Wild Wagon Ride

Wild Wagon Ride. a description of my slightly abstract image of two horse pulling a wagon very fast.

Wild Wagon Ride

When I came to live in Poland in the mid-1990s, there were still a significant number of farms relying on horses for wagon and ploughing duties. Today few remain, and since horse riding is quite a minority activity in comparison to other European countries, the actual number of horses has declined. However, the village museum in Lublin has a small stock of working horses, and on one visit I was lucky enough to view a re-enactment of an uprising event. I have no idea whether the equipment used was accurate to the period, but it was a fun event nonetheless.

Have you ever seen those pictures of racing cars with the car in perfect focus and the background nicely blurred. well, that is the effect I wished to achieve. You can see that the horses have hard, sharp edges, which is easy enough although time consuming to achieve, but you can get the blurred background by using a larger and then a smaller brush, using the larger to first define the color patches, then the smaller brush to blur the edges and get rid of any actual lines.

You can get prints of this on canvas at: http://shop.photo4me.com/picture.aspx?id=369253&f=canvas

Polish Cottage Interior

Polish Cottage Interior. My abstract view of an inside view of what it used to be like living in a cottage, and commentary on the future for such buildings.

Polish Cottage Interior

Dom Babcie

When one drives around the rural areas of Poland it is still common to see old wooden cottages, although there number is decreasing as they are replaced by homes made of cheaper materials, such as concrete blocks. The two issues of most significance are that wooden cottages are expensive to maintain, and most are still owned by people who, in some form or other, have work related to agriculture. In a way it is sad to say, but the future of cottages is often highly dependent on being bought by people with urban work, who can afford to pay the costs of living in rural housing. This drives up the costs of buying homes in the countryside and in villages, making agricultural work more difficult to achieve as a profession.

Since wooden cottages of the types found in Poland can be readily dismantled, it is not uncommon for them to be sold as a kit, ready for you to reassemble on your own land. Sadly, though, many are just allowed to decay until the only solution is demolition, although some are being clad in thermal blocks to continue their life emulating a more modern home.

To purchase a print of this image: http://shop.photo4me.com/picture.aspx?id=365885