Jewels of Bohemia - Tom Hansen

Click on the image to view all photos enlarged in a slide show. Move through the show using the right and left arrow keys.

(Scroll down for slideshow.) I took up photography in 2015 after I retired and joined the BI Photo Club in 2017. I shoot a variety of subjects such as travel, dance photography, street photography, Macro, and wildlife.  I use Sony Mirrorless Cameras (A7RIV, A7II, and A6000) and my iPhone and edit photos using Lightroom, Topaz AI products, and Photoshop.

Having postponed a trip to the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary for several years due to COVID, last fall I ripped the band aid off last October and made the trip.

The exhibit is a mix of images featuring travel, still life, and street photography. The images show both the beauty and some of the controversial issues of the region.

The last image is a holocaust memorial in Budapest along the Danube. Diana Prince wrote a touching poem about it:

Sixty Shoes

Along the Danube
black shoes sit like steel doves
And press against the stone—

Sit where they fell
On one cold morning
just like this.

The little boy grabbing his mother’s coat,
his mother clutching him
for one last kiss.

That morning women,
children, and old men
Sat down to breakfast
Unaware.

And may have laughed
or hummed a song
or taken one sweet breath
of morning air.

Before the gunmen dragged them
from their homes,
And lined them up, removed their shoes,
and fired.

Before their bodies fell in morning sun.

They are ourselves
only by different names.
Those tired eyes
and mouths filled with death,
and we are falling with them
One by one.

There are the shoes
they wore into forever.
My brothers, who have you killed.
What have you done?