Today is the International Day of the Romanian Blouse, and it is also the first day of an exhibition of a part of Ligia’s collection of traditional, authentic Romanian costumes (blouses, skirts and more). About twenty costumes are currently on display at the Museum of Natural Gas in Medias and can be seen there during normal business hours through the end of this week (the 29th of June). Admittance is free.

Some time ago, the two of us decided to call Ligia’s collection “Straie Alese“, because it includes authentic, rare, vintage, hand-woven and loom-woven articles of clothing from all parts of Romania. Most pieces are 50-70 years old and some are more than a century old. For those who have already asked, most are not for sale. A select few of the costumes are sometimes offered for sale.

The launch of the exhibition was held earlier today. You can see the photo gallery below. Now, an exhibition at a museum does not happen by itself. There were a tight-knit group of women who keep the tradition alive in our city and who were glad to find out about Ligia’s collection and they worked with Ligia to organize the showing, so we’d like to thank them here for their guidance and invaluable assistance. The exhibition would not have happened without them! 👏🙌🌻

We’re glad this first event happened right here in our city, which, situated as it is in the geographical heart of Romania and in the bosom of Transilvania, seems especially favored by fate to be a good starting place for a project that can reach far and wide. We are of course open to collaborations with other museums, here in Romania and abroad.

Enjoy the photographs!

Ziua Internationala a Iei, 24 iunie 2018, Muzeul Gazelor, Medias, Transilvania, Romania

Ziua Internationala a Iei, 24 iunie 2018, Muzeul Gazelor, Medias, Transilvania, Romania

Events

An exhibition of Ligia’s traditional Romanian costumes

Places

Springtime in our garden

Spring has arrived and that means it’s time for my annual gallery of photographs from our garden. This is the sixth edition mind you, so it has become somewhat of a tradition for me. I hope you have a cup of tea or coffee ready — if you don’t, go get one — because there are 131 photographs for you to see. There’s also something different from previous years: I’ve taken most of the photos with my Olympus gear, particularly with my PEN E-P5 and the new lenses I bought for it. This equipment is so light and so responsive it feels like I’m almost cheating when I use it. And there’s no compromise in image quality. I love it. Enjoy the photographs!

A focus stack

$Red-tinged fractal$

A growing evening primrose plant

In our own garden

These flowers just love to spring up on the garden path instead of sticking to the tended grounds. Also notice the itsy-bitsy spider hiding behind the shrub in the foreground.

A bee gathers pollen from grape hyacinths

$A lovely fractal$

The petals on the lower daisy have been partially eaten by a snail

Primula and other assorted plants and flowers

A focus stack

Daisies starting to close their petals for the day

A focus stack

$Fuzzy fractal$

I call it fuzzy because of the fine hairs on the leaves of this developing comfrey plant

Places

Around the town in 2009

This is a gallery of photographs taken in and around Medias in the summer of 2009 (68 photos in total). As I look back on these photos, it’s interesting to see how the town has changed and stayed the same during this time. It’s definitely changed since 2006, when I took these other photos. Enjoy!

Medias, Romania

A distant hillside visible from inside the historic city center in Medias, Romania. The rooftop of one of the old German houses is visible in the foreground.

Historic district, Medias, Romania

Doesn’t this fellow look like the mutt from “Lady and the Tramp”?

Medias, Romania

Inside the medieval city walls, Medias, Romania

Medias Medieval Festival

Historic district, Medias, Romania

Dusk, a watch tower at the Roth school, Medias, Romania.

A cityscape of the city of Medias, Romania, showing the older, medieval buildings of the city. The clocktower is indeed leaning.

Medias, Romania

Historic district, Medias, Romania

Medias, Romania

Historic district, Medias, Romania

Medias, Romania

Houses and villas from the city of Medias, Romania, on a bright summer day.

A cityscape of the city of Medias, Romania, showing some of the city’s apartment buildings.

Historic district, Medias, Romania

Medias, Romania

Margarethenkirche, Medias, Romania

Medias, Romania

Walking in the city of Medias, Romania, on a clear summer evening. The city’s main clock tower is visible above the rooflines of the buildings in the foreground.

An older apartment building on a bright summer day, Medias, Romania.

Medias, Romania

Old brick chimneys on the roof of one of the old houses in the historic city center, Medias, Romania.

Historic district, Medias, Romania

A man walks down a street in the historic city center, Medias, Romania.

