Taormina

The view from the funivia (cable lift) station in Taormina center, conveniently located on top of a hill, towards Letojanni.

No more no comment?

Iuliana mentioned to me it might be a better idea to stick to the one post a day concept in stead of posting in bulk as I did yesterday.
As her comments are usually justified, I will re-post the pictures from yesterday one by one, so those of you that have already seen them; good for you, the others; just come back tomorrow and the day after and the day after that etc etc... ;-)
As to today's picture, this was taken on the day of our arrival in Taormina or a stroll to the neighboring village of Giardini Naxos. The first Greek settlement on the Island, way back when.
Lovely little seaside village well worth the visit.
(I know some bloggers find free content for websites with Article Writing Services, but I'll continue to supply my own work.)

Planetary experimentation

I've wanted to do this for quite some time now. It's officially called a polar panorama but also named spherical or planet panorama. It's a 360° panorama of the Platz der Republik in Berlin. On top, you'll recognize the Reichstag and on the left is the Bundeskanzlerei or the washing machine as it's popularly known.
In total 42 shots went into it and after about 8 hours of crunching, this is what I ended up with.

Evening walk

 

After our visit to Notre Dame we went on a walk along the Seine, past the pont neuf (picture to follow) accross the pont des artistes, where they, for one reason or another, have a very nice tradition of hanging padlocks on the bannisters with the names and the dates of their visit. Then past the Louvre , through the jardins des tuilleries and on to the place de la Concorde. The light was simply amazing! all three images are straight from the camera. The square one is a pano of two, so that was the only editing done on that one. I hope you'll like them for I surely do

Notre Dame de Paris

One simply can not go to Paris without taking a picture of this monument of course.
Panorama of six shots.

On the flip side

Half an hour after taking the previous picture of the Eiffel tower, the sky started getting a wee bit darker. This was the sight from the tower towards the musée de l'homme. It is of course a panorama as well, this time 21 shots went into it's creation. Oh, and no, I did not darken the sky in post-production.

Brugge

'Nuff said, no? :-)

Every now and then there's a fix...

Finally found some inspiration again :-)
This picture was taken in 2008 at Brussels' North station. I had taken a series of exposures with the intention to do an HDR with them. Somehow at the time I was unable to get it quite the way I wanted it.

Browsing my old pictures yesterday evening I stumbled across them and decided to give it another go. This is the result of that go.
Hope you guys like it!

Panoramic Porto

With only a 50mm lens getting the whole bridge on it is not really doable. Solution? Take nine pictures and add some photoshop magic...

here's some more :-)

And here are another couple of pix I finished :-)

Quickly before going to work

Just finished another one.
This one was taken on the evening of the Sao Joao celebrations.
Very nice and definitely worth the trip to go and experience it!

Finally

Well, yes I know, it's been a long time and also I know that having my camera stolen wasn't supposed to hold me back from taking pictures, but it has. I can't really explain it. Anyway enough with the excuses and on to today's post. I went for a photowalk in Brussels yesterday to finally test drive the Samsung Digimax A50 that my good friend Stijn lent to me. As you can see it does quite a good job!

Oh the irony

Today I was supposed to have a job interview at Pepsico in Zaventem. I said supposed because my daily life seems to not have lost it's sense of irony. I was going to take the 1142h bus to Zaventem to arrive there at 1221h which was expertly timed as the interview was at 1230h. As I get to the busstop I see a manifestation coming up the street towards me and in the direction the bus was supposed to take. So basically I missed a job interview because a manifestation for jobs blocked the bus for almost an hour.
Any who, I took this picture as I walked back home using my trusty cellphone :-)
The iPhone version can be found here.

Bad news and new ideas

I've been to visit Iuliana in London this past weekend until this morning, which was a load of fun!
The only thing that was not quite so much fun, hence the bad news in the title, was that while waiting for the Eurostar check in to open, my camera bag and with it, all of my equipment got stolen. This, as you can understand was not one of my best days.
But on a happier note, I have promised myself NOT to let this stop me from taking pictures and proving to myself and the rest of the world that my motto of: It's a poor workman that blames his tools, is true.
So, after getting over the initial shock and feeling of loss, I started using my cellphone's camera as my first experiment towards this aim. This is the first of what will be a lot of experiments to prove that it's not merely the camera that takes good pictures. In order for me to do this, I'm planning on asking people around me to let me use their camera for a day or so, to take pictures and to post them here, until I have saved enough money to replace my lost equipment.
The iPhone version of the above picture of the Horse guards in London can be found here.

Flora urbana...

This is one from the same day as the ones in the botanique.
I usually don't do square crops, but for this one I've made an exception as it fit the subject and composition quite nicely.
The iPhone version is here. It has been stretched so as to fit the screen, but I don't think it's giving any bad effect on the image.

Botanique in spring

Since it was such gorgeous weather yesterday, I headed out to the Botanique to capture some springy shots. These are a couple of the results.
The first one is a composition of eight shots the second, a mere ten :-)
Enjoy!

Botanique by night

On Tuesday evening, my friend Paul and I went to do some nigh time shooting in town. This is the first of the resulting pictures. I'm quite satisfied by the result!
For those of you not from Brussels, this is the view from the botanical gardens towards the Koekelberg cathedral.

Tram 28

The famous tram 28. We waited for nearly an hour to get on this famous little tram, after which we gave up. This was the one heading in the opposite direction.
iPhone version

Botanical garden

This is the entrance to the botanical gardens of the university of Lisbon. It felt slightly neglected but I quite liked it. Too bad it was closed so we couldn't go in.

The iPhone version is here.

And we're off again :-)

My sincerest apologies for not posting for such a very very long time!! I had a bit of an editor's block. I tried to edit a couple of times but was never quite happy enough with the resulting pictures. Any who, that being said; We're off again!

The first picture is in Lisbon in one of the many parks there.

And there's the iPhone version as well of course