Sailing in Côte d'Azur

As we can see now - life is unpredictable. The next thing that I tried in my life was sailing! On yacht of course with a proper captain :) 6 people on board for one ween end, what can be better! And sailing in Mediterranean is a good thing to do as the coast with it's towns and islands looks great. Unfortunately, we didn't have martini or the chairs for getting tan, but we definitely had a great company. The days were windy, which is very important, and I even got a chance to 'drive' the yacht. Very cool experience :))


Santa Lucia, St Raphael


Life in the harbor, St Tropez


On the yacht


Harbor in St Tropez

First time: pasitrinimas su stulpu

Taigi, neveltui sukuriau nauja skilti 'First time' :)) Jau turiu dar viena toki ivyki, tik jau beveik savaite ta ivyki cia talpinu. Ivyko jis praeita antradieni, Sausio 22, vakare, tamsoje, darbo stovejimo aiskteleje. Ta dien buvau prisiparkavus masina prie stulpo (kuriu yra isviso 2) aiksteleje. Ir griztant is darbo su kruva minciu apie visokiausias prezentacijas, as sedau i masina ir issisukau vaira ne i ta puse, ko pasekejo gavosi didele trintis su stulpu, kurio as aisku nepastebejau. O stulpo pagrindas yra is cemento, jis pakrypo 45 laipsniais ir mano Pyzhiko durys pasidare nebe prekines isvaizdos, be juodo bamperio ir su eile metalines spalvos juosteliu. Is tikro tai buvo mano pirmas kartas, kai susiduriu su stulpu :) Na bet gyvent FR, tai tiesiog pakryksciojau savo masina, cia juk tas yra praktiskai norma :)

Dar norejau nuotraukele ikelt, bet taip ir neisejo iamzinti sito ivykio. Siulau naudotis lakia vaizduote, no pykchiarz :)

Playing with water - results!

This was the target :)


And the results are not too much exciting as I thought, let's say it was a first time. While watching the photos, especially the last one, they remind me a process of creating/constructing an electronic music - adding various elements, patterns and as the result you get some nice music. Here is quite the same idea - there is a nice fountain and you can decompose it into small pieces using high shutter speed and manual focus basically. I was trying to follow Roota's recomendations, however it was not possible to find 90 angle, as a result the focus range is very small on pictures.





Inside the fountain:






Right side of the fountain:






Incrising shutter speed up to 4000 I got some kind of molecules in various forms:






C'est tout! ;) Have some nice shots!

First time: skiing

Première fois - I decided today to open a new category as it becomes more and more relevant topic. I mean, try this, try that :) So this time zero pictures, but lots of impressions.

Somehow I was lucky not to forget anything :) Probably thanks to Agne, she was trying to make the first time softer :) I even took my bus on time, 7.30 (but we left 7.55...) and had some sleep. Later adventures began. I rented the skies with batons and boots. I was not able to get on me the first pair of the boots - are my legs so big?! No, glad to hear that :) Taking a bigger size solves the problem. A queue near funicular, and at 11 you are on the green field for debutants :) By achieving it I realized two things: I don't have a skipass for funiculars and I forgot to give my shoes to the guys in ski renting shop. Yeah... it does not stop me from skiing :D As I was left completely alone and without any instructions,the first thing I did - investigated my opportunities to get a lesson on skiing today. Lucky me, that was possible, but only at 1 o'clock :) Très bien!

On Sunday there are lots of people, so as a debutant I was afraid to go strait onto the 'highway'. However, practicing to stop skiing on the almost icy snow gave almost zero results: I learned to put the skies on, put them off, stand with skies and to fall down. Thoughts like: this is not for me, I am not born to ski, there is no chance to join the 'highway' - started bugging me. And burning sun settled me down for awhile until 1 o'clock :) Then I had a wrong teacher, unhappy that I did not ski peviously and had no exprience in any kind of sports, and also having no skipass, only a bus ticket :) He got nervious and then told that my teacher is another guy - Sebastien :) Don't know if it really was an error... but Sebastien was a great guy, extremely patient, a school teacher and skiing instructor during the week-ends. The problem with skipass was solved easily - you just go :D In one hour I was skiing alone along the highway in zig-zag curve :)) I learned how-tos: stop, make a turn, fall down, ski on a higher speed - it was enough to pass the debutant's hill :) My enthusiasm returned to me, I was full of energy to ride all the debutant hills! And then, 16:00 came, time to go home... What a pitty, I would like to have still 2 more hours left :)) Probably now will leave this for the next week-end. But overall - Yahoo! I made it!

Update: Forgot to mention where I've been skiing - ski resort of Auron (alternative for more popular resort - Isola 2000).