Why so green?

Hello guys! It's been a long time no posting but the finals are coming and you have no idea how busy I am with all the projects, homework and exams. Wish I had more time but one of the good parts is that I'll have more stuff to show you! Starting from this post, we had to make a photo reportage around the city of Tirana. We stopped in different corners and everyone of us had their unique topic on what to focus and express from the pictures. Anyway, I'll tell you more about the project when I post the photographs soon. Meanwhile, a friend of mine took some pictures of me during the work and I was just thinking: Why not to post them? 

My Heartagram day!

This day is the day when I turned to a 20 year old lady! Holy crap, I'm so old! haha. But, anyway I can tell that it was one of the best days of my entire life! When it comes to birthdays all the eyes are on you! You focus on the people you love as much as they focus the more on you and then you finish the day thinking how blessed you are. In fact, this birthday lasted for the whole week! I had so much people to surround myself with so everyday I partied my own way with different groups of buddies. I enjoyed that time a lot and got many presents! God, I love birthdays!

The most beautiful part of it was getting the tattoo I have dreamed about for ages: Heartagram! The Heartagram is the trademarked symbol of HIM, created by Ville Valo on his twentieth birthday. He has stated that the heartagram is a "modern Ying Yang" and is meant to represent the juxtaposition of 'good and evil', 'light and dark' , 'life and death' and 'love and hate' . It combines a heart with a pentagram and it stands for HIM as a band, as an entity and for 'love metal' in general. This symbol is sported as a tattoo by many HIM fans though...and sure I'm one of them! 

Eyes like a shutter, mind like a lens.

 Days have gone by and I have collected many projects to show. Every Wednesday we take different lessons and we got so much to learn. I have to mention that except the fact that we learn how to take good pictures, we also get to know more about the Photography history and evolution. I have known many famous photographers of all time and learning more and more about their special techniques, ideas, styles and their way of expressing and making art by using their artistic soul and a camera. 

One from the projects was about the four portrait lightning patterns every photographer should know.

1. Split Lightning

Just like it's name, it splits the face into equal halves with one side being in the light and the other one in the shadow. Often used to create dramatic images. Mostly used for musicians and other artists portraits.

From South to North

As you can understand it by the title, my two latest posts have been full of pictures from south Albania and not within three days I've been in northern Albania, visiting with the city of Shkodra with my class. We had to visit the "Marubi" Photography Exhibition center which is located there. This National Photo Gallery was created in 1970 after Gege Marubi donated to the state his personal archive of the three generations. This collection of 500.000 negatives starts with an inverted refugee story. Pietro Marubbi (1834-1905) from Piacenza in northern Italy, fled his homeland for political reasons, settled in Shkodra in 1856 as an artist and taking the name Pjeter Marubi ( as an Albanian name) . Two years later he took the first-ever photograph in Albania, set up the first photo studio of the country, and made a living making portrait photos of the local upper class families and the odd revolutionary. With such an large amount of negatives covering every major event in the region between 1858 and 1959, this is one of Europe's most valuable photo collections.

Summer breeze through my heart...

First of May gave all of us a day off. Unlike the other countries, we don't protest for worker's right but we just give ourselves a little holiday. So, the first of May brought me to south Albania. The weather was perfect and I hadn't seen the sea so far. Besides, I had to take some landscape pictures for my Photography homework so I guess it was the perfect place to photograph. I also had missed that kind of relaxing feeling. I love the sound and smell of the sea. I might buy a house there and stay for hours watching the sun fall and not getting tired of it. I feel so unlucky to not live in coastal towns. Anyway, I stayed there all the weekend and moved in many places around Vlora. Had my first day at the beach for this year and it was awesome except the fact that the water was a little freezing. For all you people who live abroad, if you're still wondering where to go this summer, you can visit south Albania! There are many places and things you'd enjoy, especially the beaches and night life! Pinky promise!