La Sovata

After the mountains we went to a salt water lake spa resort called Sovata. Sun was bathed, beer was drunk and food was sampled. Lovely!

Ceahlau

It had to happen at some point. After years of seeing it in the distance and claiming I could hike to the top if I wanted to, this year I actually did. It was a lovely but hard trek from 800 to 1800m. Well, it was for me anyway ;-). Cursing occurred on many an occasion. But I made it to the top and took some lovely pictures along the way. This particular one is a pano of 20 shots. Approx. 270°. I really like how it came out. Hope you like it as well.

Sicilian summer

Olives hanging in the tree in the hotel's gardens.

White walkers

Couldn't help but snap a pic of these sisters on their stroll through Taormina.

Freshhhhh

The same evening in Taormina. Fresh fruit and vedge on a market stall. One of the many things I loved about Sicily was the fresh produce they have everywhere and the way they put it to use in their cuisine. Simple but ever so tasty.
Looks like these stands have a public relations career, promoting Sicily.

Mask

They seemed to be selling these quite a lot in Taormina. I'm quite happy with how it came out seeing as it's behind glass and all :-)

Taormina

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

Lido la pigna

This was where we spent most of our beach time. Beautiful cove and brilliant restaurant on the beach! Good times...



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.)

The balcony

Yup, the view... :)

That time of year

We just got back from a BRILLIANT holiday in beautiful Sicily.
This was the view that welcomed us as we came out of the airport in Catania.
Yes, my jaw dropped slightly as well... :-)
Many pictures of this holiday are sure to follow.

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

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.

Tramonto in Sardegna

And thus, we finally arrive at the pictures of our second week of holiday which we spent in beautiful Sardinia. Seriously, if you ever have the chance go there! It's truly wonderful.
The iPhone version is here.
Dusk is a difficult time to shoot.  New York State colleges have online classes in photography to learn new tricks.

Sun rays over mountains

As I was working on the panorama in the previous post, I noticed that this picture looked quite nice when under exposed by two stops. So this morning I did that edit and this is what came out! I'm very pleased with the outcome.
The iPhone version can be found here.

Porto... more Porto

Yeah, I'm still not quite done :-)

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!