left our jobs, went to Asia

Nope, you guessed it incorrectly :)

Photography is the right answer.

Apart from being materialistic and talking about things, boots, clothing and tools, we also tried to look at this trip from further perspective - what will we think of it in 10, 20, 30 years, what will we remember and what stories will we be able to tell.

One very right saying goes "see it once instead of listen about it for ages". Fully agreeing with it, we realized that we will for sure want to take a lot of pictures as a prime tool of showing the places we've been to, illustrating the stories and remembering the people we met.

Unfortunately, our photography skills were, at best... awful :)

Hence we decided to invest some of our precious pre-trip time and money to photography courses.

Yes I know that there is a host of photography books and resources on eMule and similar, but firstly it does not feel right to download it, and secondly - We'd never be able to allocate 5 hours per week to just photography, if we hadn't spent 350 EUR for a nice 3 months course. there'd always appear something more important.

So we gathered our strength, sacrificed some of the time and energy that remained after not so easy day's job, and became the first-class pupils at September 6th, 2006.

It has been both interesting/useful and useless, but nevertheless fun. Met 10 nice classmates, been doing the theory, practice outside and practice under artificial lighting conditions.

Three most important lessons learnt:

1. Before the course we felt that the pictures we've been always doing were rather OK, but now, even with the current knowledge and practice, we think it's total crap.
2. One can not just prepare, think and shoot a magnificent photo, even with good equipment. Unfortunately, fantastic photos need a sheer amount of luck as well.
3. Since it is so difficult to do that perfect photograph, I'd think that the good idea is the best start. Even medium photos, provided they have a good background story (for example, "7 nicest bridges in your city") could be very rewarding for both the photographer and the audience. I have a few in mind, but try and think one of your own.

Overall, the course was well worth the effort and money, and not only to us, but also to all the visitors of cringel.com, for they'll be seeing much better photographs from now on! A few selected shots below:

Marius: