Grebenac is the village Nana (that is, my Grandmother) grew up in. Apart from Vrsac where our hotel was, we spent a majority of our time visiting people in this village. Some of these people include family, others were dear childhood friends of Nana.
Unlike with all the other pictures I took on this trip, I had a set goal when photographing Grebenac, that being to capture the village as if it were frozen in time. None of these pictures capture people or animals, which give it a sense of lifelessness or stillness, especially with the ruinous buildings and photos from the cemetery (although, the last photo being of the well does capture motion. This can also be looked at as a dim source of life still present in this seemingly abandoned village).
I'm very happy with all the pictures in this gallery, especially knowing that this is where my family comes from.
Location: Grebenac
About: The home of a family we visited with, specifically the main courtyard area.
Location: Grebenac
About: The same home as the previous picture. It was very well decorated outside.
Location: Grebenac
About: A ruined house on the corner of one road. The original owner left and never returned.
Location: Grebenac
About: An inside view of the ruinous house.
Location: Grebenac
About: In contrast to the previous image; the inside of a home that is being maintained while the owners were gone.
Location: Grebenac
About: The exterior view of someones house, very well kept.
Location: Grebenac
About: A Soccer field.
Location: Grebenac
About: Farmland we passed by.
Location: Grebenac
About: In the cemetery; an aged building that appears to have been abandoned.
Location: Grebenac
About: In the cemetery; a tombstone that has fallen apart from the weather, being held together by the iron wire. The text on it is no longer readable.
Location: Grebenac
About: In the cemetery; a well-kept building likely used for funeral services or ground maintenance.
Location: Grebenac
About: In the cemetery; a tombstone visibly aged from weathering, although still readable.
Location: Grebenac
About: A cart that was left in someones yard. It appears to not have seen use in many years.
Location: Grebenac
About: A pile of bricks that made up part of a wall. It has since began collapsing.
Location: Grebenac
About: Telephone and electric lines.
Location: Grebenac
About: A house that seems to have been abandoned in recent years.
Location: Grebenac
About: Along the sidewalk.
Location: Grebenac
About: In the church yard was this tombstone with a dead wreath around it.
Location: Grebenac
About: The top of the church building.
Location: Grebenac
About: An elementary school building.
Location: Grebenac
About: Homes lined across the street. An old Buba is seen walking on the sidewalk.
Location: Grebenac
About: Likely for electrical or telephone services.
Location: Grebenac
About: The home of a wealthy family; bald eagle statues line all around the building.
Location: Grebenac
About: A pile of bricks.
Location: Grebenac
About: The Grebenac well, flowing and alive.
The pictures here span three days, first being in Vrsac and our climb up the hill, the second being in Novi Sad with family, and the last two pictures being in Grebenac.
A lot of these pictures turned out really well, my favorite from the gallery being the police car. Overall, there's a good blend of different things here, from nature to architecture, people and close up shots; it captures the perspective of walking around exploring Serbia, the things you'll see and places you'll visit.
Location: Downtown Vrsac
About: We sat outside a pizza place the was along this walkable street. Straight ahead is another restaurant; I've noticed that streets like this that block car traffic have many food places lined the entire length, and they are always full. Serbia is full of a lot of character, and this is a great showcase of that, with the people eating, the trees, the graffiti on the building, and the bright sun shining down. Despite how far away this was, it was inviting and comfortable place to sit in.
Location: Downtown Vrsac
About: Roads are a bit confusing in the cities, often being really tight or one way. Buildings also tend to be right on the street with little buffer, as shown here. We passed this building by a lot, but never figured out if it was a home or a business. Even still, it's pretty cool being on the corner.
Location: Vrsac; Up the Hill
About: This is the first photo I took as we began our hike up the Vrsac hill (pictured in previous galleries). Along the road are mostly houses, although we did come across a small medical building, like a doctor's office, although it looked like a home at first look.
Location: Vrsac; Up the Hill
About: Further up there is this sign that shows how steep the road is. Biking downhill would be so much fun, as it is steep. It seemed like the road only got more steep as we proceeded up.
Location: Vrsac; Up the Hill
About: This was taken at the top of the residential portion of the hill; that building with the gray roof and glass points is another hotel we considered. The view from here is nice, but this isn't even halfway up to the top. We would have to climb a long staircase to get to our next photo spot.
Location: Vrsac; Up the Hill
About: Despite it's old look, this building is still used today for service (we literally peeked through the key hole to see it was clean on the inside with papers and signs and other stuff). Walking up all those stairs leads right to the front door of this church, you can see where the stairs end at the bottom of the photo.
