Today was grey and cold, so here is a bit of brown for somebody I miss tonight.

Had a really relaxing picnic with my ex co-workers this weekend. Could not help but think how much we/things have changed since the days of the crazy attic start-up. To begin with, we were a bunch of five back then, on Saturday, we were fifteen… Come to think of it, if this friendship thingy was all we got out of Daisy, in the long run I guess it was worth it. BTW, I still keep certificate of stock options on my office wall at university to remind me of how great my current job is, regardless of all the hassle with the students.
The pic is from our way back.

While reading image/photo theory for my PhD (from now on referred to as “the bloody thing”), I came across some pearls of wisdom that I will randomly share. Consider the following one from 1614 encyclopedia entry on decoration of bedrooms. From The power of imagesby David Freedberg. Admittedly it is completely usless for “the bloody thing”.
If you have trouble reading text click here for a larger pic or here for other examples of the same belief.

I don’t know what is your take on the subject of graffiti. I am currently quite fond of them, particularly if they are not just some obscene sketches and mindless rants. It seems to me that Ljubljana is currently under graffiti attack (or is it just me noticing them more?) and a lot of them are really well done.
I have been photographing them for some time now and a recent post by Razzbuffnik spurred me into posting them. I mostly focus mostly on those that depict people as in a way, for me they represent a certain (though admittedly obscure) portrait of city’s inhabitants, a sort of a giant public photo album.

Just a quick “visual bite” from today’s relaxed coffee at Slovene ethnographic museum cafe. The espresso was a real shot in the vein but the ambient/music/things Tamara made up for the poisonously strong, heavily roasted drink.
And it was way more appealing to indulge in there than to get straight into the rush hour traffic. I guess some (smart) things do come with age. Or attitude.
BTW, umbrella is one of the few words in vocabulary of my intuitive German, and this looked like a perfect opportunity to use it :)

I am still fascinated by the documentary film Helvetica by Gary Hustwit that I saw yesterday. Yes, it is a documentary film about typography, about one of the most enduring and attractive types ever designed. One of the things that struck me was its pure omnipresence. Helvetica type is literally everywhere, you will find it on garbage trucks, subway signs and corporate identities of multinational corporations. And at the first sight you won’t even notice it is the same type. I for one consider myself to have an eye for obscure details and that kind of stuff but I was stunned. Since lots of shots in the film are from New York, I went through photographs of my this year’s visit to the city and sure, there it was, Helvetica, looking at me from more than a dozen of photographs. Hence the little homage pic.
In any event, the film is really worth seeing, it is well done, runs very smoothly and offers a brilliant interplay pro and contra statements from an interesting mix of interviewers of different generations, various styles and gradations of fame. And it is not just some wish-wash babble, its a bunch of people really contemplating about design.

Was a bit blue today, it’s at least 30 degrees Celsius outside and I am apparently catching a cold.  
You can expect more photographs themed by colours in the near future.

Here is a story of how I almost didn’t make it all the way to PhD. Before entering primary school, it was mandatory (I guess it still is) that each child was examined by a psychologist to determine if he/she was ready to go to school and “fit” to go to “regular” school. I almost ended in a school with adapted learning programme because of a circus related incident.
At one point during the interview, the psychologist asked me which animals fly.
My answer was immediate: “Elephant!”.
She was stunned. After recovering from the initial amazement, she continued to probe me: “What do you mean an elephant? Elephants don’t fly.” 
“Yes they do.”
“C’m on, elephants cant fly.”
“Yes they can. The one that a crow gave a feather to does”.
The answer further aggravated the lady and my mother apparently spent most of the remaining interview time convincing the baffled psychologist that I was really referring to the elephant Dumbo from the Disney book I loved so much at the time. My mother says that when we left, the psychologist was still not fully convinced.
Serves me right for reading capitalist propaganda pamphlets. Wonder what would Dorfman and Mattelarts have to say about this :) 
My mother also told me that she only took me to a circus once - I was terrified thorought the show since I thought they were using the whips to torture the poor animals.

Yesterday we passed a circus that has stirred a lot of interest among Kamnik’s smallest inhabitants. You should have heard Tamara’s excitement when she spotted one of the camels. Apparently, this circus was really made to make people happy regardless of their age - I for instance was thrilled to get an unexpected motif for my photo project on circus posters. Here are some sample images of the project.
   

I am still considering the possibility of doing a bit of hand colouring on the finalised prints, perhaps just a detail here (like on the last thumbnail) or there but at the moment, I’m leaning more toward pure black and white. Any comments on this are appreciated.

Must say that I am very glad that Germans didn’t win Euro. The mere fact that I did not watch a single game really does not make me a true fan of the sport but it does not mean that I didn’t have an opinion on the subject. Why didn’t I watch the games? Well, first of all we don’t have a TV. Or I should say, we don’t care to have a TV. Perhaps you can call it reverse snobism of a sort but unlike people who obsessively buy giant plasma/LCD TV sets, our living room is (for now) “screen-less”, a fact that rarely escapes our mostly amased first-time visitors.
But back to football, one thing is sure, it does have beneficial effects on social communication - you have probably noticed the ease with which you can strike politer conversation with people you hardly know, from grocery store seller to your new taciturn next door neighbor. And those little stickers of football players that kids collect adorn the basement doors in apartment buildings for years to come.