Sunday, August 30, 2009

Radom AirShow 2009 - plane crash

Today I attended very nice air show in Radom. Unfortunately it finished unexpectedly with a very sad event - crash of Belarusian SU27 at 13:17. I even hadn't enough time to take good pictures of this nice plane and unfortunately both pilots died in the the crash. In memoriam to the pilots I would like to share with you pictures with last 3 minutes of their life. Let they rest in peace. Condolences to their families.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

7D on the way???

To be honest I don't believe that new Canon camera will be called 7D. It would be strange. But rumors are telling different stories. You can read it on Canonrumors. Let's wait till Tuesday and see if it's true... I bet it's well prepared fake...

What the duck?

This morning isn't nice. It's raining. So instead of going to the forest for some jogging, I sat at the computer screen to put my stuff in order and bumped into nice comic in one of Amateur Photographer magazine (July 2009). It comes from the series What the Duck. This series is dedicated to photographers. All of them: amateurs and professionals. It's really funny, so I recommend to subscribe it! Unfortunately I can't put here the comic from AP July issue, but you can try to find it over the internet for yourself.
Instead please enjoy the recent one which is also nice (dedicated to wedding photographers :).

Monday, August 24, 2009

Wines#2: New discovery

Yesterday I had a little party at home. Because it was meeting with one of my best friends, I decided to get some nice wine. Went to my favorite wine shop - Winnice Południa and found plain Barbera D'Alba. I know it's not as good as Brunello, but wanted to check it for myself. And I know guys from Winnice have really best selection of wines, so I took the risk. And this wine turned out to be amazing. One of the best I ever had. It was not much different than Brunello or similar wines.
Barbera tastes like fresh black fruit with a little earth in it. It has blackberry and plum in it. Later, after a while of drinking you can feel it's lemon-sharp acidity. It's great with cheese and grilled meat. I definitely recommend this wine to every italian wine lover!
But it was only the beginning. Then we switched to Spain. My friend, exactly like me, is Spain fan and brought nice red wine from Iberian Peninsula. That wine was produced by famous Señorío del Condestable winery in the Murcia region. Maybe the year 2005 was not perfect in Spain, but the wine was really good and I would say that I felt cheeries, blackberry, musk and little spice in it. It also was more spicy and more intense in taste, especially after longer drinking. Tasted very nice with pork and white sausages. I don't know how much it costs, but I bet it was worth it's price! You can give it a try.

Monday, August 17, 2009

Revolutionary bag?

Browsing some dpreview discussions recently I came across one interesting backpack.
It's really big.
It's nice.
It can hold a lot of stuff.
It has nice name Kiboko.
It's unavailable in Poland, so I can't put my hands on it :(
It's expensive, so I don't know if I can afford it

And I never had an idea that you can carry so many gear on your back! I belived Tamrac Adventure 10 is enough. But it seems to be a new winner. Just check it's webpage.
And it looks like on the picture below (taken from guragear website).

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

New domain

Yesterday I've registered my own domain. Hope to put photogallery there very soon. I'm still working on it. Gallery will be based on singapore - nice template based web gallery engine. Finally you'll be able to see my pictures from USA, norway, spain and other trips. Keep waiting!

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

White, pink, red wines...

With this entry I'd like to start new topic in my blog. Sometimes I'll put wine descriptions in here. And no, not for you. Rather for me myself, because I treat this log like a diary - just to make my memory more permanent. I note here different things - knowledge on many topics. And wine is one of my hobby. I like to taste new wines, I like to get back to old ones and I like to have good wine with food. Of course you can use my wine descriptions if you wish, but with wine there's hard to meet some other taste. Taste of wine depends on many things, like place, food, atmosphere, temperature, weather, etc. Same wine can taste different in different place, on different occassion, etc.
Nevertheless I've some favorite wines or a at least brands. One of them is Vinho Verde from Portugal. It's something very special. Has nice light blue color and tastes perfectly in hot, summer days. It must be cold. Like 6-8 C. Then it's good and you can get most of it.
Today I'll describe two wines from Portugal. First is Gatão. "It's one of the most emblematic wines of the Vinhos Verdes Region, being produced since the years 30 from the last century. Present in more than 50 countries of the 5 continents, it is a wine that well represents the balance between the freshness, the slightness and the fruity flavour of the Vinho Verde." More on it you can find here. It's good to drink with salads, cheese, snacks, etc.
Another one, a little bit more expensive (30 PLN against 25 PLN for Gatão) is Santo Adrião. "Produced and bottled in the Vinhos Verdes Region, from a selection of regional grape varieties Loureiro, Trajadura and Azal. Naturally fresh, with a fruity flavour and characteristic slightness. Citrinous tonality, brilliant, a light wine of smooth flavour, fresh and well balanced." as the write here.
Santo Adrião is a bit stronger than Gatão. It has 10%, but should be also served very cold and in summer days.
Important thing is also where you can buy these nice wines. Surprisingly first one you can buy in LeClerc. The second is a little bit more harder to get and I usually buy it in my favorite local wine store - Winnice Południa. But you can also find it in the Internet altogether with door to door shipping. Enjoy the wine!!!

Monday, August 3, 2009

Norway memories... Flying puffins

People asked me if puffins can fly. Yes, they can. Here you can find some poor pictures I managed to take from the boat trip. I know they're poor, but they proof these nice beasts can fly :) Enjoy!

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Light does matter!

Today I would like to convince you that sometimes it's worth waiting for good light. As you can see in the picture below, I've taken three shots of the same object, but with completely different lighting conditions! As you can see on time marks, it passed only 3 minutes between first and last shot, but difference is huge! All shots were taken early morning from the ferry leaving Talin for Helsinki. This is morning view of tower in Talin.

Because one picture is worth more than thousand words, just think over what you see above. Light was changing so fast that I decided to take those shots as teaching materials.

Hint: It's always worth to wait few minutes and take one more shot with different lighting conditions! Always!

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Cejrowski sobre Ecuador

As you probably noticed, we are trying to organize some nice trip to Ecuador next year. And because of that I'm reading/watching/looking for everything that is connected with this nice country. Last week I came across nice DVD movie called "Boso przez świat - Ekwador" (in english it would be something like "Barefoot through the world - Ecuador" if I translated it correctly). Cover below:

This is really interesting movie about Ecuador. It consists of 7 parts. First one is about equator itself. It's nothing new that true equator is not where people think it should be :) Other one tells the story of banana fruit - very interesting. Even my kids were watching it keenly. Then next 5 parts are about trip to Amazonia - how to prepare, what are threats and risks and what to do to survive your journey. And I think this part is most interesting to me. Although I don't think we will go for some hard core trip, it contains a lot of nice hints.
So I recommend this series ("Boso przez świat...") to everyone. It is real fun, a lot of knowledge and hints from experienced guy. My kids asked me to buy other movies from the series - especially Mexico and Spain/Portugal. So it must be something in it!