Just give me a good zoom lens, thanks

Greetings from Osttirol! My wife and I have been vacationing in Austria for the past week. It’s a gorgeous place to visit and, needless to say, I took tons of photos here. I’ve been carrying my Canon 5D and my lenses with me everywhere, and let me tell you, I’ve been sorely in need of [...]

Life, as I want to know it

Life, as I want to know it, originally uploaded by raoulpop.
Early morning just outside a forest near Natural Bridge, VA.

Shenandoah Valley panoramas

You are about to see several panoramic photos that have taken me well over 35 hours to create — and I’m not counting travel time, setup time, time it took to take the photos, and the time it took to write this post.
A couple of weekends ago, Ligia and I got into our MINI and [...]

The shit days of spring

I am pleased to announce that the shit days of spring are approaching their malodorous end. If you happen to live in non-temperate climates, you may not be accustomed with this rite-of-passage period that takes place every year where I live.
The shit days of spring are that time of the year when pig farmers get [...]

Photographs for sale

My photographs (a select number of them) are now up for sale through both Alamy and the PhotoShelter Collection. Here are the links:

Stock Photography by Raoul Pop at Alamy
Raoul Pop’s Stock Photography at PhotoShelter Collection

Alamy presents you with a search page first. To see my photos without doing a search, just click on my name. [...]

A place out of the ordinary

Ligia and I made a trip to a place out of the ordinary this past Saturday. Not many people have been there, that I can guarantee you. It’s pretty close to civilization, and you can get there by foot. What was it? The middle of the Potomac River, near Glen Echo, MD.

Our area’s experiencing a [...]

One perfect foggy morning

Have you ever woken up to the perfect morning fog? I have. We were staying with relatives in a tiny little village in Moldova, Romania. Their house sat between several hills.
As I got out of the house on day, morning was just starting to break. The soft, diffuse light just barely illuminated the sleepy silhouettes [...]

Passing through Cheile Bicazului (part 2)

I realized something after I read through yesterday’s post on Cheile Bicazului a couple of times. I hadn’t included any photos of the actual mountain pass, which made my comments about how it was carved out of the rock seem a bit superfluous. That was an oversight that needed to be corrected.
This time, you’ll get [...]

Passing through Cheile Bicazului

This is Part 1 of a two-part post on Cheile Bicazului. You can read Part Two here.
During our recent trip to Romania, we passed through Cheile Bicazului, a stunning, narrow pass carved through the Carpathian mountains. We started out on the Transylvania side, where the weather was beautiful and sunny, though we could see [...]

Saying goodbye to fall

Autumn is always a bitter-sweet season for me. I still remember it as the time school starts. When I was a child, I dreaded September, because I knew school was coming. Those feelings lingered through college, and they tinge my thoughts even now. Autumn also meant harvest with all its bounty: apples, grapes, corn, potatoes, [...]

Fantastic fall foliage

If you live in a place where you don’t get to experience the wonder of nature called fall foliage, then you’ll probably enjoy the photos I took on two trips to Shenandoah National Park and its most prominent and well-known feature, Skyline Drive.
I wrote about our September trip to Shenandoah a few weeks ago. Ligia [...]

White’s Ferry and Edwards Ferry

A few weeks ago, Ligia and I visited White’s Ferry and Edwards Ferry, both on the Potomac River here in Maryland. We’d been to White’s Ferry before and knew what to expect, but hadn’t yet been to Edwards Ferry, which is hidden away and harder to get to. Both are very close to the C&O [...]