Medias, Romania

Relics from communist times, Medias, Romania

Walking in the city of Medias, Romania, on a clear summer night. The city’s main clock tower is visible above the rooflines of the buildings in the foreground.

One of the towers marking an old medieval entrance to the fortified part of the city of Medias, Romania.

Medias Medieval Festival

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The towers of the medieval city of Medias, Romania are visible in the distance on a bright summer day. Houses and villas from downtown can also be seen.

Historic district, Medias, Romania

Historic district, Medias, Romania

Margarethenkirche, Medias, Romania

Medias, Romania

Historic district, Medias, Romania

Inside Margarethenkirche, Medias, Romania

Historic district, Medias, Romania

Houses and villas from the city of Medias, Romania, on a bright summer day.

Margarethenkirche, Medias, Romania

Medias, Romania

I used the following cameras and lenses to take these photographs: an Olympus C770 UZ, a Nokia N95 (my mobile phone at the time), a Canon EOS 5D, a Canon EOS Rebel XTi, a Canon PowerShot G10, a Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS lens and a Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 lens.

Olympus Camedia C-770 UltraZoom

Nokia N95

Canon EOS 5D

Canon EOS Rebel XTi

Canon PowerShot G10

Canon EF 24-105mm f4L IS USM Lens

Canon EF 50mm f1.4 USM Lens

Places

Blue hour and snowfall!

This past Sunday morning, I woke up to a beautiful snowfall and luckily for me, about 10 minutes before the blue hour (which actually lasts less than an hour). I tiptoed down the stairs so I wouldn’t wake up my wife and child, put some clothes and shoes on, and because it was snowing heavily, I took my Canon 7D (my only weather-sealed camera), along with the 10-22mm EF-S lens (which is also weather-sealed). I wanted an ultra-wide perspective to the photos and also the ability to shoot without a tripod at low shutter speeds. An ultra-wide lens lets you do that because of the “reciprocal rule”: as long as the shutter speed matches the focal length, you should get a good photo (provided you have steady hands). A 10-22mm lens would let me use shutter speeds as low as 1/10th of a second, which is just what I did on some of the photos. Enjoy the gallery!

Taken during a mid-February snowfall in Medias, Romania

For those of you who love looking at camera gear (I know I do), here is a photo of the camera and lens I used.

Canon EOS 7D

Canon EF-S 10-22mm f:3.5-4.5 Lens

Places

A walk through town before daybreak

To celebrate the acquisition of a new camera (well, the acquisition is new, the camera isn’t), I took a pre-dawn walk through town. It was cold and somewhat rainy. Water got on my lens a couple of times and I’d forgotten to bring a lens cloth, so you’ll see some weird light artifacts on some of the photos. That’s from the partially wiped lens… I was hoping dawn would come soon and I’d get some nice photos of the “blue hour”. As it turned out, my battery ran out of juice and I got pretty cold before that happened. But it was really nice to walk through town with few to no people around me. I am after all an introvert, so the more time I spend alone, the better I feel.

I am quite pleased with my acquisition. It’s a camera I used and reviewed in the past (eight years ago, actually): the Olympus PEN E-P2. I loved that little camera and I should have bought it back then. After quietly pining for it all this time, I found it online a few days ago at an unbeatable price, second-hand, in great condition: about 100 euros for the body, plus another 100 euros for the viewfinder (yes, I got the VF-2!) and about 200 euros for a wonderful little lens for it, the M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-50mm f/3.5-6.3 EZ (it’s a 2x crop factor so a 24-100mm 35mm equivalent).

Olympus PEN E-P2 Mirrorless Camera

Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-50mm f:3.5-6.3 EZ Lens

Now I have the E-P2 and the E-PL1, which I bought several years ago with the two kit lenses offered at the time, the 14-42mm and the 40-150mm. Yay!

I took the photos without a tripod, relying on the camera’s optical image stabilization technology, which shifts the sensor on a 3-way axis in order to keep the shot steady. I shot at 1/10, 1/15 and 1/20, keeping the ISO at 1600 and the aperture wide open. Given that the lens goes from f/3.5 to f/6.3 when it’s at its longest focal length, that means some of the photos are darker. I squeezed every bit of light out of them in post processing, but having shot both RAW and JPG simultaneously, I can tell you the camera’s built-in noise reduction and image processing is so good (for its time), I could have just shot directly in JPG and uploaded them SOOC (straight out of the camera). Enjoy the photos!