If video is not shown in the browser or applications then visit it at Biltmore Estate from Dmitrii on Vimeo.

Well, another Monday and we have another video with one of the stills from it.

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and here is the rest of them, hopefully you are no longer on dial up and have ability to see it quick.

I took this photo couple years ago about one month or so after they drained the lake. The surface was all clay like slimy dirt, and it broke into this shapes, similar to what you see in some deserts after they have rain. Walking on it was very tricky as it was a bit soft and if I applied to much pressure, the clay was giving up and my shoe was going into it, not something I wanted to do. And yeah, those cans grabbed my attention from the trail above the lake, I think that is why I climbed down to the bottom of it, to take this photo.

A few weeks later this whole area was overgrown by wild vegetation and it was like that until they filled it back with water. Those cans might very well still be down there, waiting to be discovered by archeologists a few thousand years from now.

Saturday Update: Great participation on this one, you guys rock! Good suggestions on where it is, but artandkitchen got it right, it is Carmel Mission Basilica in Carmel (California)!

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If video is not shown in the browser or applications then visit it at Mediterranean Sunrise from Dmitrii on Vimeo.

at this early hour. Lifeguards show up at this tower at much later time, maybe around 9AM or so. Red umbrellas on the left are the hot commodity and get claimed right around this time, during sunrise. You’d usually see old babushkas (grandmas) show up and lay their towels on the chairs and hang around to make sure no one get into their way.

On our three day visit to this part of the Mediterranean the sea was like a lake, just as you see in this photo, calm and nice, no waves, no wind. You could just float in that salty clean water and soak under the hot Turkish sun.

Saturday Update: A few very good guesses! All of those places probably have similar shopping centers, but this one happens to be in downtown Asheville North Carolina. This was one of the first photos I took with D800 about twelve months ago on one of my visits to Asheville. The amount of detail this camera provides is really incredible.

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If video is not shown in the browser or applications then visit it at Evening in NYC from Dmitrii on Vimeo.

This is the last unpublished photo from this video. I like this video and I might use it with other photos from NYC, but they will not be part of the video itself.

As always you can click on the photo and see much larger size photo, with more details, you can save it to your device and use it as wall paper. New York, New York!

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Saturday Update: Well, no one knew this one at all. Even my wife thought that it was in Savannah Georgia, which it is not anywhere close to. The statue is of Queen Isabella I, the queen of Spain who financed Christopher Columbus on his voyage to discover the route to Asia. During his second trip he discovered Puerto Rico. The statue is in Old San Juan Puerto Rico.

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If video is not shown in the browser or applications then visit it at Sunset In the Smokies from Dmitrii on Vimeo.

What do you think about this sunset? I think it is really beautiful.

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About one year ago I had an idea about doing consistent weekly posts on the same day, with a goal to get my visitors to expect and look forward to those posts. The goal was to provide something different and interesting and bring people back to my blog. So on every Friday I decided to publish a photo with  undisclosed location and let readers to identify it. I usually post the answer and acknowledge everyone that knew the place on Saturday or Sunday. Yesterday’s post was #49, almost one year of “Friday Mystery Photos”!

I think a lot of folks had fun identifying places where they have been or saw on someone else’s photos, or just did a guess. One thing that I was expecting, completely did not materialize, is the number of people visit my blog on Fridays. About the same number of you guys stopped by here yesterday as any Friday in March, or as any Friday six or twelve months ago. So this whole idea about getting people addicted to every Friday Mystery Photo really didn’t work on a grand scale. I’m sure there are a few of you who comes here every Friday (thanks guys!), but it did not accumulate as I thought it would. I guess some smarty pants advertisement and marketing guru would have a perfect explanation for it.

I have no intensions to quit on with this mystery photo trend and I’ll do my best to keep it going and find something new for every Friday of the month and I hope you find it interesting to see some cool places and maybe actually know where it is.

And I especially like those Fridays when my wife asks me where I took it, as she pretty much knows every place I have been in the last few years.

Double Take

Today’s photo takes us back to the lovely San Francisco. I took this photo from a pier at the Maritime National Historic Park. The one that curves like a bow.

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Where is this place anyway? I’ll update the status of this post sometime on Saturday, as usual.

Saturday Update: This is Caribe Hilton in San Juan Puerto Rico. Looks like no one stayed or recognized it at night. If you visit San Juan and want to have a mix of the resort life and quick access to the old town then this hotel is the perfect place. They have many pools and their own private ocean laguna where you can swim and play all day long. It is only five minutes away from the old town, using bus is 75c per person or taxi is about $10 per ride. We never ate at the hotel, so have no idea how good it is, I know it was pricy. They do have Starbucks in the lobby so morning coffee with some snacks is easy to get.

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And here couple more photos showing this marina.

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During a single day we saw some sun, some blue sky, a lot of moving clouds and some serious snow storm. All types of weather in short 7-8 hours of daylight. Do you see the Colorado River?

As always, you can click on the image and see higher resolution image in my photo gallery. Enjoy.

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If video is not shown in the browser or applications then visit it at Graveyards Field Water Falls from Dmitrii on Vimeo.

As you hike back from the upper Graveyard Fields Waterfalls you can take the path that will take you over some handmade bridges over swampy fields. It is nice of the NC Park system to invest into it allow travelers to easily get to the destination and back to the parking lot.

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Saturday update: Thanks everyone for stopping by and letting us know where it is. Yes, it is Brooklyn Bridge,  njoyeverymoment and Michele D’Acosta knew exactly where it was.

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After paying $5 per person and having a short 10 minutes hike you will arrive at the entrance of the cave. There actually two caves there, side by side, one is a huge almost like a dome and the second one is the Window Cave. This photo shows the first chamber of the Window Cave, it leads you through a pitch dark halls to the huge opening, showing the valley bellow. The pitch dark halls and chambers are full with bats, they are hanging from the ceiling in huge batches and fly all around. Pretty cool place to visit.

I used my headlamp to light up this cave, had to move it in circular motion during long exposures, to get it evenly.

And yep I did take couple photos of the window too, just have not had a chance to process it yet.

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If video is not shown in the browser or applications then visit it at  DC SHORT from Dmitrii on Vimeo.

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But today is the Friday and it means we have a photo that is probably not going to be known by most, maybe by some. Where is it and what is that church is known for?

Sunday update: Well, looks like no one who have visited my blog have seen this church in the past. I actually have other photos of it already posted, just from a different side. At that time it was posted as Friday Mystery Photo as well and some folks actually knew the place. I guess you have not been back to see this one.

This photo was taken couple weeks ago from the top floor at Marriott Key Bridge hotel. Lincoln Memorial and Jefferson Memorial appears very close to each other, but in fact there is about 1.5 mile between them. This is visual effect achieved via compression, this happens when you use high focal length, it makes things look really close to each other.

If video is not shown in the browser or applications then visit it at Before the Storm from Dmitrii on Vimeo.

If you were wondering what is title photo of the video, now you will know that far in background is the Thacher Island and those two little towers are lighthouses on the island. I took this photo right across from our hotel where we spent the night. Lovely place, I think it is called Bass Rocks Ocean Inn.

1. The first thing I noticed is the economical rundown of the island. I was a little surprised about it. I thought that since it is US territory and major travel destination, it will be in a much better shape. I say this simply on visual observation of the San Juan, places where we walked, took a bus or drove around the island. There are a lot of buildings that are simply abandoned, show their dark skeletons, covered with some graffiti or with advertisements, proclaiming that “Puerto Rico Does it Better”.
2. In San Juan you will see police on almost every corner. Pretty much every house or apartment building around the island, not just in San Juan, has bars on the windows up to the second floor. This tells me that there must be a lot of crime in San Juan and overall everywhere. Otherwise why so much police everywhere? This is probably the byproduct of the first observation.
3. Food and hotels are expensive, pretty much US or higher prices.
4. Roads are in great condition. We rented a car for a few days, drove around the island, stayed a few nights in the mountains and I was really impressed with the condition of the roads. Even though they could be a bit wider in the mountains, they were passable with two cars, just had to be very careful and not to drive in the middle of it as it goes left and right and up and down and you never know when oncoming car will show up from around the corner. If you rent a car and plan to drive in the mountains then try to get compact car, it is much better suitable for those narrow roads. And they are all pretty much paved (at least we didn’t venture to any dirt roads) and I saw maybe only one or two pot holes, great condition of their road system.
5. Cell phone reception was excellent. Even in most places in the mountains (not at our mountain retreat, which was actually nice, being disconnected from it all) we could geo track where we were driving.
6. Gas prices are priced per litter. Speed limit is in mph, and distances on the roads are shown in kilometers (I think). Some strange combination of US and European metric systems.
7. I knew that Puerto Rico has iguanas. I didn’t know where they exactly live and if we were going to see any. I saw three of them and in most unexpected places. One was running across busy intersection in Utuado, small mountain town in central part of the Island. The other two were seating next to airport runway in San Juan as we were planning to take off. We didn’t see them anywhere else, not in the mountains, not on any beaches.
8. The food was excellent. With the exception of our first meal at Subway (we flew in on Good Friday and pretty much everything else was closed) I didn’t have a single bad meal. Everywhere we ate the food was really fresh and well prepared. Sometimes it was delivered to our table on the “island time”, taking from thirty minutes to an hour, but it was tasty.
9. Buses can be used in San Juan, but they run on their own unpredicted schedule and it might take a while before you get to your final destination. At least they all cost the same – 75c, exact change required.

I took a lot of photos, have not looked at most of them yet, I hope there are some good ones to share with you guys. Here is one to start with. It rained on and off for the first two days, so everything was a bit grey, but really nice temperatures.

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This photo was taken at 400mm focal length. It was taken from Parque del Nuevo Milenio, which is about 3 miles away from Castile San Felipe Del Morro. For this trip I rented Nikon 80-400mm lens and took a lot of photos with it. This lens is very expensive (almost 3K) and I don’t want to buy it, but renting it was a great way to take photos like this, otherwise impossible with lenses that I own.

I use this guys to rent lenses for my trips:

Today’s Friday Photo comes from a very cool city, where is it?

As always I’ll update it with location on Saturday.

Sunday update: I’ve never been to Copenhagen and asked my wife why a few of you said that it is definitely not in Copenhagen. They have a similar girl, mermaid in fact, not just a swimmer. Now I want to go and see it. But a few of you (mbaldelli, xtinamcgphoto, Guy and timmyL) got this one right, it is in fact in Vancouver BC.

If video is not shown in the browser or applications then visit it at Biltmore Estate from Dmitrii on Vimeo.

Biltmore Estate and the house attracts a lot of visitors, and it provides very nice background for some nice family photos. Last year we purchased an annual pass and were able to visit it many times. I was hoping to catch it sometime with the snow during this winter but that never happened, I think mainly to the luck of snow in Asheville or my inability to get there when they had some snow. The funny part is that we never actually stepped into the house yet. I was inside the house about 15 years ago and it was pretty cool, but since they do not allow photography inside of it, I didn’t make into it during last year. We’ll probably do it sometime later this year if we decide to renew our passes.

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Have a great weekend everyone!

Saturday update: I don’t think anyone attempted to identify this photo. Well, it is not easy one, but if you ever been to the Coit Tower in San Francisco and looked up in the sky you would probably recognize it. Tripods are not allowed inside the tower so I had to shoot it handheld. There are some nice views off San Francisco from it, pretty much you can  see in every directions though the glass windows. I wish they took the glass off those windows and put some metal bars, as that glass is all scratched and sometimes obstruct the clarity of the view. They still use probably its original elevator, very tiny, man operated.

