blog Archives - Page 4 of 4 - Sylvia Kouveli Fotografía

Katerina & Stathis: Urban Wedding

Posted on September 24, 2016September 23, 2017 by sylvia

Katerina and Stathis are a beautiful, harmonious couple who decided to tie the knot at the Athens City Hall, on a beautiful September morning, followed by a lunch reception at a nearby restaurant.

After a morning hair and make-up session with the bride at the couple’s home, I was shown the groom’s family house where he was getting dressed in the meantime. I was surprised to see that their families’ homes -and now their own home as well- were only a block away from each other. It turns out that as children they had grown up in the same neighbourhood, but didn’t actually meet until they had both finished school! I guess one way or another these twin souls were bound to cross each other’s path. 🙂

It didn’t take Stathis much time to get dressed and ready, so soon we were off to pick up the bride! Hugs, kisses, some happy tears and lots of wishes from the neighbours, and we’re headed downtown!

Thankfully the couple had arranged for a reserved parking spot a short walk from the City Hall, otherwise we would have been circling around the city centre for hours! It was just beautiful to see Katerina and Stathis all dressed-up and walking through the busy streets of downtown Athens on a Saturday morning!

It was a simple yet classy ceremony and reception with their families and loved ones, planned with love and care and great attention to detail. I’ll let you see for yourself!

Surprising Underwater Fashion Photos

Posted on September 7, 2016September 12, 2016 by sylvia

Beautiful underwater fashion photos with a prop that will surprise you.

At one time or another, you must have come across beautiful underwater photos of ethereal models, their long dresses flowing with the sea current.

Take a look at the photos below. They were taken this summer in the Cyclades, a beautiful and popular vacation destination in Greece.

What do you see?

My beautiful, patient and highly cooperative volunteer models are not using lavish fabrics for their poses. Instead, they are using objects found in the very waters they are swimming in.

And what’s that?

Garbage. Trash. Rubbish.

That’s right. Unfortunately, these objects that are part of the beautiful photos you see, are nothing more that trash, collected from the bottom of the sea, near the beach, some tangled in seaweed, others approaching the shore floating in from a different country.

Take a look at this photo.

See the crystal clean waters? The flawless bottom? The white rounded pebbles?

This photo was taken at a marvelous deserted beach that formed part of an astonishing landscape.

Unfortunately, at less than 5 meters from the shore there were massive amounts of trash that had floated there from -possibly- hundreds of miles away.

It’s easy to detach oneself from this and simply say, “I never throw my garbage onto the beach, it’s not my fault”, but we are all part of this problem. We must all make a conscious effort to prevent any objects from ending up into our seas and oceans.

We can all definitely make sure we leave nothing behind when we leave the beach.
We can pick up any garbage we find around us.
We can spread the word and make the people close to us aware of this.
We can influence our local officials through relevant groups and organizations.
We can do things about it!

No one wants to swim in a sea of garbage. But guess what… we already do!

Summer Photo Cocktail Recipe

Posted on August 11, 2016September 12, 2016 by sylvia

Ingredients:

5 ripened Greek women
2 ripened Spanish women
5-7 bikinis
1 summer hat
1-2 pareos
plenty of turquoise sea water
sunshine

Instructions:

Mix the ripened women with the bikinis and place on a beautiful Greek island
Add 1 dash of turquoise waters
Sprinkle with sunshine
Maintain temperature between 28-35°C
Allow for the mix to rest and soak up the sun
Serve with a salty twist
Garnish with the summer hat and pareos
Place in front of a camera
Enjoy while hot

Results: Spot the University Professor

Posted on August 9, 2016September 7, 2016 by sylvia

In the previous week, our readers were presented with a challenge: Spot the University Professor.

After a short description during which they were asked to form a mental picture of this professor, they had to look at this picture and guess which one was actually her.

The results were stunning!

20% voted A
20% voted B
20% voted C
6.7% voted D
13.3% voted “All of the above”
and 20% voted “None of the above”

So according to the participants it could have been practically anyone, but the correct answer is: C!

Zoi Resta, Interpreters’ trainer at the Ionian University in Greece, Freelance Interpreter and Translator, Business Development @TheLanguageProject, Member of the International Federation of Translators (FIT), Member of the European Society for Translation Studies (EST), Member of the Panhellenic Association of Professional Translators Graduates of the Ionian University (PEEMPIP), Member of the Pancyprian Union of Graduate Translators and Interpreters, Member of the Hellenic Society for Translation Studies.

Impressed yet? I am!

What does this challenge show us? Well, that we are not the stereotype of our job. Dr. Resta is not only an extremely talented professional, she is also a very fun and kind person (I happen to know her personally), and as you can see, extremely hot!

We should never fall into the trap of judging a person by their job title, or by their Facebook profile image. Each one of us is way more than what appears in an email signature, or on a business card, or on just about anything that gives us a limited first impression.

Let’s be open, kind, welcoming and willing to get to know people for who their are, not for what we imagine them to be.

