic.

The Neretva River - Konjic, Herzegovina




Shelby Shoots!

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

Počitelj - UNESCO World Heritage Site?

This will get long so you can skip ahead to the photo if you must :)

Unlike high schoolers in the USA, out here in the rest of the world, one sometimes has to travel to a different city or even country to take the SAT test for college. The nearest test for this cycle was in Mostar. So instead of making a 2-3 hour drive first thing this morning and then actually finding the test site before 8 am, we opted to drive to Mostar on Friday evening and spent the night. This ends up making it rather expensive for just a test, so while Shelby and a friend of Carl and hers took the test, Carl, Elesa and I took the opportunity and a little time to check out the surrounding areas and enjoy the sunshine and fresh air (neither of which is available on any regular basis in Sarajevo this time of year). At this point, we've seen Mostar enough and we will end up back at some point anyway.

First we drove about 30 minutes or so to Hutovo blato, a bird sanctuary. We were pretty disappointed...in our minds we were comparing it to Australia's Kakadu Yellow Water and Guatemala's Monterrico Biotopo. No such luck...3 domestic looking goose things and a glimpse of some type of raptor, maybe a Short-toed eagle???

Then we went to spend some time walking around Počitelj. Along the way, we came across an interesting old bridge similar in design to the very famous bridge in Mostar, and I stopped to take a couple photos. I'm sure one of which will someday make it here (especially once I remember the name and some of the details:)

Počitelj is an interesting looking old town built into the side of a hill. The first thing you notice is the castle/fort that sits up high on the edge of a cliff. It also has a neat bell/clock tower (minus the clock and bell). The town was heavily damaged during war and it is still undergoing a lot of reconstruction (although, according to the plaque, the bell and clock were long gone years before). There were men repairing a stone roof today. According to our Bradt guide book and a lot of web sites, including some decent Bosnia-Herzegovina ones such as this, Počitelj is on the UNESCO World Heritage List. However, when I go to the list itself, I can find no such reference. So I'm left wondering...are all those other sources wrong? is the UNESCO World Heritage site wrong or not up to date? Was it taken off the list? Has it applied to the be on the list and not been officially added yet? I mean what is the deal?

Here is a typical postcard shot that I took. The clock tower is in the foreground on the left and the fort (Sahat-kula), dominates the background up on the cliff. Also making a small appearance, the minaret of Hadzi-Alija Mosque on the right and a dome of the Sisman-Ibrahimpasina medresa in the lower left corner.

Počitelj - UNESCO World Heritage Site?



Oh, and Shelby reports that she thinks she did especially well on the math portion of the test...

In Memory...

1912 - 2007
"Grampa Big Truck" circa 1998

In the Navy!

I flew back to the U.S.last week to see Ryan's graduation from Navy boot camp this past Friday and just returned this afternoon. We got to see a bit of Chicago during his weekend liberty...some photos will come later. In the meantime, WAY TO GO RYAN!

Ryan and Jenise

SURPRISE!!!!

And surprised she was! as she was coming in the door I think the exact quote was: "The stupid elevator is broken again" ... which about 1/2 the guests had already figured out...the other half made it up before it broke.

Fun with Fungi

Somehow I should be able to come up with a good caption for this photo. It seems Maya has a bit of a foot fetish....I'm open to ideas, so send me a comment :)

Dog Show

There was a dog show in town, a big one with international competition. Elesa and I got to discussing how all the various extra-curricular things/hobbies people get involved in (usually with their children) have their own culture. It is especially noticeable with those that have competitions and big events. Judo, ice skating, Little League Baseball, dog shows, gymnastics etc. To an outsider, much of the proceedings make no sense, outsiders don't see the differences so "obvious" to those in the know. By the time I got to the show and joined up with Elesa and Shelby, it was to the part where they are judging between bests of breeds to determine the best of the groups and eventually best of show. All the %&(^ had gone home as one lady put it. Since I know nothing about dog shows, instead of photographing the competition parts, I took photos of the dogs "hanging out" and waiting their turn. So I guess this was like trying to take photos of ugly competitors at a beauty pageant...

This is a GOOD Hair Day


A Little Bit of Tongue!


I'm So Pretty


Things are Looking Up!


Best of Show - Shelby and Maya


Maya managed to draw a fair amount of attention even here among the "big dogs". She also certainly accounted for almost all of the cultural diversity among the doggies, singlehandedly representing more bloodlines than the other 100+ dogs combined!

Shelby Competes

This had to be tough for Shelby. Her first judo competition in about 3 years....and it was in a foreign language! As you can imagine, she was a little nervous. We didn't know how we would know which mat to be on and when. She was unfamiliar with the venue, the fighting style and the refereeing style. She lost her match, but it was hard fought. Shelby did not look nervous or timid. She attacked well and confidently. Shelby used some of the techniques she has been working on for use against taller competitors with longer arms (which is most of her opponents). In today's match, even the winning throw, both Carl and I thought Shelby was going to be able to reverse it and win as they were going down. I'm sure Shelby's opponent would never have guessed that it has been so long since Shelby's last competition.

Indoor Sports

Here's a shot of Shelby at judo practice last night. Indoor sports photography is always a challenge. The lighting is almost always poor. Plus, the weird and mixed color casts from the different light sources aren't "fun" like they were here. And then there are the challenges of the particular sport, in this case judo. You want to get a nice action shot, but a good deal of the time, you end up being in a bad position relative to the competitors...or right as the throw happens, someone gets between your camera and the action.

This was shot with my EOS 5D and a 70-200mm 2.8L IS lens. I set the ISO to 1600 (hence the "noise" and the reason why this photo really won't look a lot better big if you click on it) and shot aperture priority 1/200s at f/4. The computer tells me I was zoomed to 130mm, I would have probably done better to have gone out to 200mm, since I ended up cropping a butt out of the left side of the frame and some wires and junk off the top. I worked on the white balance some when I did the raw conversion, but it is basically hopeless. The lights are not all the same, and there is a nasty red light coming from the reflection off the mat.

Shelby Does Stuff Too...

She didn't get any snowboard/skiing recognition, but besides starting with a local judo club this past week, she has also been taking riding lessons since we've been here.

The Photographic Truth

I went snowboarding for my very first time with Ryan and Carl today. I went down the whole mountain one time after a little bit of practice on a tiny hill at the bottom of the slope. It seems to me to be a pretty big mountain, Sarajevo’s Mt. Bjelasnica. I think the chair lift is like a 15 minute or so ride. It seemed a little longer, since I'm not keen on heights. These first five photos are complements of Shelby and Carl who had the sense to grab my camera as I came down the last 1/4 of the mountain or so. I'm in blue and on my feet...you might notice Ryan, in red and on his butt in every photo :) There is NO alteration of these photos in photoshop...this is the way it was...







According to spectators and eye-witnesses such as Shelby, Carl and Elesa, the reality was more like this:

Jeff on back

...apparently I spent most of an hour this way, because that is how long it took me to get down the mountain, Ryan spent most of that time sitting down watching.

Ryan on the go


And of course my posed photo opportunity!