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This is a view of the Georgetown University from across the river in Roslyn. The National Cathedral is right behind it. I took this one last night. I’ll try to take one again when skies get clear and that smog goes away.

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If video is not shown in the browser or applications then visit it at Mediterranean Sunrise from Dmitrii on Vimeo.

I can remember those fresh waters and how I jumped into them after taking a few sunrise photos, very nice and refreshing before the start of a hot day. Water in Mediterranean sea is so clean and warm, I could not believe how nice it was, and on a calm day like this, it was almost lake like experience, no waves, very still but with salt water and nice buoyancy that lets you just float in the water without much effort.

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This is probably one of the most common views of the bridge and the reason to it is because parking lot is right above me. There is a little hike that takes you a bit down to see the bridge from this angle and pretty much everyone who stops at the bridge comes down this way and take their photos. You can also cross the street to the left, walk up a little dirt road and take photos of the bridge with the ocean in the background. I went there but didn’t see anyone else following me, and that photo is probably going to be next in my little Bixby Bridge photo series.

Big Sur is a beautiful place and I wish I had better access to it to take more shots like this during different times of the year and weather, not easy task while living on the East coast.

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Saturday update: Thanks to all trying to identify where it is and to those who knew but decided not to point it out because it was too easy for them. Anyway, this is Arthur Ravenel Bridge connecting Charleston with Mt Pleasant in South Carolina. I took this photo in Mt Pleasant Memorial Waterfront park, on other side of the bridge is Charleston.

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I stayed not far from this bridge back in October and decided to take late evening walk and see what I might find. I’m glad that I ventured out and explored this part of Boston. If you are ever there, you should too.

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Purchase Limited Edition print of this photo

If video is not shown in the browser or applications then visit it at Evening in NYC from Dmitrii on Vimeo.

The views of the Manhattan from the Brooklyn side are very nice, you can walk from the Manhattan bridge along the East River, go under the Brooklyn Bridge and have many different angles on both bridges and the Manhattan across the water. Next time you visit NYC make an effort and see it from this side as well.

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Purchase Limited Edition print of this photo

Saturday Update: Well, only one person commented and he got it right. Sebastijan Videc, not many people in the world know about Medeo ice skating ring, nicely done.

I have a lot of child hood memories associated with Medeo, it is probably one of the first place where I tried to skate on the real professionally made ice. I might tried prior to it on some back road in our neighborhood or at the park, but those places didn’t make ice for speed skating. When I was about ten or so years old I joined speed skating sport team and for entire winter had to get up couple times each week at super early hours to get on the bus that would get us to Medeo, so we could practice. The funny part is that I was so small and they didn’t have right size of the speed skating skates for me so I had to use my own “dutishi” little skates, any one from that part of the world would probably know the type of skate I’m talking about. I didn’t do that speed skating for long. Every year we use to go and skate at Medeo on weekends and it would get so crowded, one would have hard time even walking not just skating. Use to go see hockey ball games, it is the hockey game but they use an orange ball and the sticks are curved, not straight like in traditional ice hockey with a pack. Use to go see motorbikes ice speed competitions, those were really cool, smelled like a lot of burned gasoline, with bikes going around at high speed, their tires using some huge spikes to get traction with the ice as they turn around and making huge dents into the ice. All of it of course was 20+ years ago. I have no idea what they do there now during ice season. Probably the same and even more.

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This Friday I also want to give you an additional clue… to the above mystery photo.

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If video is not shown in the browser or applications then visit it at Sunset In the Smokies from Dmitrii on Vimeo.

Sounds like we have spring around the corner, probably most of the cold weather is behind us, finally. As temperatures rise and we get some spring colors it would be nice to go back to the mountains and see if anything is blooming, do some evening photography similar to this one. 

Any big plans for this spring anyone? We are taking a little break during first week of April, in warmer weather, some place south from North Carolina. You’ll know where it is in April after I post first photos.

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This photo is better viewed in higher resolution, all those details are pretty cool, just click on it…

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