Challenge: Spot the University Professor

Posted on August 3, 2016August 3, 2016 by sylvia

Close your eyes.
Oh, wait! This won’t work unless you’re able to keep reading. So, keep your eyes open. 🙂

Imagine a University professor. Good…
A female. That’s it…
She’s from a small town and she teaches at a small University in a similarly small town.
Her subject is interpretation.
Have you painted a picture?
She’s a bookworm and loves languages, especially German.
What does she look like?

Does our University professor wear glasses? Is she dressed in slightly old fashioned clothes, a long skirt and a button-down shirt? How old is she?

Ok, so now that you have a pretty complete image of this professor in your mind, look at the picture below and guess which person is the professor.

Vote for the challenge on my Facebook page, by clicking here!

Tune back in after a few days to check out the results!

Show me the manual!

Posted on April 18, 2016August 9, 2016 by sylvia

Why is it important to read -at least once- your camera’s manual?

It’s simple: So that you know how to use your camera correctly!

Remember when we all used to have DVD players and we always had to refer back to the user’s manual to see (for the hundredth time) how to set the time, after a power cut?

Well, it’s similar with your camera. There are so many functions that they cannot all be guessed, even by an experienced user. There will always be that one thing that you don’t know how to do, or that one setting that you don’t exactly know what it does.

Reading the user’s manual and referring back to it whenever necessary isn’t something to be ashamed of. On the contrary, it shows consumer responsibility and photographic curiosity! 😉

If you are a first time user of a kind of camera (and with “kind” I’m referring to categories such as, compact, mirrorless, DSLR, bridge, analog, your grampa’s pinhole camera, etc.) I absolutely URGE you to grab that manual and become an expert user of the machine you are holding in your hands, just by reading it!

Go ahead, start at the beginning and try EVERYTHING! I promise you, it’s actually more fun than it sounds.

I recently bought a Canon 5D Mark III, and for the first 5 times or so that I went out to shoot something, I always carried that manual with me, even though I had already read it front to back twice. And sure enough, at one point, I had to refer back to one of those dog-eared pages to remember how to find a setting.

Right now, I have an original Lubitel 2 (made in USSR) camera hanging from my neck, smelling of old leather and years of stuffy storage, and I’m staring down at it, not being able to remember for the life of me how to take a picture!

To my defense, I haven’t picked it up in over 6 months (very bad, I know) and it’s VERY different from any and all of my other cameras.

This is the part where I reach for the manual.

But wait! I got this, I’ve done it before, I can do it again… right? Well, not exactly. I took a hint when it took me over 10 seconds to pop-up the viewfinder hood. The last thing I want to do is damage this camera, or destroy the precious 120 film that’s inside it.

So, I humbly sit down and open the manual.

Page one:

“THE ‘LUBITEL 2’ is a low-priced modern camera intended for amateurs.”

😛

Let it rest

Posted on March 28, 2016 by sylvia

I feel absolutely enthused and dumbfounded with the amazing capacity of the human brain and more specifically, with its ability to process information subconsciously.

On Friday I spent many hours on my laptop, trying to figure out all the different functionalities and features of the new theme I activated for this site. Having absolutely no development experience and very little knowledge of coding, whenever I came across a hurdle, I turned to the theme’s documentation and tutorials. Naturally, the solutions offered were focused on generic problems and did not offer much insight on small tweaks one might need for the absolute personalization of a page. So I experimented, I tried pushing different buttons, selecting different options on the available drop down menus, changing a whole bunch of different things that were practically irrelevant to my actual issue and almost destroying what was working. So, I gave up! I put my laptop to sleep and went out for a beer (or two… ok, three)! 🙂

I had decided that during the entire weekend I wouldn’t touch my laptop. That’s right, no email, no Facebook, no photo editing, no new theme on my website – nada! It was easy. Besides, on Saturday my mind was foggy and my brain dehydrated (I think the popular term for those symptoms is having a hangover) and on Sunday I was too tired from spring cleaning to do anything productive. To be fair, I did manage to get in plenty of sleep during the weekend, so on Monday I’d be able to start fresh!

And that’s how it happened! 🙂 I woke up on Monday morning, refreshed, rested and ready to tackle a new week! I went through my daily routine, took my dog Murgo out for a nice walk, had a quick coffee and returned to my home office to start my workday. I was waiting for my work profile to load on my PC and that’s when it came to me. It was like the memory of a dream, but not like the typical non-sensical dreams I have, more like a subconscious thought. It was related to my website and it actually made sense! I quickly opened my Mac and went directly into the site’s back office. I tried that one, simple step I had seen (or thought of) in my sleep, and… it worked! 😀 It actually worked! I was flabbergasted!

All it took was two days’ rest and my brain was able to process all the information with which I had overloaded it on Friday and offer me the solution I had been desperately searching for. Amazing, don’t you think?

Now you can check out my homepage, although it’s still under construction, it looks a lot better today than it did on Friday night. 😉

If there’s one thing I can take away from this astonishing experience, it’s that we need to give our brains time and rest. I’m not a fan of procrastination, believe me! Working under pressure is ok, because it gets things done. But there’s a limit. We all need to recognize that point of unproductivity when we reach it and just take a step back, sleep on it, let the creative juices flow freely and then come back to work.

Happy Monday!