Parking heroes (+bonus)

Something different for today. With the old camera, which for two years has been a valuable companion and was used to make The Last Voter 2 and 3, I took some pictures as well. Like the ones in Torino. When I was in Greece, more often than not, I would encounter some inexcusable parking habits and some of them just had to be in a photo.

Especially for today, we will only see the edited photos. I hope you don't mind.

A very bad habit. People who are in a hurry for some reason, think that others are not in a hurry or that their time is not worth that much. So, instead of parking their car, they just leave it there. Passing cars will have to be careful because fuck them anyway.

Some people take two places because they don't want other cars next to them with the danger of leaving a line on them. These are the people who will kick you out of a fleeing boat if this means that there will be one more portion for them.

The lady who left the car there was in a hurry. Her moves were nervous. But still, she couldn't find a normal parking space, because this would mean that she would have to walk. And walking in small towns is a huge thing! You have to avoid it at any cost! Especially if the cost is paid by other people, preferably the weakest ones.

And now something from the airport of Thessaloniki. Above the lines, we see the menu of a restaurant in greek. Below the lines, it's in english, sort of. For example, oregano doesn't have to be from Oregon or Arizona or North Carolina, anyway. "Of" can replace "or" only when you speak dutch. And, of course, you can have dessert in desert, but you cannot eat the desert itself.

Back to Notre Dame

...or, to be precise, back to the park behind Notre Dame. Some pictures that I didn't publish on Saturday are today's post. It was very nice, I was just standing there checking the birds bathing and sitting on the grass. If only I had a better camera! But, hopefully, this will change soon. Until then, check this.

Lots of sun. Great colours. Maybe a bit too bright? No problem.

Editing to the rescue. Now the flowers look much better and separated from each other.

This guy was huge. When I saw him going to the fountain I thought he was a duck or something.

But he's too small to be a duck, even if he's a bit too big for a pigeon. Anyway, I managed to take some photos of him.

At the Louvre

Another long walk today. At the Louvre. And later I experimented a bit with the 500D outside, at the garden of Tuileries. Some photos made me want to lick them, but I showed strong character. Unfortunately, I will have to wait until Nikos decides to send me the photos before I'm able to post them here and have our eyes see something better.

Anyway, buy the book and let people know of it, because it's a time of strong need (in a good way, though)! More details in the next days. For now, behold some photos of art pieces from one of the most famous museums of the world.

Some battle. One of the numerous battles in the paintings. Why so many battles?

Yes, the history of humanity is filled with battles and there are battles everywhere, all the time. Why the fuck do they have to fight all the time?

By the way, this is what people take when some safe assholes send them to battle.

Death. How honorable.

King Leonidas at Thermopylae. Apparently he wasn't a real king, otherwise he wouldn't be under the cloud of the arrows.

Maybe being a king those days didn't have today's definition which is "rich useless piece of human garbage, sitting somewhere while people get disemboweled for him". There were others that were superiors, apparently. Or maybe in Sparta they were deeply insane and had no problem to go and die, because why not.

At least in Egypt they were peaceful. Not with slaves and not all the time and oh, well, they weren't peaceful anywhere. In all the ancient world they were killing each other like crazy. How did humanity even survive to reach the current era? Besides war, there have been some freak epidemics from time to time.

Why can't we just give a high-five like these guys in the picture do? Preferably without the handcuffs in the other hands.

A long walk. A really long one.

Today we kept on with our tourist activities. We covered the distance from Hôtel de Ville until Charles de Gaulle - Étoile. For those of you who don't know, this is about 10 stations of the metro line 1. On our way, we passed through the Louvre and the gardens of Tuileries. And Concorde. And Champs-Elysées avenue. A bit part of Paris, in a few words.

I didn't take many photos. Nikos had his Canon 500D with him and I couldn't get in the mood to use my sad Android phone. But soon...

An arc between the Louvre and the gardens of Tuileries. The exposure wasn't helping and I ended up with the sky all destroyed.

So, the whole editing concerned only the arc and a bit of the trees behind it.

And what would we do without our phallic symbols? This is the egyptian column at Concorde and we can see the Eiffel tower to our left. It's visible but it's very far!

It's a dark picture, but at least we have the clouds to add to the atmosphere. It was sunny earlier but while we were approaching the evening we got clouds and a bit of rain.

A long day out

Friends came today. And there was a long walk. I mean, really long. From Notre Dame to Concorde and back. That's like five or six metro stations. And with all the sun, my head was killing me. After about two hours of sleep and it's still messed up. I will continue as soon as I finish with the post.

While I was waiting for them, I took a walk around the area of Hotel de Ville. First of all, they have installed sand and beach volley nets in front of the Hotel de Ville. Paris has no sea, but who cares! Lack of sea doesn't mean lack of creativity!

Yes. In the middle of the city. This place changes every week. Once they install tennis courts and a big screen to watch Roland Garros, another time they have a whole garden with flowers and chairs, they had a music festival about a week ago, now this. We can't say that the people responsible for making the area great are lazy.

What I said earlier, but with more intense colours.

Near Notre Dame there is a park. All the benches were taken, at least the once in the shade. And I was there, taking photos of the pigeons bathing in the fountain and sitting around on the grass. A very nice image overall.

