konstantinos’ blog

Time to be creative …and seems that my mind travels to space…

Original photo taken on a flight from London to Berlin on 6 October 2007.

Make: Canon
Model: Canon PowerShot S70
Shutter Speed: 1/15 second
F Number: F/4.0
Focal Length: 11 mm
Date Picture Taken: Oct 6, 2007, 8:44:33 AM

Which is the best way to update your blog? A blog that you care for but you didn’t have the time, the mood or the inspiration for more than ten days to update? … the answer is with a video compiled from photos and videos shot by the author! lol

Ok. The truth is that lately I haven’t been feeling very well, and I don’t mean psychologically (luckily I am always a positive and happy person). London’s cold weather is always willing to affect sensitive bodies like mine… haha (I am a virgo… and virgoans tend to worry about their health & sometimes tend to be hypochondriacs). Anyway, enough with all these nonsense.

Now that I’ve finally found the mood to post something new I created this small video to jewel my blog (lol²)! Seriously… I liked this track: Take back the future from (the greek group) High Level Static and so I decided to make a clip where I can use it in the background. All photos and videos of the compiled video are shot at Berlin 1+ month ago. Watch it but believe it or not I can be more creative and imaginative in video editing :p …but with Windows Movie Maker and a laptop with 512MB RAM choices are limited…

Date: 28 October 2007

Time: evening

Destination: Tate Modern

Place: river Thames, London

Participants: Marios, Vasilis, Konstantinos

A new photo for my photographic portfolio! This time is a portrait… a foreign territory for me, but I think the result is pretty good. Of course, the place of the shoot - the Holocaust Memorial at Berlin, Germany - helps a lot in that! Anyway, hope you like it. The comments I’ve received up to now from the deviantArt community are ehmm  …let’s say few… lol

Model: Canon PowerShot S70
Shutter Speed: 1/30 second
F Number: F/2.8
Focal Length: 6 mm
Date Picture Taken: Oct 7, 2007, 6:27:23 PM

Yes, Berlin was great! I would definetely want to visit this city in the future. It differs a lot compared to London and in my opinion it has a lot of similarities with Athens. Before you argue on that; it’s just my personal opinion! Of course the superior architecture cannot be compared to what Athenians are used to see, and dare to say what Londoners are used to see. Potsdamer Platz is great, like Canary Wharf but what really amazed me are all these buildings made in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s with their minimal architectural design (see Bauhaus).

Anyway, before letting you enjoy (?) the photographs let’s summarize the Berlin experience in a few words: clubbing with great music, clubbing on the 15th floor, clubbing at 10am in a “club” under a tube station, cheap food, relatively cheap cabs, average shopping malls and shopping atmosphere, friendly young people, inexpressive older people, futuristic buildings, wide wide wide streets, huge monuments, greeks in random positions (cab driver, dunkin donuts cashier), euros, no english… did I mention clubbing?

Voila…

New photo/deviation/artwork after 1,5 month! This whole dissertation situation not only dominated most of my time the last two months but also changed my priorities in the things that I would like to enjoy now that I have (some) free time. Anyway, the good thing is that I am in the mood of showing something new and moreover of participating again in my beloved dA community which I had been neglecting for a long time now… (more looooong comments are coming!)

So here it is: “Autumn Walk”, simultaneously launched on deviantArt, Flickr and dpgr.gr!

Hope you like it. Photo was taken during a walk at Hyde Park in London, but not on an autumn day! Nevertheless, it usually feels like autumn in London … and I like that

Model: Canon PowerShot S70
Shutter Speed: 1/318 second
F Number: F/2.8
Focal Length: 6 mm
Date Picture Taken: Feb 4, 2007, 6:25:22 PM

I started writing this post in order to discuss the changes that take place in my life this period. So I thought, lets make the post look nicer by adding a nice photo from London. Then I searched my archive of unpublished photos (sic) and found the photo you see above (click on the photo for an exuberant view). It’s taken from the balcony of the house where my friends Panos & Alkistis live. And it’s a photo that reminds me of how beautiful London’s skyline is! So I decided not to write about the new things in my life but about the skylines of the three cities of my life…

Actually nothing special is happening in my life apart from the fact that I am not longer a student. Who would expect that after 21 years (when I first started going to primary school, lol) a day would come when I would not be a student any more. Seriously speaking, after almost ten years of studying at a graduate/postgraduate level, my status has changed and I don’t think that I have really realized that. No more student discounts, no more lazy daily schedules, no more late night outs… The thing that worries me more is that I still have the feeling that a coursework or a project should be finished or that I should study from now in order to go well at the exams on January (or May or September or …). Of course, the latter has always been a thought and nothing more! The good thing is that I already keep myself occupied with what I really enjoy and if this something happens to be the field of my future job I will be even more excited. For the curious (and I don’t think there are any… only 2-3 of my close friends read this blog …) I am talking about Web and interactive design. Anyway, enough with this info… I have reasons that make me happy lately and they don’t fit in the “I finished my masters degree” reason, but let’s leave that for future posts.