Location: Vrsac; Top of the Hill
About: This was taken further up our climb; we had to walk alongside a road that winds and bends to get closer to the top. A clearing from the trees shows this view of the countryside and just how much farm land there is here.
Location: Vrsac; Fortress on the Hill
About: Finally at the top of the hill! This is the stone fortress that sits on top of the hill overlooking the city. The building was converted into a museum where you can learn all about this building and some history of Vrsac.
Location: Vrsac; Top of the Hill
About: This is the entire city of Vrsac, now from atop the Hill. You can see the old white church pictured earlier, further back is a long building which was our hotel, and on the right side of the image is the downtown portion of the city. Seeing all of this was beautiful, and made that walk totally worth it.
Location: Vrsac; Top of the Hill
About: Pictured here are the vineyards owned by our hotel (they made their own wine). The white Turkish looking building is also owned by our hotel and was currently being built; it'll be an extension of the hotel, mainly for events and parties.
Location: Vrsac; Top of the Hill
About: I love this picture. The Vrsac hill I've been showing is the last in a series of hills, and is by no means the largest. I love the look of this picture, with the colors of each hill being a bit different and the last one having a hazy fade to it, almost like the clouds are absorbing it. There's a lot of beautiful nature in Serbia.
Location: Vrsac; Fortress on the Hill
About: Another picture of the stone fortress. Being inside the building makes you feel invincible. I'd love to be inside during a heavy storm, knowing just how strong these stone walls are. We also learned that the big rock at the bottom of the photo was here when they built the building, but given its size they deciding to build it into the wall.
Location: Vrsac; Vineyards
About: We thankfully didn't have to walk back down hill, instead we were picked up and driven down. This shows us driving through the vineyards with the fortress far in the distance. I like that once house in the middle next to the tree.
Location: Novi Sad
About: We spent some of our time in Novi Sad to visit with family and explore the city. This was taken at a restaurant, or rather, a boat that was made into a restaurant. This is a picture of a large fortress along the water. We originally intended to go but was unable to due to time.
Location: Novi Sad
About: This was taken as part of a contents between me with my Canon SLR, my brother and his iPhone 16, and my dad with his iPhone 7 to see who could take the best picture. I am of course biased to my own picture, but each was good for its own reason. Whenever you order a drink from anywhere it comes in a glass bottle like this.
Location: Novi Sad
About: Between all five of us, Nana easily had the most fun traveling around and meeting with family. This was taken inside the boat restaurant.
Location: Novi Sad
About: Walking down the road, this was taken looking at a bus stop with people waiting around for it. Although Novi Sad felt similar to the rest of the country, it did look and feel a lot cleaner.
Location: Novi Sad; Old City
About: Crossing this street leads into the old city of Novi Sad. This area was busy with people walking to and from, with stores and restaurants along the road packed full of people. This is all to say that it was lively.
Location: Novi Sad; Old City
About: This center area was very busy with people. It almost felt like you'd look, look away for a second, and look back to see an entirely new crowd of people before you.
Location: Novi Sad; Old City
About: One of the church towers in the old city of Novi Sad. The architecture here is amazing.
Location: Novi Sad; Old City
About: Another view of the church tower. This angle has the sun shining directly on it, making the building "glow" more. I love the evening sun shining on it like this.
Location: Novi Sad; Old City
About: I'm not sure who this is, but he must be important given where they put this statue and his intimidating pose. I'm not sure what the building behind him is, but it's very beautiful in it's appearance.
Location: Novi Sad; Old City
About: This kid is so cool; driving around the city in his four wheel car. Just look at him, he's too cool for us. What a guy.
Location: Novi Sad; Old City
About: Taken of some old buildings as we left the city. The evening sun setting, highlighting the tops of the buildings and the "Rudnik" advertisement. Two guys are also seen leaning over a balcony, seemingly having a good conversation.
Location: Serbia
About: It was a long drive back to the Hotel, and given the roads were empty, my dad was driving a bit above the speed limit. A car ends up following behind us, and eventually speeds up right in front of us. The car is totally black, with no indication of it being the police, so we weren't sure if this was a crazy person or not. The red-blue lights eventually turns on and we pull over to be greeted by three police officers. We got a $50 speeding ticket, but I got this cool picture of the police car, so I think that's a fair trade. This is probably my favorite picture from the trip.
Location: Grebenac
About: We went back to Grebenac to see more people and explore around some more. There really isn't a lot of people out and about, making the village feel empty. Although sometimes you'll come across a group of men sitting outside a bar smoking and drinking, or an old lady sitting outside her home staring you down.
