Weekly Picture Project: Week 6 (F)

For this week's Picture Project, we had quite a few ideas for possible topics, so I think we each decided to get what we could. Some of the big ideas were "filter," "flash," and "f-stops." However, I don't have filters or a flash for my camera, and after two weeks of exposure and depth of field, I was about f-stopped out. We also mentioned "food" and "fun." So, I just figured I'd get what I could:

Here's my picture for "food." We had some friends over in the afternoon, and I made some pizzas. I took this picture when I was preparing the sauce.

Here's one for "fun": Angela sitting in front of a giant bull statue (next to a giant monkey statue that made howling sounds). They're outside a BBQ restaurant on the highway back from Guanacaste.

 

And as for "filter," I don't have a filter, but I forgot that I can just use sunglasses to filter light. So the picture above is normal...

...this one is taken with Angela's pink sunglasses in front of the camera lens...

...and for this picture I put my own (black) sunglasses in front of the lens. Not the most amazing filter, but it'll do in a pinch, I guess.

So, thanks for checking these out. Have a great day!

Walk at Pont Triffen, Tuesday 15th February

The walk starts at 2pm from the parking by the bridge at Pont Triffen (direct exit from N164, near Landeleau). This is a fairly level and easy walk, outward on a newly developed stretch of former railway track, followed by a lock crossing over the River Aulne, and return along the canal towpath. Look forward to seeing you there!

Sunrise At Orchard Beach

Immersed in Ancient Life: Greeks in Italy

The last week was difficult for me because I was ill. But I decided to take advantage of some suny days we had and went in Paestum.



Paestum is an excavation site not too far from Salerno (about 40 minutes of train) where you can see 3 of Greek temples and some interesting rests of the roman town. Than, there is a museum where you can see many original pieces of the cultures from 40000 years ago till Roman times. Very interesting. If you know what you have to look at.

The 2 temples on the photo are from Vi and V centuries BC. And here is the third of them that is situated far enough and is dedicated to an other deity. This one is from V century. BC, clear.



In this post I want to show you some greek vases. It's something simply incredible, the quality of the pictures!

Here is the rape of Europe (by the way, I've seen dufferent representations of this event but there was no one where Europe showed her disappointment about this crime :0)))





Most tourists do not look at the pictures on the vases. They go away and leave the juice of the exposition. Because these pictures represent the life of those persons. I went in Paestum this time with intention to photograph the pictures to show them to you. So, that you can enjoy it with me.

This is a picture on the vase that was given to the woman for her marriage. I think, the picture shows the moment when the woman was prepared for the cerimony. The most interesting is that these vases were found in the tombs too. So, the woman had to take this "marriage vase" with her in the life after the death.



What has to represent this picture I don't know. What surprised me here were the hairs of the man. Not only all the characters of the vase are blond (?????) but the man has this strange long hair. It was not comfortable to have long hair in the battle, I think, because the ancient fighters used them (on the pictures) to take the enemy. So, why this long hair?



Here is the proof of my doubts



Finally, to have this post not too long (more about Paestum I'll write in my blog "Marvelous World of Travel") I want to show you an other picture from the vase to attract your attention to the vases when you will visit a museum next time.
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Wordle

As I recently mentioned in my language learning blog, I recently heard about "wordles." Basically, they take the common words in a body of text and display them so they look pretty. Here's a wordle for Sitzblog:

Evidently, I say the word "really" a lot, and I name-drop Angela and San Ramon or San Jose quite frequently.

Monaco, Monte Carlo -one of the Most Beautiful Places in Europe

For many years I thought, Monaco is the most beautiful place I've ever seen in my life.

We traveled with my friends in Liguria and because they have a flat not far from Ventimilia, we visited the not too far situating towns and other interesting places. It was vvery interesting because the French part of the coast was much more illuminated and there was life all the night, there. This way we reached Monaco one of the days.

The road we came in Monaco was high enough, and we could see all the town. Ther is not so much soil between the mountains and the sea, and the buildings grow in high into the air there. And all the amenities like gardens and pools that all "normal" houses have on the ground, were on the roofs there.


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In the little harbour there was an interesting entertaining: you could sail with a little yacht that had glass bottom so that the tourists could see the underwater life of the harbour. But the cost of one ticket was 300 Francs (I don't remember the currency) and we were 4 persons, so we decided to leave this idea.


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We went in the old town where is situating the Palace of the Prince. The square was empty (maybe we came too early, I don't remember now) and we decided to walk there. We found a garden on the rock over the sea. Somebody said us that there is a prison just under our feet there. The prisoners could see only sea from the windows of their cells. Nearby was the Institute of the Oceanography which head was Jacques-Yves Cousteau in that period. We loved to watch his documentaries and felt honoured to stay near the place he worked in (even if he surely was in sea).


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It was clear that the old town was the residential area of the rich families. All the houses that seemed to come from XVIII-XIX centuries were very beautiful.


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In the evening we visited the square of the famous casino where we found different enormous cars that I've never seen from that time more. There were women clothed with long evening dresses, too. But not only these persons, everything there was very beautiful. We entered the building just to see that some persons came to visit theater, others went to casino. Tourists are not allowed in such places. So, we went out.

After that, we walked some steps and found "American casino" opened for everybody. We entered it, too. It was only touristic visit, nothing more. A week before, an other friend of this family left a big sum there. She lived 5 days there and passed all the evenings in this casino to prove that all the stories about the money that persons leave there are not true. Well, she proved it. ;-)))

It was night when we left Monte Carlo. And I could never forget it's beauty.
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Pictures of the Day: January 30 - February 6, 2011

I'm actually not too far behind at this moment! Here are the Pictures of the Day from the past week:

January 30th: Hannah and Stefanie. We went to Sofie and Thijs' house for coffee, and so did Juan and Paola. It was a nice afternoon.

January 31st: This is from a series of pictures I took for our weekly Picture Project.

f/22, 1/13 sec., ISO 1600 (should have set it lower, but oh well).

The Picture Project theme this week was Exposure, with a bit of depth of field thrown in for fun. In this picture, I tried to show "good"/proper exposure (although it is a little dark).

February 1st: Our friends Brad and Shani recently had a baby, so I decided to break out the famous "Brad Shirt" in honor of them. Good work!

The Brad Shirt itself has seen better days. Josh also has --or at least had-- a matching one because he and I made them in Hannover around 12 years ago. We happened to have a senior picture of Brad with us when we passed by a T-shirt store, and the rest is history. I believe that Josh and I premiered our shirts in Budapest, to Brad's surprise. I believe he said something like, "That's kind of morbid."

In any case, congrats to the new parents!

February 2nd: From the company in Ca�as, where I teach my Wednesday evening class. I liked the nice industrial feel to the sunset.

February 3rd: Scenes from work: Oscar and a student.

February 4th: At a hotel in Brasilito, where I teach a class on Friday evenings. Angela went with me this week, so that was nice.

February 5th: A girl digging on the beach at Playa Conchal. We spent a few hours there since it's about a 10-minute walk from Brasilito.

February 6th: An orchid in our living room. Silhouetted in the sunset, it sort of looked like some kind of strange moth or bird.

That's it for this week. Thanks for reading and checking out the pictures, and have a great week!