Latvija, or the dream of a better life Photo

Photographer’s Note

You are standing in the middle of a suburb that didn't exist just a couple of years ago. It was fields, green grass, nothing more. Some dozen of minutes away from Riga, now you are stuck behind an hour's worth of traffic on your way back home.
When you bought your plot of land barely three years ago, you were just a handful of houses here. Now, you don't even bother counting anymore.
This is the house of your new neighbours. Hopefully they will be nice people.

The winter is slowly melting away and soon this new, booming neighbourhood will be alive with its new inhabitants, their children and pets. Welcome to the world you'd seen on TV and that now is yours.

Welcome to a world of traffic and disappearing springs.
Yes, those have been polluted by all the runoff that these new suburban settlements have created in the past year or so.
And welcome to the world of burglary alarms.
What will you do when the one downstairs goes off and you know the security men will take about four minutes, at best, to reach your home?

Greetings from Latvia!
Here the brand new buildings pop up like mushrooms.
Here there is talk of a devaluation...

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On a technical side of things: perhaps I haven't posted in long enough, but... when I view the picture on my laptop's preview it looks fine, well contrasted and in proper colour, yet here on the site it looks bleak and grey! Can anyone tell me what's wrong?

And when on my website, it looks like it should, meaning --> like this.

Thank You in advance to all those amongst You who take the time to comment and/or criticise!

Uhu, guillaumejm, daburg, ktanska, luisafonso, Davids, sarju, Brian has marked this note useful

Critiques | Translate

guillaumejm (9114) 2007-04-12 16:30

Bonsoir julia,
De retour?. C'est vrai qu'elle a un petit coté trsitounette cette photo. J'ai comparé avec celle pointée par ton lien inséré dans le commentaire. les 2 photos sont en fait différentes chez moi aussi. mais si tu fais un click droit sur chacune des photos tu vas voir qu'elles ne font pas la même taille => ce ne sont donc en réalité les même photos. l'une est bien plus compressée que l'autre. celà peut expliquer le pb (tu devrais compresser au plus près des 200K autorisés je pense).
Amicalement
JMarc

ktanska (16611) 2007-04-13 3:11

Hei Julia,
I've seen similar suburban growth in the outskirts of Tallinn. It's interesting how quickly things change. And the way you have shot this further away from the fence shows well the idea: My home is my castle. Not exactly photogenic, but certainly worth documenting.
File sizes of the photo versions are different, so it's not the same picture. But I can't see quality difference. Maybe different browsers don't show it the same way.
Kari

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luisafonso (858) 2007-04-16 9:34

Here I am, acting as the psychoanalyst, trying to figure out what moved you to post this photo. Why would a soul like you, who posts so scarcely, be touched by this one in particular? What does this picture have that is so special to earn the 'posted to TE' status...? I really can't find anything that justifies it rather than your literary note or the 'know the world' issue that is so dear to all of us. Is this a bad picture? Of course not! Is this a good picture? Uh, well, no... This is just a 'proper' picture of an opened gate to the neighbors property. I like the crossed composition and the opened arm gate. But apart from that, I am still in that same process of understanding why... Why my dear? And you can always reply me "Why not...?" :)

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Davids (1034) 2007-04-22 1:36

Very soon my home will also be finished. Only this one will be in Marupe. But the feeling is the same. Being a foreigner, the house is completely different, we explain people who want to visit us the rough directions, and then we say; "look for something different", and they always find us. Our area was planed in the 20's. The war and the years after have halted the building process, but now people are building everywhere in an area of roughly 10-15km2.

It's strange to be part of it (again, I remember 1975 in Holland), glad you wrote it down.

Brian (1) 2007-04-27 0:33