Look familiar?

Architectural crops

Click on the thumbnails:

Crazy city

HK - and no PP whatsoever :)

Live in style

Guess which city this is ... anyway, I will be going back there
because I want to learn to LIVE IN STYLE like they do, hell yeah :)

Railway colours

Beautiful carpet

Office windows

Evening on Lake Como

The insatiable hunger of the stone crocodile

Glehn Park, Tallinn

Modern art

Saw this ... thing in a park in Milan.
I don't know, I really don't.
Maybe mankind is doomed.

The essence of my work

The fall

Guardian demon

WW2 German naval gun overlooking Saint Helier, Jersey.
Rust in peace.

Guardian angel

Milan...

Kadriorg today...

Kadriorg Park through the Eye of the Fish, part 2

Kadriorg Park through the Eye of the Fish, part 1

The shadow

Just boats

Jersey...

Autumn is here

My favourite childhood toy

Uus Maailm 2011 - my local community street festival

Street cafes, market stalls and live performances including Mzwakhe and Zwai from South Africa.

Umbrellas

Ülemiste Freestyle 2011

Click on the thumbnails :

Soon it will be so

Lantern in the bleakness

This is Tallinn

Jaani Church in Tallinn

Just a house in the Old Town...

Toompea Hill in HDR

I have succumbed to the HDR fever. Doctors are helpless. Below you will see the lurid symptoms of the illness - my first three HDR photos of/on/from the Toompea Hill in Tallinn's Old Town.

Artsy-fartsy image alert,
enter at your own risk!!!!

Cross of Liberty

Hong Kong evening tram

Just a tiny 3D fridge magnet ...

Between church and child

Blast from the past

Eleven years ago I bought my first digital camera, a far cry from the digital cameras of today.

Northward view of Tallinn from the top storey of Viru Hotel

Balconies

Sanssouci

In memory of Isaky

"What's going on? What's going on behind these walls..."

Motion blur

Motion blur in a photo can be a useful mistake or a planned result.
Do we always want to see everything tack sharp?

In memory of Glashenka

"I'm being photographed again ... photographed!"

View of Tallinn, old and new, from the southern suburb

Cup of tea at work

Sunlit roses

Wanted to discard this image at first but there is something about it...

What I think of glamorous self-portraits

Downtown rainbow

Leaves

Canada Memorial, Green Park, London.

Ominous

Sonechka

View of Tallinn from the sea

Macro add-on lenses

One department in which large-sensor interchangeable-lens cameras do not always surpass simpler pocket digicams is macro photography.

Firstly, the larger the sensor, the much shallower depth of field at the same aperture value. So you grind your teeth, close down the aperture and crank up the ISO to compensate.

Secondly, most interchangeable lenses are not actually designed for macro photography - they cannot focus very closely. So you either buy a special macro lens, which is of course the best option quality-wise, or you just buy a macro add-on lens for the main lens, allowing it to focus much closer but sacrificing a bit of optical quality as is inevitable when you add an extra layer of glass.

I am using the Samsung NX system and a dedicated macro lens has been announced (yippie!!) along with its hefty price tag (arrrgh!!), so I have decided not to wait/save shedloads of money for it, but try macro add-on lenses instead.

Below you will find 100% crops of the same computer display area (along with a stain that I only saw when I viewed the images full-size :) ) illustrating how much detail you can get with the Samsung NX 30mm lens by itself and with at least one macro add-on lens attached - in each case at the closest focusing distance possible.

So the examples go like this: 30mm, +4, +10, +14, +18.
I hope this will be helpful to those facing the same choices that I did :)

Swiss Alps around Davos

Davos is not only an expensive winter resort and a venue for high-level conferences,
it is also a great base for stress-free mountain exploring on a budget in the summertime.
Summer accommodation prices are low and you get a special card
for free train travel in the area and free use of mountain cable cars!!

From the botanical garden in Helsinki

Large - not, lovely - yes.
Free to enter and roam.
Bliss on a sunny summer day.

Boats in Bremen's Bürgerpark

Polar bear feeling very hot

Nagoya Zoo, August 2008.
I was feeling hot too, but you do not want to see that.

Cry me a river...

I guess I like reflections

We all need to self-reflect sometimes :)

Kadriorg Park - a garden in the autumn

Lovelier than ever...

Night view of Hong Kong island

Love that city, been there twice and want to go again sooner rather than later :)

Deer in Richmond Park

London is not all thousands of buildings and millions of people :)

Red flower feast

Macro is one photography genre that I have neglected so far.
I have this tendency to overlook tiny things and I need to (learn to) look deeper.

This image is tolerable I suppose, but I (will eventually) need a dedicated macro lens.
The shot taken with Samsung 30mm with +4 diopter add-on and then heavily cropped :)

In memory of Silanty

Hello world :)

Still life

Bowl of clean fruits and a dirty window :)

London Eye illumination

Nice lighting, a bit of London night magic.

St. Paul's from afar

A view of the magnificent dome from the opposite end of the pedestrian Millennium Bridge:

My reflection

I took this weird self-portrait on the day for which I had waited 15 years - QPR returning back to the Premier League after the FA hearing farce concluded without points deduction on the final day of the season :