Coming up - Table Sale at Kontokali

Saturday 2nd April sees us taking a table at the "Lighthouse" in Kontokali. A chance to make my first sale of some of my photographs which I've been posting here. It's an Easter-themed sale, so, we're trying to put an Easter spin on my photographs!! BUT, should be fun seeing what reaction I get from the public.

Here's another picture of the Windmill at Garitsa Bay, this time full-front and in the very early morning light.

Some more re-finished photographs

Anyone who has a digital camera, and that's probably most of us, will know that you must really use some techie software to get the most out of your images.

In this photograph I combined a black and white image over the original colour one and a wee bit of Photoshop magic. Compare with the one I posted earlier.




This is the view across to mainland Greece from our house.

A bit about my project.

I'm working on a photography project that entails me having to get up before dawn and hustling into Corfu before the sun rises! The idea is to get ethereal photographs of interesting parts of the town. In an earlier post I put up a first attempt at capturing Saint Spyridon Church just before sunrise. Well, as I was setting up the tripod, someone, perhaps an unknowing priest or a time-clock, switched off the lights that lit up the dome of the tower. So, I had to content myself with what was there. Undaunted, I went out again last Monday morning and took this -



Now it's just a matter of me getting to bed early and getting out more often!

Back to normal (ish)

I think we're just about back to normal, whatever that might be. Bought a proxy TV viewing option yesterday so we can now watch British TV via a laptop. No need for the satellite dish (for the time being!)
There are some workers doing up the next door house and they park opposite our house in a spot we vacated last week preferring to walk 100 meters to a safer spot on the advice of our lovely neighbours. They'd had their car smashed late last year at a cost of €5,000 yet to be reimbursed by their insurance company. We'd had two incidents when skidding cars had narrowly missed ours, so we took the advice seriously and moved. Two hours ago we heard a double thump and looked out to see the workers car had been almost written off by another skidding driver. We believe it's being caused by a water run-off along the road on a corner, supplemented with an algae-type growth that makes the corner very slippery, especially if the tyres a a bit thin!

So, HELP!!! - we moved just in time. Now, B is concerned that we didn't warn the workers from parking where they did.

I see this coming weekend could have good photo taking weather in the early morning, so it's up at 5:30 a.m. and see what I can get.......

Not quite "Now the TV"

Must be getting old - went shopping on Saturday, bought all the goodies for "Clean Monday" - first day of Lent to anyone who doesn't know these things - stood for ages in the check-out etc etc, then promptly forgot that today is the holiday. Only seeing our neighbour who should have been at work wandering about his verandah in his PJs brought it to mind. So, no satellite searching, more like visiting some of the villages to see just what people get up to today......

Now the TV

Having tried with a limited amount of success to get BBC and ITV using a proxy server in the UK, we've decided to go the satellite way. Should be fun trying to figure out what services are available without resorting to a 2.4 meter dish (€1,500 can you believe?) and SKY TV. Our neighbour tells us they had BBC Prime until they started charging for it. Tomorrow morning we go knocking on satellite dealers doors trying to get the best deal, plus filling up with heating oil for the freeze we've been promised over the next week or so - snow in Athens, for God's sake and near freezing temperatures here. Not content with looking at the snow on the mainland mountains, we're possibly going to get some of our own - help! After 7 years in China, one year in Hong Kong snow is as foreign to us as China was when we first arrived there. Mind you, that was Beijing and -15C and plenty of snow, but after one year we went south to Canton to some heat and humidity (100% plus some).

Anyway, we're loving living in a house that doesn't have white fungus growing through the paint in the bedroom and no back up of stench from the septic tank, plus water that was corroding our stainless steel cutlery and made our glasses go a milky white - and we were washing in this stuff - we actually thought that was how people had to live here - worse than living a country environment in China - and that's saying something. BUT, here we are in the lap of luxury looking over the sea from our front windows with now clean cutlery and milky-scum-free glasses!

I must say that some of the people who read this blog have made some lovely comments about my photographs, so here's a chance to say thanks and that I hope to create a calendar for 2012 containing some of them - sometime before the summer starts proper. Another little project to keep me busy.

Back again

After almost 5 weeks without, we now have our phone and internet reconnected. A new life starts in our new home and not having had my camera to hand I can only say that 2 weeks ago we saw our first dolphins about 100 meters from shore, doing the classic dolphin arc through the air and back into the water. A beautiful welcome to our new home. We're just about fully unpacked - record time - and had only this mornings efforts from the electrician to connect the inside of the house to the outside phone line - DONE!

More photographs to come as I am now preparing a portfolio of sorts, hopefully to sell during the summer when the visitors arrive to Corfu.