blog | Stefan Chirila | fine art portrait and wedding photography

A street in Romania – I

Posted on December 2, 2016 by stefan

Many years ago, this street did not loon much different from what it looks like today, but I was a little boy running down it, playing with a sling shot, which I thought was the most high tech utensil ever devised by man – and the only tool I’d ever need.

I finally managed to build myself the editing beast that I had dreamt so long of building. It is now time to revise the rest of the Romania 2016 pictures. The first post about my trip, “On finding yourself in a foreign city…”, you can read here.

My editing monster. A post about it will follow.

Posted in Uncategorized |

Free family portraits – with donation – October 2016

Posted on October 10, 2016 by stefan

Here I am, sitting at my favourite cafe, the SMILE TIGER COFFEE ROASTERS, in Kitchener (see map), contemplating the secrets of light and colour while editing some images, when the notion of how fragile the things we take for granted really are. The other day I found out how one of my coworkers’ home burned down. It didn’t even take a whole day for all the belongings their family worked for to be gone from the face of the earth for good. It makes one think, you know. As far as I know, the cause of the fire isn’t even figure out as of yet; the only thing they know for sure is that in the evenings they can’t go back home to sleep, they have to hope that their credit cards can support them for long enough that they need not end up on the street …and when I say they, I mean my coworker and the rest of the 15 members of her family. I’ll let you read on about their story here.

What I do want to let you know is that in an attempt to make myself helpful to them, I would like to raise some funds. So until the end of October, any one of you readers can book a sort-of-free family portraits session with me. How does it work? Well I won’t charge you anything for my work, as long as you make a donation of $100 or more to their cause through me.

Let’s make a difference and have some fun creating some beautiful photography while at it. Of course you can also DONATE without a portrait session, directly HERE.

Posted in events, family, forPhotographers, portraits |

On finding yourself in a foreign city – introspection on street photography

Posted on September 6, 2016 by stefan

Opera square/Victory square, City center, Timisoara, Romania [map]

“Make heaven out of what you’ve got”
Liberty square, City center, Timisoara, Romania [map]

Opera square, City center, Timisoara, Romania [map]

Opera square, facing the Mitropolitan Orthodox Cathedral
Opera square, facing the Opera house

A view of the street I grew up on in Timisoara, Romania [map]

On finding yourself in a foreign city…
You might think that you’re going out there to photograph the street, and the way the street looks and feels, but I found that you’re not. What I’ve come to discover is that what you’re really doing is photographing how you feel – the images reflecting what you are looking at when you are in that place, on that street, in that given mood.

In light of that thought, I was afraid. My fear was, that I may find myself there, not feeling anything; that I might let down the influence and lessons of the great photographs I have admired for so long. You know, those images that seem able to peel off the outer layer of reality and offer a glimpse into that which we perceive to exist somewhere beyond the things we can see …to paraphrase Ansel Adams, a some form of an essence of a place, the very thing that makes it feel the way it feels. I needed an “AHA” moment, and nothing short of it. And I did not want to think about the possibility of it not happening.
END OF PART ONE