Friday 16 January 2009

happy

Today's post doesn't belong to the routine of this blog, but I am so happy that I have to tell you this: I have just found out that I got the big prize at the national D:Focus photography contest, together with the first prize at the category 'photojournalism'. This means that I got 2200 euro to buy electronic products, which in its turn means that I can finally buy the digital camera I have been longing for, the Nikon D300. Which I could have never ever bought otherwise, not in this life maybe :-)
I am so happy! And more than this material value, the prize has a special symbolic meaning for me, coming now, after I have returned to my images (and to my blog :-) when in late autumn I had given up photography for good (or so I had thought at the time).

You can see the winning album here (Japan by 'murasaki'). You already know some of the pictures from my blog.

29 comments:

  1. Oh this is wonderful news, congratulations. Yet I'm not in the least bit surprised.

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  2. :)
    excellent. & congrats. one day you'll be rich and famous, i can see that definitely coming :)

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  3. congratulations and a fine choice of camera. wonderful images of Japan, with some marvelous colour (i had already noticed that you appear to have a very strong colour sense). kudos!

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  4. ce veste minunata!! bravo, ma bucur tare pentru si cu tine!

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  5. Congratulations!! I am so happy for you :D

    And I completely agree with Antonia. And I am so happy you decided to come back to photography - your images have become a daily part of my life now - it felt somewhat strange to not see new ones when you had stopped and I missed them terribly.

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  6. Felicitari!!si inspiratie iti doresc!Numai bine!

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  7. you might consider d90, which has more or less same sensor as d300, but can also make decent movies. rest of the money should go into optics, probably 50-150 2.8 and 18-50 2.8 from sigma or tokina

    I will observe how your pictures change.

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  8. Mubarak ho!!!
    Now, Roxana, believe in yourself.

    and , oh yeah, could you lend your poor ___ brother 500 Euros?

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  9. Congratulations!!! Well deserved!!!
    Frocks/FS&P

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  10. You are truly an artist, i had no doubts ever! Congrats!

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  11. Fantastic news. Every congrat! Well done!

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  12. Congratulations dear! How wonderful.

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  13. Roxana - You are a fine artist. Not just a photographer - though your photographs are wonderfully intense and mysterious. But the way you marry image and text - your own words or someone else's - is incredibly subtle and original. So a thousand cheers for the clever judges who gave you this prize, and a million cheers for you. You deserve it.

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  14. and a million thank you to you all, I really can't say how grateful I am for the warmth and friendship you give me... I must say that I still can't believe you love so much what I do... it's like a dream.

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  15. aha - a discerning jury with taste!

    (but how alarming, that you might have given up altohether on photography!!!)

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  16. hey roxana,

    i'd also like to congratulate you! it's nice to see such great work get recognized! you go on with your awesome self, you deserve it!! :-)

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  17. facinating pictures! You deserved that prize!

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  18. thank you, lalegini, for your visit and your kind words.

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  19. That is just brilliant news! It has been incredible, watching your blog grow from the very begining. How you have never posted anything dull or boring, just consistently beautiful, thought-provoking and intelligent images. I agree with Neil too that the content, photography married with text, has been stunning.
    Well done!

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  20. your photography is Powerful for me! Your soul, poetic, and it comes through!!!!

    You will have more than that camera in the end...
    I read a poet who almost gave up his poetry for spiritual practice, then he shifted, and came back to it, i will see if i can find the interview.

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  21. thank you, oh thank you! Susan, I have missed your comments, you know that?


    mansuetude, thank you for telling me this. recently somebody said to me that I must have great spiritual strength, but that this is not visible on my blog :-) I don't know what to think about it, I just got amused. but I am happy you can see power and poetry through my pictures.

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  22. its all All isn't it?
    Man would take apart the molecules in water, looking for the hydrogen atoms, the oxygen, maybe finding other things too--

    then with all that done, he might get so perplexed about his own thirst... the water broken in his hands, he might say, look I broke god, i broke life, i must be something...

    (forgive me)

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  23. I hope the Nikon doesn't lure you too far down the road of technical proficiency. Your best images are nearly always the least clear. Whatever you do though, many congratulations!

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  24. mansuetude, your words remind me of Benn's poem, the Forsaken I, in which he confronts the poverty of the modern world, brought about by reason and science and desire to understand and master everything, and the lost world of the myth. he uses almost the same images as you, the breaking of the bread, taking apart the molecules ...

    World thought to bits. Space and the ages,
    And what mankind groped for as guide,
    Infinities are now their gauges ―
    The myth has lied.

    Oh, when all wholely to one center tended
    And all mankind from that one wound seemed welling,
    Breaking the bread that each one might partake―
    Oh distant hour, fulfilling and compelling,
    That even the forsaken did not forsake.

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  25. oh, D.Coys, thank you, what a great surprise!
    no, I don't intend to give up my old nikon or film, and because I am hopeless when it comes to technical matters I don't think much will change here.
    but, I would very much like to know exactly which images you think are best :-)

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  26. 'I would very much like to know exactly which images you think are best :-)'

    The portraits, nudes and their settings have a nice habit of laying out only parts of their stall. The disembodiment and the dirt in this one, for example, tell an incomplete story:

    http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xW0_fFPi7X8/SP-arrI4ymI/AAAAAAAABD0/SPYT6pyksZc/s1600-h/maed-44_resize.jpg

    Something similarly perplexing goes on with this striking creature:

    http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_xW0_fFPi7X8/SQeDKo9xBNI/AAAAAAAABH0/xQNHhZw4eRc/s1600-h/littleone.jpg

    The best ones keep a distance, and show hesitance, perhaps reluctance. More of less please!

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  27. d.coys! I hadn't expected you would answer so quickly, thank you! so these are the pictures you like, I see (I - almost - see now). you know, nobody loved the little creature except you. I love it too, each time I look at it I feel a strange uneasiness about life. maybe hesitance is just my way of being into the world.

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  28. That's wonderful, congratulations!
    Your photos are wonderful, I love looking at photographs of Japan taken by non-japanese photographer, they always make me look at my country in a different way and make me notice something new.

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