Instagram Adventure Continues

I took a bit of a break for holidays, enjoyed some time with family and friends. Now that the work started, I am starting to work on my blog, too.

All through the last year I had enormous fun with my Instagram project, taking photos on my morning walks and posting them with minimum processing. December was no exception, I experienced great weather and some pretty amazing mornings.

A professor of mine used to say “It’s all about the details.” and more often than not I can’t argue with that. It is very rewarding when you rediscover an old thing that you’ve been passing by for years.

The gentleness of winter sunrises always leave me breathless, it almost feels like the sun shyly invites you into a new day.

Being the month of December, it was impossible to avoid few Christmas images. But I managed to control myself this time and posted just the few.

Month after month my Instagram project continues only and only because of Berta. She is my driving force for all the morning walks, I don’t think I would be up and about in freezing conditions morning after morning, if it wasn’t for her. And sometimes she gives me the best and funniest images I could ask for.

My Instagram feed was swamped with everyone’s #best16of16, so I had to do it myself. It was interesting to see which images were most popular and I was quite surprised to see almost 10.000 likes. I have such a small group of followers, so that number is pretty amazing.

My Instagram adventure continues in 2017. and as always, you can find me under the nick snowlocked. I would love if we could connect on Instagram, too.

 

March Madness on Instagram

My Instragram adventure continued through the month of March, albeit with a bit of difficulty. The weather was really awful, cloudy and rainy, just like this first image bellow.

Thankfully, spring decided to show up half way through and my focus shifted from landscape to flowers. Trying to capture macro world with my phone camera proved a challenging thing, but at least I provided some entertainment for my neighbours, squatting and kneeling and almost rolling in the grass.

 

In other news, Berta is still ignoring my photographic attempts. But if anything, I am persistent.

One of the favorite images of the last month is Berta and Vilma playing “Catch me if you can”. They are just adorable and I am in awe of their friendship. My one and only indoor image is Berta finally posing for me.

And finally, my good old Hendrix bridge…With the daylight savings change, the sun is up much earlier, so that will provide me with quite different images from the fall/winter season.

The adventure continues in April, the weather and the light changes every day, it will be interesting to see all those changes in my images. If you want to follow my daily antics, you can find me on Instagram if you look for snowlocked. I would love to follow you there, too.

My February Instagram

I am a little bit late this month with posting my Instagram images from February. The flu left me exhausted and somewhat in a bad mood. The weather is not helping, either. Rainy, cloudy days are following one after another, keeping spring just out of the reach.

Hopefully, sun will find its way through the clouds, making my morning walks beautiful again. For now, here are my February images.

 

I am still surprised how it all looks bright and colorful on my phone, but here everything is soft and mellow. It gives me a sense of novelty, like a new version of already published images. I managed to capture few precious moments of Berta and Vilma, they always make me smile.

Going through these galleries, it seems I managed to get quite a few sunny mornings in February. Strange, because if someone asked me how was the weather, I would say the entire month was just awful. Goes to show how we tend to linger on bad things, forgetting to enjoy all the wonderful moments.

With days getting longer, I hope to extend my afternoon walks and get a different set of images of those familiar places. With sunsets and bolder colors, different angles, I can’t wait to see what I’ll get.

The “Hendrix” railway bridge is still one of my favorite subjects, I like how all those straight lines and steel make a contrast to soft morning light, abstractness of river and surrounding nature.

I posted only two images so far this month, but I hope to catch up with my regular schedule. Who knew a little bit of flu and fever could leave you so exhausted and spent….If you want to follow my daily antics, you can find me on Instagram if you look for snowlocked. I would love to follow you there, too.

Straight

Our theme for this first week of March is Straight. My first thought was a railway bridge in my neighbourhood, the one I am constantly trying to capture in different ways. I think it fits the bill.

Nothing really extraordinary about this image…the sky was overcast, so I had to tinker in post-processing to get some balance in lightning and contrast. Since it was heavily cropped, I needed to soften the image, because it looked a little bit grainy. Spotlight gave me in-depth I was looking for, so I stopped editing then and there.

As usual, for more excellent entries, tomorrow hop over to Leanne’s blog Leanne Cole PHOTOGRAPHY.

January on Instagram

Expanding your creative horizons can come from so many different directions. There is no real excuse to not challenge and push yourself every day. Because the world is around you, everywhere you look…It is not in a far away land that you dream of visiting, once you find a better job and save some money. The world is at your exposure every morning when you open your eyes.

As you can see, my little Instagram project is still going strong. For almost 100 days I am taking pictures on my morning walks and I am still able to find something new. Weather it is a different subject or a different angle or a different light, I rediscover my little piece of heaven again and again. I don’t think I appreciated the beauty that surrounds me, until I saw all the images together.

