Twilight photos

Yesterday I went to the fields near Diest to make some twilight landscape pictures. I found the highway lamp rather interesting (and I am not so happy with my landscape pictures by the way).



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Lighthouse in Marken

Last Friday I managed to get to Marken in North Holland. Marken is a former island now connected to the mainland by a causeway. Its main attraction is the traditional Dutch houses in this little town but I was interested to see the lighthouse. It is called Paard van Marken and it looks very nice.

Cars aren't allowed there, so it's about 2km walk (or bicycle ride) from the car parking. I was there around 10 pm, right after the sun went behind horizon. The sky was still painted in nice sunset pink hues, but unfortunately it was right behind me when I photographed the lighthouse. So for the next time I need to get there before sunset. That way I will also get some time to visit the village of Marken :)

The weather was windy, so it wasn't very easy to avoid camera shake despite the tripod. Simple workaround helped though - I holded my jacket just like wings, so most pictures came out sharp.

The lighthouse is automated and people living in the house attached to the lighthouse aren't lighthouse keepers! They maintain the website www.thijsvandetoren.nl (check "fotos").

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Leuven station in the rain

It's gray and rainy day today after two weeks of sun. It reminded me about the picture of Leuven station I made last winter...

I like railway stations. People waiting, people coming and leaving, trains coming and traing passing by... Leuven is my of my favorite stations (it looks nice and it's not far from my house) so don't get surprised if you will see it again :)


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Strobist lighting

I often use flash for outdoor photography under daylight, but I still need to practice "strobist" style lighting in the dusk.

One particular setup I was thinking about is to repeat Leuven station photo with flash-lit figure of a commuter. I am not fully satisfied with the result I got but I think it's decent for the first attempt.

It was made a couple of months ago but I din't have a combination of free time and good weather to try to make it better.


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After economical decline in Russia in the end of 1980's and almost complete collapse in the beginning of 1990's, economy started to grow at the end of XX's century and is growing very rapidly in the last few years. There are still huge social problems, corruption and there is still a long way to go, but things are moving fast.

Part of the growth resulted many more private and business cars on the streets. Moscow can't cope with the current number of cars and tremendous efforts are made for a major road reconstruction in Moscow. As part of this efforts a new bridge across Moscow riverhas been recently constructed:


There are more and more modern office and appartment buildings (some of them skyscrapers) built everywhere in Moscow, between boring grey blocks from the previous decades.

Every time I come to Moscow I see it changed significantly.




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