22/365: A snowy morning in Lodz

Well, I am VERY glad that I got to take some photos in the snow. I was sure I'd missed it this year. I never had time to ride out of town and go walking in the forest when it was snowy, and then everything started melting. But on that morning...

Pure luck, really. I would have still been asleep at nine, not somewhere on the edge of town taking photos, if I didn't have a horse riding class that day. You wouldn't think so, but the easiest way for me to get to the stables is to take the bus all the way to the airport and then walk across the fields. And I think from now on I will take the earlier bus and wander around the birchwood for a bit every time I go. :)

(if you click the photo you'll go to my flickr stream where there are other pretty winter shots)

-Rodia

8/365: At home with perch and burbot

8/365: At home with perch and burbot, originally uploaded by Magic Madzik.

January 8th

I like to say I'm currently unemployed, but the actual truth is that I'm freelancing. It's nice, because I have lots of time to go outside and take pictures, but some days I do have to sit down and make a deadline.

The illustrations I've been doing recently are all going into schoolbooks, so it is rather important that the perch looks like a perch and that the burbot is not missing its fishy goatee. Enter my vast collection of picture reference books. That's an encyclopaedia of animals which my mum got me at a flea market. Very useful. Because google is good, but google plus books is better.

-Rodia

1/365 from Rodia

1/365: Happy New Year!, originally uploaded by Magic Madzik.

January 1st

So much sparkle! Happy New Year!

The photo shows where I celebrated the arrival of 2011.

Lodz is a flat city. Very flat. Its highest point is a semi-artificial mound piled in 1969 to create a small (K-15) ski-jumping slope. No bleachers or judge tower were ever built, and the slope fell into ruin in the eighties. I hear some resourceful young volunteers fixed it up just this last year. Interesting to note that people had already been ski jumping from the natural portion of the mound in the 1930s.

Anyway, the mound itself stands 230 m above sea level and is called Rudzka Góra, which means 'Mountain of Ore', as it lies in an area of town where bog iron used to be extracted. There's an artificial bobsleigh track that runs up the top (awesome fun), and when half the town showed up to watch the fireworks they all clambered up by holding on to the lift cable.

You can see part of the track in the photo, behind the people. On an ordinary day you're not supposed to climb over the fence and get that close to the track and the equipment, but New Year's Eve is special. You're probably not supposed to launch fireworks haphazardly in a crowd, either, but that's what people did. I did not get hit, but it was close. Fireworks are stupid, but they're a beautiful kind of stupid. From the Rudzka Góra, I saw them go off all over town. I didn't get exactly the shot I wanted, but I got others which were equally good, and next year I know what to do.

No one got hurt, it was loud, it was beautiful, I had the best time. I don't like parties at all, but on New Year's there's an inevitable pressure to do Something, so I am always looking for a good place to be that doesn't involve drinking and dancing. Especially since I'm never invited anywhere that WOULD involve it!