Location: Grebenac
About: A fruit tree outside the neighbors house. I think these are apples. Fruit trees like this are common around peoples houses, as this is what they use to make rakija (vodka).
The first three pictures here were taken of the private pool/spa at our hotel, the rest capture the city of Timișoara, a Romanian city we took a day trip too.
The images here mainly focus on the architecture and the buildings we saw in the city, which I believe were the most interesting and beautiful of the buildings we've seen up to this point. Romania and Serbia feel very similar in a lot of ways, but something about Romania felt higher quality and more exciting. The city itself is huge; the amount of space closed off for pedestrian traffic only is amazing. So much of this city is only accessible by walking.
Location: Vrsac; Hotel Helvecija
About: Our hotel has a private pool. You reserve a 2-hour time slot and have full access to a pool, spa, and steam bath. All to yourself, total privacy. This was one of the highlights of the trip for me; coming down in the morning for a swim, sit in the spa, then a shower before heading up to breakfast was so nice. Sometimes they would leave the lights turned off which added great ambiance. The only downside to this was the same two songs playing on repeat: "Elevator to Heaven" by Chris Bell and "As the Years Go Passing By" by The Sons of Blues.
Location: Vrsac; Hotel Helvecija
About: The pool was small, but still the perfect size for me and our family to share.
Location: Vrsac; Hotel Helvecija
About: A stone decoration they had laying on one of the tables. I brought it here for a nice picture with the pool in the background. I love the way this photo turned out; the background is blurred perfectly with great lighting all around. This is one of my favorite photos from the trip.
Location: Timișoara, Romania
About: Our destination for the day was the city of Timișoara in Romania. After parking, we headed towards to city center with this massive cathedral servicing as a guide in that direction. The roofs and bricks and architecture overall is so beautiful here; this has to be the coolest of the church/cathedrals so far.
Location: Timișoara, Romania
About: Looking inside, it was very dark, but with beautiful decorations all around. The quiet interior was also very different from the loud and busy city surrounding the building.
Location: Timișoara, Romania
About: No matter where you looked inside, you'll see something really beautiful. From the painted walls to these chandeliers, being inside this building was incredible. The lighting was dim so my camera struggled to pick things up well. This photo is also a bit shaky and not lined up well.
Location: Timișoara, Romania
About: Stepping right outside the cathedral door is the city center. There's lots of greenery in the center with shops and restaurant along the walkways.
Location: Timișoara, Romania
About: I was hoping to capture the flag while it was blowing in the wind, but that just never happened. It wasn't very windy at all, making the summer sun feel that much hotter. Even still, the building behind it is pretty cool, especially with that copper colored roof.
Location: Timișoara, Romania
About: A front view of the cathedral after crossing the street. Seeing the building from this perspective provides a much better view of the architecture; I just like this building a whole lot, it's so cool what can I say.
Location: Timișoara, Romania
About: Walking deeper into the city... Walking around was really cool, since everything was so new and interesting. Even sitting down and people watching you come across some interesting characters.
Location: Timișoara, Romania
About: This is the running theme with images in this gallery: I love the buildings. The way it's shaped is already really interesting, but what I love is the color combinations. The yellow blinds and a balcony with green rails, the copper-red roof with blue along the edge, and gray walls to the building is not something you come across very often, yet it all fits together so well. The statue of the animals is also quite nice.
Location: Timișoara, Romania
About: A fountain that sat in the center of all the green space. It's a pretty cool fountain, although I could've done better centering it in frame.
Location: Timișoara, Romania
About: At the end of the long walkway (pictured earlier) is this building. Nana told us it was/is a government building, where the ruling person would come out on the balcony to speak to the crowd before him. Now this space is mostly empty, aside from people walking though it. It's a pretty building, and the white makes it stand out from the surrounding colorful buildings.
Location: Timișoara, Romania
About: There's this little fountain somewhere in front of the building pictured previous. Pigeons populate this area to drink the water or do their own thing. Just looking at all the pigeons you can get an idea of what they are up to, giving a sense of liveliness to this photo.
Location: Timișoara, Romania
About: Looking back to the cathedral, now in the midst of the green area. I really like this photo, there's a lot to see and it all fits together nicely.
Location: Timișoara, Romania
About: When facing the white building, heading right leads you to here, this alleyway with umbrellas above. Along the right side are some small shops or restaurants to eat at. This picture doesn't do this area good justice, but walking through here is very fun.
