Black and Whites

I took a photo of the Aeroplane Bar the last time I was in Olomouc as well, but I couldn't resist trying it again. Unfortunately, unless you only want part of the plane, or some kind of abstraction, this is one of the only angles which works because of the trees blocking the view.

The full name of this basilica is the "Basilica Minor of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary," which is such a long name that it's rarely used. Dating to 1669, this basilica was one of the places Pope John Paul II visited in 1995.

This is a more common angle on the basilica, showing the twin clock towers.

The shingles look especially good in black and white.

Here was some of the other equipment/supplies/junk available to the maintenance crew, which I think makes a nice photo in black and white.

One of the doorways into the courtyard also responds well to a black and white conversion.

The remains of old infrastructure can still be seen on many Czech branchlines, including in some cases telegraph poles. This one had leaned slightly, although for what reason wasn't clear to me. Maybe it was just shifting earth.

This shot also works quite well in black and white, so I converted it even though it's a cheesy third-rate cameraphone image.

This photo was almost wrecked by a reflection on the train window, but I was able to salvage it by converting it to black and white.

I thought that with the pale lighting and paradoxically high contrast of Picture 7, I could do something with a black and white conversion, too.

This is the Rio-Antirro bridge, completed in 2004, and so therefore new to me on this trip. Since Rio and Patras are on the Peloponnese, which is not considered to be mainland Greece, this bridge supplements the ferries, although there have been other bridges in the past, including the one that I took when I visited the last time. It's also called the Charilaos Trikoupis Bridge, after the 19th-Century prime minister who originally proposed it.

Looking in the other direction from the bridge, the scene is nicer, of course, with mountains that are far enough away so that you can't see the development on them.

There are also a lot of details, both natural and otherwise, on the Rio beach, so sometimes just pointing your camera at the ground can give you something. I decided to compose this shot around that shellfish in the middle.

We also had a quick coffee at this coffeehouse, which is one of several in Rio. I don't recall the name, though.

Immediately after getting back from Greece, I loaded up the Ikoflex, for the first time in a few years, with a roll of expired Pan F that I had. The results were fine, some of my better shots, actually, but I had trouble finding a lab that were willing to scan the negatives. In the end, I had prints made and scanned them, but I'm still looking for a proper scanner to have these done.

Swinging the Ikoflex (still on the tripod) over to my right, I got this shot right after the Tynsky Chram shot.

In Malostranske Namesti, I took two shots of Miklasky Chram. This was the better one. The lines through the picture in the sky are the cantenary for the trams, another fixture of the square for over 100 years.

As I was walking back from the Mala Strana, I thought the light had improved, so I took another shot of Tynsky Chram. I haven't decided which is better, as this one actually looks darker.