Back to the skylines, I believe that I had always been impressed by skylines. In the thought of what makes an amazing skyline the classical answer would obviously be: skyscrapers, historical buildings, interesting ground morphology etc. Cities like London, NYC, Tokio, Hong Kong are undoubtedly the most famous regarding their skyline. However, in my opinion a skyline can be very interesting if its view reminds us of the city/place in which it belongs and further more of all the beautiful moments that someone can recall after having lived there for a reasonable amount of time. Ok, compared to Athens, Patras and London - the cities where I have spent 99% of my lifetime (born/raised in Athens, studied in Patras for 7 years and living the last 13 months in London) - London’s skyline has undoubtedly the wow factor but I still consider Athens’ and Patras’ skylines magnetic. And that’s mainly because I love these cities and I am always looking forward to experiencing things regarding them… even a static photo skyline!

To avoid misunderstandings, I love London too and I am very happy to have lived and still living here. Life here is a powerful experience and varies a lot from what I have been used to until now. I just hope that after a while, when my experiences from being a Londoner will be equally compared in quantity and quality with my experiences as an Athenian and a Patrinian (lol… who knows what the resident of Patras are called???), London will not have dominated in my mind as the place with the best and only good memories! …because it sure has the potential for that.

A little gift from all the readers of this blog (if there is anyone!)

Tada… a collection of wallpapers! All made from photos I shot during my vacations in Skiathos, Greece. Each wallpaper is available in two screen resolutions: 1280×1024 (common desktop TFT resolution) and 1280×800 (common laptop TFT resolution). If, I say if, you can’t leave without one of them and your screen resolution is bigger or stranger (mac users again!) just ask me to send you a bigger file.

Hope you like them… c&c always accepted.

1280×1024 - 1280×800

1280×1024 - 1280×800

1280×1024 - 1280×800

1280×1024 - 1280×800

1280×1024 - 1280×800

1280×1024 - 1280×800

Vacations are over, along with all the great things that happened during them

Back to London, back to dissertation work, back to friendly sun.

My mind is full of thoughts about the past 22 days… thoughts about missing people and situations. All things happen for a reason (as a good friend of mine says). Patience, patience, patience and everything will be great. Maybe even greater than these past days.

DX

Finally, almost after a month of intensive negotiations between a company of 5 people, everything is arranged for our short vacations on Skiathos. Skiathos is a city and a small island in the Aegean Sea belonging to Greece (…where else). Rooms to let, bus and ferry tickets are booked and the only thing that keep Thanasis, Michalis, Georgia, Stathis, Ifigenia and me, from the island is these 10 days that we will have to wait for that…

I’m really happy for two reasons. Firstly, the obvious one of going on summer vacations in a really nice place with sea, sun and a temperature almost 25 degrees higher than the temperature I have been experiencing for the last 2139412734 months in trendy cosmopolitan beautiful centre-of-the-universe mouldy London! It’s a big difference going from 15 degrees to 40 degrees. I don’t know how shocking this difference will be though! It sounds very strange to me that I won’t have to carry an umbrella or my beloved TOPSHOP trendy jacket (lol) when going out! But of course, I will survive!

Skiathos is a great island and in my opinion has one of the most amazing beaches in Greece called Koukounaries. I had visited the island 6 years before, if I remember correctly, with a completely different synthesis of a friendly company and I still remember that beach! Moreover, Skiathos is by general acceptance the “greenest” Greek island of the Aegean Sea and that makes it even more interesting. Night-life at the island is not disappointing at all. However, I am not sure if I care about that now You see, the last couple of months in London have been more than interesting regarding night-life, partying, clubbing, drinking… On the other hand, greek summer night-life is great and I am looking forward to go out when I’ll arrive to Greece. So Athens will cover this need better than any other place in Greece (I believe).

The second reason for being happy is that after 2-3 years I am going for second time on vacations with my friends from Patras. Unfortunately, not all of them will be there (why John, Mixaloybas, Alf, mmmmmmmmmmm ?) but a lot of effort has been put into arranging these short vacations with 5 of them… I don’t want to imagine the same process with all of them

Anyway, my summerish mood is already very strong (in contrast to my “sit down and do your dissertation” mood), so I’ll close this post with a few photos from Skiathos… to inspire a similar mood to those of you that won’t go on vacations in a summer destination or that have to stay in cool leading attractive all-this-happen-here London.