There is even a fresh face this month, my best friends dog, a very irresistable Jack Russel named Vilma. Berta and I both adore her, I hope there will be some new images with the two of them. If I am able to catch them in the same frame. 😀

My beautiful railway bridge is officially named “Hendrix”! For over thirty years someone makes a graffiti at the side of the bridge and every time officials paint it over, but soon after the name “Hendrix” is proudly standing again. In the end, urban culture won. There might be hope for us…

I think Berta is warming up to my silly hobby, I managed to get few really beautiful images. She is still ignoring me, but at least she is still. 😛 I am quite taken by the colors in all these images, what a talented artist nature is. Looking at the collection, I am only inspired to continue with this Instagram project. Isn’t that something?

I got a wonderful Christmas present that arrived in the middle of January – Samsung Galaxy S6, the phone with the best camera. What a difference it makes, compared to my old iPhone 4S, a pure joy. You can find me on Instagram if you look for snowlocked, I would love to follow you there, too.

Lastly, I would like to share with you this heavenly piece of music, a beautiful soundtrack for my morning walks.

It is Monochrome and It is Madness

The theme for the August Monochrome Madness was bridges. So, I waited for the last possible minute and went down to the river to take some photos of the nearest bridge I could find. Because I am that lazy. 😛 You can find the original color version in my yesterday’s post Down By The River, along with a short history of the railway bridge.

Editing was a road to madness, because the original image was taken on a very sunny Sunday morning, but for some reason I decided to transport it into the night. There is this interesting “space” overlay in PicMonkey, that I used few times before. Once you place it, you turn the image once more to black and white, remove the white spots (I think those are supposed to be galaxies far, far away) from the parts of the image like the bridge and the river and play some more with the exposure. It could almost pass for a night image. I said almost. 😀

The theme for the September Monochrome Madness is Urban, whatever that means. I’ll need to invest some time in streetstyling…or I’ll just go outside my building and sit on the curb, hoping to catch some interesting image. I am thinking about entering a photographic contest “Moving through my city”, that is a part of the project “Sustainable Urban Mobility in Zagreb”. Since I am using my bike to move around, maybe I could focus on that.

As always, be so kind to check other great entries in this week’s Monochrome Madness Challenge on Leanne’s blog Leanne Cole PHOTOGRAPHY

Down By The River

Mondays are usually reserved for One Four Challenge, but this is a review month, so I am taking some artistic liberties. I will use this month to search for some images that I might use in the future OFCs.

I always leave everything for the last minute, that is a well-known fact. So, when Leanne Cole posted month ago that for the first August Monochrome Madness theme would be bridges, it was natural that I left it for this Sunday.

I overslept. So, instead of the beautiful sunrise light, I got scorching heat and blinding brightness. Instead of enjoying some quiet time, I stumbled upon fishermen with whom I hold a long-standing grudge. I managed to find a peaceful place on a wooden dock, only to be chased by the rowers who for the first time ever chose that exact spot to stop and rearrange their seating.

Ah, well….amidst all that drama, I did enjoy myself, watched Berta take a dip in the river, tried to take photo of some crazy fish jumping out of the water and took few images of newly renovated railroad bridge.

Not a great gallery, but not entirely bad. It is almost impossible to take a decent image of Berta, the second she sees my camera, she duck. The one where she is laying on the dock is the best I took in years. She heard the rowers approaching, so she turned around. Bingo!

As I said, there were so many crazy fishies jumping out of the water, but soon I found out it was impossible to catch them on camera. Like they took a page from Berta’s book. The one here is barely visible, but I liked the composition with that end of the wooden dock, so I played around with it. My friend suggested I take a video and extract an image from there, but isn’t that cheating?

The railroad had been under the construction for three years and is finally finished. Nicknamed “Hendrix” for the graffiti that was painted 30 years ago, the bridge was constructed in the year 1939. and it has a great architectural and engineering value, because there was no actual welding work and the main beam was strengthened through ingenious engineering of the arc. Although the Hendrix graffiti was painted without any real artistic merit and certainly without any deep message, over the years it acquired somewhat legendary status, especially to the “Lost” generation of 70s and 80s. In the latest reconstruction, a new coat of paint was applied. There were two separate attempts to spray “Hendrix” at the same place, center of the bridge, but the workers painted it over. Still, there is hope, now that the job is done, some brave soul will climb the bridge and make it “Hendrix” again.

Next Monday I would like to take you behind the stage of June and July One Four Challenge, on a stroll through Milan. Stay tuned. 😀

Deconstruction

These are the images of the Railway Bridge in my hometown Zagreb, Croatia. Nicknamed “Hendrix” for the graffiti that was painted 25 years ago, the bridge was built in 1939. and it has a great architectural and engineering value, because there was no actual welding work and the main beam was strengthen through ingenious engineering of the arc. Although the Hendrix graffiti was painted without any real artistic merit and certainly without any deep message, over the years it acquired somewhat legendary status, especially to the “Lost” generation of 70s and 80s. In the latest reconstruction, a new coat of paint was applied. There were two separate attempts to spray “Hendrix” at the same place, center of the bridge, but the workers painted it over. Still, there is hope once the job is done, some brave soul will climb the bridge and make it “Hendrix” again.

The old “Hendrix”

 New images taken 09.03.2014./06.04.2014.