About Kristaloop

Bloggers can tell a lot about themselves in the way, how their blogs look like and what they blog about. In fact, kinds of topics posted show blogger’s interests. Creativity is reflected in the design of the blog’s layout, chosen colours and font or added pictures, their quality, how originally the topics are presented. All that can help, in my opinion, to get to know the blogger closer.

Given name represents a person who has created a certain blog. I have been thinking for a couple of days how to name my Google-blog. The name, I thought, should be short, easy to remember and it should describe in one word, what kind of person I am. For this reason, I have chosen Kristaloop out of a few possibilities. Krista is a short version of my name – Kristina - to be honest, the version I like best. The remaining four letters of the blog name – “loop” – are a part of the phrase “arrow loop”.  Arrow loop is a thin vertical aperture, usually in old fortresses, which was used by archers to launch arrows. Creating the blog name by merging my name and insinuation for shooting I wanted to present my hobby and my sport activities.

Yes, I like shooting, for example, photo-shooting. As far as I remember, I have received my very first camera as a present on my seventeenth birthday. Since then there have been a few cameras, both analogue and digital, I have changed. At the beginning I took photos of my family members, friends and relatives in all kind of constellation and to different occasions. A few years later, when I have got my first digital camera, I have tried to explore its possibilities and made photos of everything: people, animals, houses, plants. But somehow I didn’t like these pictures, or at least not all of them. The camera was rather complicated to operate, and the manual for it was a thick book, which studying I found to be time consuming. Therefore, I did not waste too much time for it. Soon after that, I have borrowed my first single-lens reflex camera, analogue. It was a camera with proper lenses and a film inside, which had to get developed. It took time to shoot the whole film before I had to send it to the lab. Nevertheless, waiting for the printed photos was the most exciting part. Although to develop a film and printing photos were quite expensive, I did not care about the costs. Still, I wanted to learn to catch the right moment and to perpetuate it. For this reason, I have started to analyse the subject before shooting, how the objects are placed, proportions of light and darkness. I have started to ask me simple questions before the camera button was pushed: why do I want to perpetuate this particular scene? Will it be still interesting to look at a few years later? People making useless photos of their vacation on the beach get on my nerves. Does it make sense to shoot three hundred photos of the same subject? Or what about “me in bikini” fifty times from the left and another fifty times from the right? Who wants to see the burnt skin and the same face in one pose hundreds of times? Not me. In my opinion, every picture I make should tell a story: where I was, why, and - focused on the scene - what did impress me so much about it. By the way, all photos (with a few exceptions) posted on this blog are made by me. Because these are my stories I post and, therefore, they are accompanied by my pictures.

Photo-shooting is not the only passion I have. Once a week, every Wednesday, I have a sport-shooting training. I use an airgun as well as an air pistol, though I prefer the airgun.  Some people might think I could have brutal thoughts or might be irresponsible because I like this sport. In fact, it requires high mental concentration and, like other sports, good condition as well. It might sound strange, but this sport has helped me in the past and still helps me to calm down, put my thoughts together, to rank my priorities and to concentrate on the most important things. It has helped me to keep focused on my target, not to hurry up. In this point, photo-shooting and sport-shooting are alike: both require high concentration and in both I have to learn to catch the right moment for a perfect result. And because I was focused enough on my target and went to my training conscientiously I took part in competition last summer (see photo). But only one time is not enough. I want to improve as much as I can in both, sports and photography. And I am up to this challenge.