A Year ...

and 3600 photos ago, we went to Mostar with Elesa's parents. Doors and doorknobs are popular subjects in Bosnia, here's my version of "Door" from that day trip to Mostar :)

Door - Mostar, Herzegovina

The Wooden Church in Dobříkov

DOBŘÍKOV - Dřevěný kostelík z Podkarpatské Rusi

This small 17th century church was "rescued" from the Ukraine, and moved log by log to the little village of Dobříkov, not far from Choceň in 1930 or so. The interior is very dark, (well actually the exterior is too :) but everywhere you look is yet another iconic depiction of a saint or two. There isn't a whole lot on the internet that I could find about this village and church, beyond what is here and here. We stopped by and checked it out a little closer and one of the local women let us in and gave us a little tour. We'd originally visited back in 1995 I believe when we went through the area and my parents stayed at a small bed and breakfast a few hundred yards away. I probably have slides of it somewhere.


The Crucifixion - Dobříkov, Czech Republic



Saints - Dobříkov, Czech Republic

Dinner was Quite Tasty Tonight

look what I'm reduced to....you'd think I was on Flickr or MySpace...

Chicken and Broccoli with Oyster Sauce at Sunset

Messing Around With Stitching

These are notes for myself. I haven't messed with this in about 2 years and what little I learned at the time, I've obviously forgotten. Today I started relearning, because, at some point this summer I'd like to take make a large photo of Sarajevo so that I can have a large, but detailed panoramic print made.

Stitching is a method of taking multiple photographs that overlap and putting them together to get a much larger photo. For landscapes and cityscapes especially, it can make for a much larger more detailed photo in a large print. You can effectively end up with a photo that would require the equivalent of a 100 megapixel camera or more (not to mention the lens!) Stitching is commonly used for long panoramic photos.

Putting a bunch of photographs together at first glance looks pretty easy. Many digital cameras include some sort of stitching software in all that junk on the CD you probably stuffed in a drawer somewhere. I loaded mine on my computer, "Canon PhotoStitch". However, if you look close a the photos below, you can begin to see problems where the seams of the neighboring photos are.


Bosnian Countryside - Kakrinje, Bosnia




The first photo, a string of 14 photos shot left to right (16,000+ pixels wide once stitched) had two main problems, the first of which doesn't show up here. Because I was shooting "handheld" I didn't stay exactly level, I ended up having to cut parts of the bottom of the photos on the left off that I really would have liked to keep, and parts of the top off of the photos on the right. Use a tripod next time, and if necessary, do two rows. The other problem shows up especially in the roof of the house on the right. The exposure changes as I move across the scene. So next time, I'll take a shot of the brightest part of the scene and a shot of the darkest part of the scene and then in manual setting, use a constant aperture (which I already remembered to do) and a constant shutter speed (which I this time I let vary with each exposure) that will "work" with both the brightest and the darkest portions

The second photo (a vertical stitch of 3 photos) has some problems too. The varying exposure again, the distortion that comes from using a very wide angle lens, and I didn't leave enough overlap between the bottom photo and the middle photo, so I had to "help" the software a little more than should have been necessary. Next time, don't use such a wide angle, just take more photos instead, and make sure to overlap enough details for the stitching software to work with.


Big Sky - Kakrinje, Bosnia



Last, getting a good stitch is probably the easy part. Afterwards, the finishing work (which I didn't do at all on these photos) such getting the colors, sharpness, relative brightness etc all right could be tremendously time consuming and tedious across a huge 16000+ pixel photograph. And very last, at least the way I have the blog set up now, 1024 pixels is as wide as things can go, so you really don't see much once I reduce a photo to 1/16 the original size.

Reflection

I was looking back through some photos from last summer. I only have room on my internal drive for about a year's worth of photographs so some will be stored off soon, I thought this photo of the Indiana Statehouse aptly fit my mood....reflecting, new and old...

Indiana Statehouse - Indianapolis

Abandoning All Pretense of Originality

I thought this was pretty original. I mean really, how many people would think to take a photo of a sewer lid? Well apparently pretty many others have. Enough that someone actually googled the terms: prague castle sewer. On the bright side, I was the second hit in the results list :) and the googler took a look at my photo.

I can pretty much guarantee that the photo below has been taken a million times. Nine hundred and ninety nine thousand of them are for sale on the Charles Bridge. Here is my version.


Prague Astronomical Clock (Pražský Orloj) at Night - Prague

A Theme - Shades of Two Colors

Like this past entry and this one. The photo below is basically comprised of just two colors, in this case gray and green and shades thereof. Like a huge chunk of the photos on this blog, it was taken in Veliki Park next to our apartment...maybe at some point I'll tag the Veliki Park photos. The three or four acres (my wild guess only) that comprise the park sure give me a lot of photo opportunities.

Up is Green - Veliki Park, Sarajevo

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

Prague, Three Details

Noticed On the Way Up the Hill - Castle District, Prague




The Powder Tower (Prašná Brána) - Prague



Somewhere Near Charles Bridge (Karlův Most) - Prague

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!

