Three More from Romania

portrait of a Romanian farm woman
Portrait of Romanian Woman

I walked, uninvited, into this woman’s farmyard because I wanted to photograph her house. She stood on her porch gazing at me with amazement. I immediately loved the look of strength in her face and hands. I placed her hands on the porch rail and fired away.  Today I noticed that in scanning the slide, I blew out the highlights on her hands, so I’ll have to try again, but I can’t ignore her handsome face. So here is a preview.

 
Romanian nun calls prayers with a mallet and wooden plank
Call to Prayers

The monastery at Suceavitsa. A nun calls the community to prayers with an instrument called a ‘toaca’. It is a board with three holes drilled in each end. She raps it with a mallet and the sound cracks across the courtyard and hits the monastery walls with a smack. No one could ignore this sound. It is said that the Turks, when they controlled the area, did not allow bells to be rung and so the toaca was substituted.

 
New Humor Monastery with haystacks
New Humor with haystacks

This is the new Monastery at Humor. There are no frescoes on the exterior. But I love these cute little haystacks the Romanians make. I made a painting out of this slide using Topaz Simplify, Snap Art 3 and actually a few of Faye Sirkis brushes to finish the steeple which I had cut off to get my haystacks.

 
I had had one semester of photography class when I took this trip. Then as now, I made mistakes, but luckily with the digital darkroom, all is not lost…you can see I’ve made another mistake here. When I increased the sky and added the steeple top, I neglected to fill out the bush on the right. Oh, I’ll do it tomorrow. Like you, I have chores to do!
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