Of course, there were many tourists and most of them were interested in taking photos of the back side of the church.

Did I take any picture of the church? Well, no.

Not at the zoo this time

Yes, it's time for something different for a change. Yesterday we were going to a big park, but it started raining and we didn't want to risk getting in the middle of a summer storm, so we turned back. And then we saw a smaller park and we went there for a few minutes. Enough for me to take my superhuman phone and take some photos.

It was a nice park, with very thick vegetation. Here, the sky and the white buildings are burned and impossible to retrieve.

The colours were corrected, but the white remained white. You can't have it all, unfortunately. Unless you have a good camera!

And, for the first time in the history of ever, flowers! Yes, I decided to make an exception today.

The colours are more intense and nice, but there's always a burned part to remind us that we are all humans and nothing can change that, no matter how rich or poor or with a DSLR we are.

Last night I had a huge disappointment when I lost a very nice used Canon 500D in a very good price. But I keep on searching, what can I say?

At the zoo part VI

I'm growing increasingly tired of being unable to take photos as I want them and I don't want to wait any longer. So, I've decided to push a bit my budget and see if I can find a used DSLR and start actually learning, with something real. Hopefully, soon enough I will be able to post far better photos. For now, I present you a couple more photos from the zoo. Behold:

Here we have two hedgehogs sleeping after what seems to have been a nice vegetarian meal.

The colours needed some push up in order to get visible and more attractive. So, yes, editing worked like a wonderbra once again. But not like high heels. Those things are made by people who hate women.

This cute thing is called red panda. It doesn't look as lazy as a normal panda (with the climbing and stuff), but it sure is red.

Here the colours are much better. I will let the photo speak for itself. Go ahead, click on it. See it in all its glory.

At the zoo part V

I still have many photos from the zoo, but it's getting increasingly hard to single out some of them to put here. So, for today I have some lizards that got quite better after the editing, and some pigeons. Yeah, I went to the zoo and I took a picture of some pigeons.

In other news, while trying to be able to buy the 650D, I'm seriously thinking about buying a cheaper DSLR or a used one, so that I can take actual photos instead of using the Android phone. We'll see.

These nice lizards are small, comparing to the ones we already saw.

With some editing, they become brighter and a bit more colourful.

The pigeons are everywhere. And it's normal since they can eat food of great quality that is  destined for some exotic birds.

Here it became a bit darker, but we can see the details on the ground. Still, I think that it looks underexposed now.

At the zoo part IV - Serpents

Since there are still a few pictures from the zoo that I would like to share, I will keep posting them until I'm all out. Today's photos were a bit of a challenge to edit, since the indoors lighting was giving everything a shade of yellowish greenish and I really didn't want it on the final result. Did I succeed? Not really, but I tried and the next times will be better, probably.

Also, you will notice that the pictures are smaller. This is to make sure that the page will not be too heavy, because there have been reports (an personal observation, of course) that it loads slower than we can afford to wait in these fast days, when information has to be delivered here and now. We don't have dial-up any more, damn it! You can still click on them and view them on a slideshow in bigger size. I'm not taking this away from you, no.

This is a python. And not the funny kind. Still, if you don't bother him, he won't bother you.

Here I removed a lot of green in order to give some space to the other colours. It looks kind of better but I'm not very happy about it.

I must tell you that I like serpents. I find them fascinating. Maybe because they remind me of dinosaurs, that were one of my childhood obsessions?

Once again, some yellow and green had to leave room for the other colours. It looks kind of better.

Mosaics of the auditorium

At the auditorium of Sarah Bernhardt square, there are some nice mosaics, to which I will dedicate today's post. I found them too interesting to just ignore their existence. Also, I had the chance to see huge differences while editing. Let's see.

This is on the wall and on the floor, whose perimeter is used also as a pigeon bathroom. There are tons of light here, but they don't burn up the place.

This means that we can edit it and make the details show better. Very nice artwork, indeed.

This one is on the floor. Still a lot of light, which is not fair for the person or people who used so skillfully the little stones like three dimensional pixels.

Luckily, with some light manipulation, I believe that we have a better result now. I used a bit more saturation than usual, in an effort to intensify the colours even more.

Yeah, we have a third photo today. And there are still many nice shapes there. This one is also on the floor.

Some extra saturation was used here as well. Much better, right?

A mini concert at Sarah Bernhardt park

Today we had arranged a little gig at a park. And I say "little" because, well, we didn't have any electricity. We went there, we showed our permit to the guards and they gave us two chairs. We went to the auditorium, which is a round platform decorated with nice mosaics. A few songs in our program and the benches got all occupied with people who, even if they weren't very enthusiastic (I don't blame them, with 30ºC), they sat there after we started playing and that's encouraging.

The entrance. It's a very nice park but, at the same, I don't remember myself not liking a park.

With a bit of contrast and lowering the brightness, it certainly looks better.

The automatic white balance and the exposure of the Android app, give a good result in the auditorium but outside it's all burned beyond repair.

We see a bit difference after some adjustments have been made. Unfortunately, we couldn't save the left upper corner, which is a fundamental thing to know. If something is overexposed, it's ruined.