The Quintessentially Serbian Way of Life (I)

            ꒌ КО РАЗУМИЈЕ, ЊЕМУ ДВИЈЕ!

► █░▓ SO OFTEN WE DON'T HAVE THE TIME and luxury at disposal to set up the camera properly before a good moment of life suddenly presents itself. When something catches the photographer's attention, the only right way to do is to raise the camera and shoot. Or the scene will be lost. 

Photographically, this may not be the pinnacle of art or Press Award winner, but an insider will recognize the important moment. This is how Serbians celebrate a good moment in life. And that's not to be underestimated. The key moment here is the company and the bottle. The lack of latter's brand markings arouses immediate attention for an insider. It means it contains the golden brandy called "ракија шљивовица" (rakiya šljiwowitsa) of the highest possible order. Don't judge the clothes of the man, it's a trifle side-issue. What he's got, very few men on Earth possess. It makes him pre-eminently a royally rich man. Vuko stands on his own soil, inherited from centuries of generations he keeps the record of; he stands before his steady home in which he has been born and raised; in his untouched hamlet from where the view unfolds of the endless coniferous forest before your eyes, at the elevation above 1350 meters; he's got steady good health; a keen sympathetic wife who happens to be a professional cook; he has his older brother next to him; and another four close enough; he has the full day for himself, as it is a national holiday, his day off; and - last but not least - he holds the best brandy on the planet in his hand and knows how to use it.

This cup is being great-heartedly offered to the photographer; who himself does testify the quality as being the best he has tasted since Christmas. And oh boy, tasted he has many a cup since then!

But you do have to be an insider to comprehend the true essence of the moment. It transcends by far the drink as such, but mind you, the drink too is very special. It's formula has been mirrored in Serbian specific collective genes. The only world drinks that remotely resemble rakiya are the Italian grappa and Greek tsipouro (τσίπουρο). But they are grape-based and not made of plum, so any comparison between them is far fetched and out of place. 

So what makes the joy moment self-explanatory to us, but a clueless puzzle to others? Time for us is a relative dimension: if you play the game creatively, the important moments must once in a while unexpectedly get precedence over other things on the agenda. We have seen how stiff rules' dictate can crash some great European nations. 

Another clue: the moment has to be experienced in company. Oh yeah, we know what the planning is, but... We don't split the day or month or year in segments that exhaust each other and do not leave anything over. Or allow for some moments of true meaning. And it's the unpredictability which grant life a sense of poetic flair. If you're ready to face it and play. If you know to waltz, let me put it that way, the irregularly spread meta-quality of higher order won't be a stranger to you and you’ll join the dance light-footedly and elegantly. 

THE GEAR USED. A strong lens close to 50 mm full frame is often considered thé journalist's gear. Here however you can see it gets useless if not treated the right way. I keep my camera on "A" (Aperture priority mode), and here it should have been on "P" (Program mode). The widest available aperture has practically ruined the shot. The depth-of-field is absurdly narrow. Only the left thumb of Vuko is in focus here. Technically speaking the camera made a good choice, the focal point is exactly there where it should be in order to cover the largest possible depth of field for a particular aperture (⅓ before and ⅔ behind the focal plain). But the problem here is, there is no depth of field whatsoever with the aperture of F/1.4. The bottle (or Vuko's face) should have gotten the (only) focus. 

Add to this another idiosyncrasy of this lens, its questionable resolution and sharpness below f/2.0, and you see how you get picture’s 99,9% out of focus. For the balance, this is probably the sharpest lens I own, it's just that you have to forget the aperture values wider than f/2.2 ...
Gosh!

Developed from raw and edited in Affinity Photo 2.0; IrfanView 4.62 won't save the original tiff file if used for sharpening for example. 

File name: P1005768-from raw_.tiff

Taken in: Montenegro / Pljevlja / Podgora (show map)

Taken on: May 23, 2023

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