Location: Timișoara, Romania
About: A better shot of the umbrella alleyway. All these colors seem to be randomly thrown together, but the effect is still cool. Looking closely shows that some of the umbrellas are damaged or closed, which tells me they don't put much into maintaining it.
Location: Timișoara, Romania
About: Another view of the umbrellas, now closer and from directly under them. I'm kind of liking that pink one.
Location: Timișoara, Romania
About: A large open area with red and gray stripped pavement. Omu walks towards us sipping on his drink. This area wasn't at all busy, but there's also nothing much to do here other than see it. The sign in the back with the year actually says "2023" (partially blocked by people). I wonder why they still have it?
Location: Timișoara, Romania
About: I won't go too much into this one, all I'll say is it's a cool building in a cool spot.
Location: Timișoara, Romania
About: A statue showing what appears to be angles and maybe saints? It's pretty cool. Serbia has a lot of statues and stone works laying around all over the place.
Location: Timișoara, Romania
About: This kid must have been having a rough day. Not only was he turned into metal, but he's naked and someone cut squares out of his body.
This work was titled "Starving Child" somewhere, but I'm not sure who made it or why. It's an odd sight amidst all the older architecture and statues, but still pretty cool.
Location: Timișoara, Romania
About: This is a map of downtown Timișoara. This is a really cool way to see the city and find where we were.
Location: Timișoara, Romania
About: Continuing down another street we came across this area with all these lights streamed from building to building. It would have been really cool to see this at night. The only thing really down this way were restaurants and bars; I'd bet this area is really popular at night.
Location: Timișoara, Romania
About: At the corner of a building is this statue. It shows a nude woman with what appears to be a snake hovering over her shoulder. My guess is this is depicting Eve and the serpent from the Bible, which is likely as there is a lot of religious art and signs throughout Serbia and what we've seen of Romania. The thing that makes me feel weird about this is the face of the snake; it's human like and makes me wonder if it even is a snake, especially with that pointed tail and stiff body.
Location: Timișoara, Romania
About: Continuing on through the city is another center area. Like the previous, it wasn't very busy here, but nearby restaurants suggest more activity later in the day or in the evening. I also think that building is cool.
Location: Timișoara, Romania
About: These buildings are so colorful! I like the yellow building in the middle; I would enjoy sitting up in a balcony there.
Location: Timișoara, Romania
About: A better view of this building. I also tried to get that statue in frame as well, which seems to be similar to the one pictured earlier ("Amazing Monument"). The brick path with grass growing between the cracks is a cool look that I am very fond of.
Location: Timișoara, Romania
About: I'm not sure who James Bay is, but he seems like a cool guy. Behind his ad are the buildings from before, this time focusing on the much larger white building. I wonder what some of these buildings are for. Are they government? Hotels? Do people live here? The sign saying "CONSTRUCTIM" leads me to believe it's just a business, which is most likely.
These pictures capture the journey home in the airplane and at the airport. With the trip being over, I still had the photography bug in me to take pictures and finish off the remaining film; these capture my last ditch effort. I am happy with how these pictures came out, especially "Moon and Plane" and the picture of the Flight Attendant. By now I've been using this camera for over an entire week straight, so I think I got good handling of using it, especially with the last photo, as I took it to test what I should do with a backlit subject.
The reason the gallery is only four images is because the rest of this roll of film is unrelated to the Serbia trip. Those pictures can be found on the following gallery.
Location: Airplane; Cabin
About: The flight attendants during our travels on Air Serbia were picture-perfect. They all wore the same outfit, hair done the same way, same makeup, and were very precessional in their mannerisms.
Location: Airplane; Above the Clouds
About: I opened the window blind to see the moon and a passing plane far in the distance. I quickly took out the camera to capture this picture. It's unfortunate that I couldn't zoom in any closer, regardless, I'm very happy to have captured the moon and this plane at just the right time.
Location: Airplane; Above New York
About: This was taken as we were making our decent to JFK Airport. In the distance you can see the city of New York, although it's a bit hazy due to the film. I was debating whether or not to include this image here, but I do think it's kind of cool; it also gives a good comparison of how much bigger and more built up America is over Serbia.
Location: JFK Airport; Gate
About: At the Gate in JFK Airport while waiting for our flight home to Cleveland. I took this picture to test how to go about photographing a backlit subject. I took two pictures here, one turned out awful and the other turned out good. This is the good one. I'm really surprised how well this image turned out, with the girl being perfectly centered while not being too much in shadow. My only critique is that I probably could have exposed the image a tad longer so she would come out brighter, but this could also come at the cost of too much backlight exposing the image and ruining it. It's a good first attempt; I can only improve from here!