Charles Bridge (Karlův Most) -Details

I take a lot of "detail" photos in cities...and Prague is detail heaven. Here are a few of the details that caught my eye on Charles Bridge (Karlův Most)

Man's Best Friend - Charles Bridge, Prague(Apparently considered lucky)



...not so lucky...Behind Bars - Charles Bridge, Prague




And From the Heavens Burst Forth... - Charles Bridge, Prague




Although from the portion in this photo, you wouldn't necessarily notice, the entire statue reminded me of the plague columns I've seen in other parts of Czech Republic.

The Struggle - Charles Bridge, Prague

Lookin' Out My Backdoor

Here are a couple of shots of the same hills opposite our apartment taken from our balcony/patio at sunset on two different days. The photo of the rainbow was just taken a few minutes ago. The second photo was taken last week and the hillside is noticeably greener today. As with most of my blog photos, the bigger versions you get when you click on the photo look best.

Sarajevo Rainbow at Sunset - 21 April 2008




Sarajevo Sunset - 16 April 2008

Looking Up - More Prague

A look up at three of the more famous landmarks in Prague


The Powder Tower (Prašná Brána) at Sunset - Prague




Church Our Lady before the Týn - Old Town Square, Prague
Kostel Matky Boží pøed Týnem




Saint Vitus's Cathedral (Katedrála svatého Víta), Prague Castle

Old Jewish Cemetery, Prague

More from Prague. Below are a few of the many photos I took at the Old Jewish Cemetery (Starý židovský hřbitov). The cemetery contains an unknown number of graves, layers of graves, gravestones one upon the other. Estimates commonly seen on the internet say 12,000 or so headstones and 100,000 buried there from the late 1400's until the late 1700's. As cemeteries are among my favorite photographic subjects, Elesa and Carl had to wait a bit while I (and Shelby) took "one last" photo. The light was constantly changing as the sun played peek-a-boo behind the clouds.

A Jumble of Headstones - Old Jewish Cemetery, Prague




Old Jewish Cemetery - Prague




Old Jewish Cemetery - Prague




Old Jewish Cemetery - Prague

Prague, Even the Sewers are Cool

I haven't had much time to mess with photography the past week or so. Now I'm just getting back to going through the photos I took in Prague. I like taking photos of little details in cities. Things on the sides of buildings, statues and portions thereof etc. I noticed walking through Prague that even the sewer lids there are a cut above...

Sewer Lid - Prague



Utility Access - Prague

And then we got to Prague

...which is my favorite city in the whole world...

Like hundreds of other people, I took a few photos from the far end of the Charles Bridge (Karlův Most). But unlike about 90% of them, I didn't use a pop-up flash :)

Prague Castle District at Dusk - Czech Republic

Odds and Ends

I was able to replace my monitor a lot quicker than I feared. I now have a BRIGHT new LCD that weighs about 1/4 of my dead CRT screen and takes up far less room. I'm still trying to get the colors and brightness etc at least close to right...so if a photo's colors, brightness etc are way off, please let me know. It might be my monitor for a change...because before, it was certainly yours :)

Here a few photos that I was working on when my previous monitor went to monitor heaven....

I love seeing all the crucifixes, small chapels and other little monuments and memorials along the roads in Czech (Slovenia has a lot of neat ones too). This one was at the edge of the little village where we pulled off the last of real road to drive up the trail to the bunker, Tvrz Bouda. Weathered and worn, I was struck by how the color persevered.

Roadside Shrine - Near Tvrz Bouda, Czech



On the drive back from Tvrz Bouda to Choceň, we stopped by the church of the Virgin Mary, Our Lady of the Sorrows, Homol (Pilgrimage) church It was built in the 1690's and sits above a massive staircase. The staircase goes up the side of the hill to the chapels and the main church. The weather was cold, wet and windy with some snow mixed in with the rain. My photos of the church itself sitting atop the lengthy staircase left a lot to be desired....like... I desire to go back at a better time of day and during better weather :)


Looking Down the Steps - Homol Pilgrimage Church, Czech




Chapel - Homol Pilgrimage Church, Czech



Sometime, probably the early 1900's, the trains came to Choceň. They just cut their way deep and straight (and I do mean straight!) through the hill. It must have been an amazing engineering feat at the time.

All Trains Lead to Choceň - Choceň, Czech

We Interupt the Regularly Scheduled Broadcast....

because my monitor seems to have died and until I get it replaced or fixed, I'm limited in what I can do with my photos...

Kutná Hora, Part 2 - Sedlec Ossuary, aka "The Bone Church"

After walking around the Church of St Barbara we made our way outside of town over to the "Bone Church" - Sedlec Ossuary. We first visited it back in about 1994 or 1995...before tourists had discovered Kutná Hora, Bouda, Zámek Žleby and all the other little towns and treasures of the Czech Republic. This time there were tour buses! Even when I knew what to expect, having been there and all, it was still incredible to see. A church not merely decorated with bones...but a chandelier of bones, columns of bones, stacks and stacks of bones...human bones. I think it was one of Carl and Shelby's favorite stops on our trip. They were too young to remember our earlier visits to Czech. You can also read and see more at the wikipedia link. Here are a few photos from our visit this time.


Just Another Stack of Bones - Sedlec Ossuary near Kutná Hora




Schwarzenberg Coat-of-Arms - Sedlec Ossuary near Kutná Hora



Shelby Photographs The Chandelier - Sedlec Ossuary near Kutná Hora



The Perfect Halloween Punchbowl - Sedlec Ossuary near Kutná Hora