Prague

In between the ten hours I had to spend in Prague I tried to ignore that I am absolutely freezing and that I can't feel my fingertips and take some pictures.

Like every time I am in a new town I am more around being a tourist then a photographer (not sure it is a good thing). 

My favorite picture is the one with the wall drawing in the arch. Think there is more symbolism in there then I could possibly figure out. 

Documentary

I was thinking about taking pictures of my grandmother for a longer while before I went and took these over my Christmas holiday.

I had a wish to make pictures of her as soon as possible, because she is in a respectable age and you never know when something might happen and after that there would be no possibility in taking them, ever.... But it never is easy to go to her's and just take the camera out and take the pictures. The brief about documentary and the desire for good pictures was strong enough force for me to go and see her one day.

I think I have got some quite successful portraits of her, but I never engaged myself much enough to achieve what I actually was aiming for and was expecting. 

I found this being a prefect exercise about how much time we have to spend with one to make the person comfortable and loose the mask we all put up in front of a camera.

I never thought that far, till a teacher pointed out that I have to spend twice as much time or even more to reveal someone who's portrait is stronger likeness to the person I know and see when I visit home. 

Only now I understand that photography is quite a psychological engaging and interaction between the artist, sitter and the magic moment of camera in between. And that you must be emotionally strong yourself and you have to be ready to be under so much pressure till you will be able to get the right moment that sometimes it takes more than one go, like in my case.

I was somehow inspired by Bert Teunissen and his "Domestic Landscapes" where he takes pictures of houses and their inhabitants. I find his pictures have a calming quality and the older people look like wise man with their experience and knowledge. But in my pictures I didn't want to show the house that is built around the light and the people in it. It was more about my anger towards my grandmother and I wanted to use photography as my anger management tool and revenge. 

I never handled stressful situations well and this wasn't an exception. I never spent long enough time to expose her bitterness towards me and the world. I am on my way there in some images. 

I desire to catch more loneliness and sadness, more solitude and bitterness even if it makes me somehow a bad person to put an old women-my grandmother-  through that kind of emotions.

January 2009

If you want to be good at something you have to get up and do it. 

It takes time and practice to achieve something and without that work and self engagement I don't think I will get far.

Using this as my kind of new philosophy I decided to go out and take pictures. Look at the world though viewfinder and make 36 decisions per role. 

So now in most occasions I take my camera with me, even if it is not taken out of the bag by the end of the day.

Over Christmas holiday that I spent home, I have enough moments and opportunities to go out and try to be a better photographer.

After a night of intense snowing, in the morning I took my car and went to the countryside.

I think it is not hard to take pictures in winter that catch other's interest. If there is snow, then it has it's own magic to it. It it almost like the same with children and little animals - they always look nice and so does snow.

I tried to show in my images how suddenly forests get different depth of field and how more friendly they seem to get (in truth they get even more dangerous)

I tried to pick up colours that suddenly seem more obvious. When snow melts again all the restart to fulfill their purpose and they blend back in the whole. But now I had the opportunity to catch them and show the yellows, pinks, blues and oranges that are like on a white catwalk.