How living in two countries has its advantages but also downsides

Our regular travel during summer from Ireland to Croatia is behind us and I can collect my thoughts and impressions sitting in my apartment in Ireland. It became sort of mandatory that we travel each summer to Croatia, for seven years now. Visiting friends and family is a must, but more than that, it is a source of my artistic inspiration.

I realised how different my artwork is in Croatia (I don’t mean photography but paintings), how vibrancy and passion is at the core of the environment that surrounds me. From early age I was connected with nature and animals, probably more then average person. That lead me in the past to become a veterinarian, but also to photography. Sensibility to the world around us is a necessity to true empathy.

So, todays post is mainly an introduction to few more that will follow.

Travel with me

When we travel, we visit a lot of destinations on the way. For us, travel and adventure begins when you leave your doorstep. On this journey we flew from Cork airport over Amsterdam, to Zagreb. Due to pandemic, direct flight that was operated by Ryanair from Cork to Zadar was terminated and I really hope it will resume soon. We took a rental in Zagreb which is quite expensive during full tourist season, to get to the area of Zadar. Zadar and Zadar county is somewhat in the middle of Croatia’s coastal region. It is the area that we know the best and where the view on a huge mountain range called Velebit always makes me smile. The Adriatic meets the mountain there.

My photos attached to this post are made with GoPro. We did some aerials, underwater, and regular tourist snaps. I also took my 17×6 analog with me (it is still not developed).

Which is hidden underneath is always something that attracts me. When I was a child I watched Jaws, the scariest movie at that time. I new that in the Adriatic we don’t have big sharks, still I did not go in the deep for a long, long time. Our imagination can create stories that are worse than movie.

I don’t know who is the swimmer in the picture, it is of no importance. For me is all about that interruption when a figure enters the tranquil scene of summer. Disturbance. It forces me to stop.

As always follow me on instagram https://www.instagram.com/lidijaivaneksila/

Being a Croatian, I know how to find spots for photography, good restaurants, where to swim, and what to expect there. Also it means I slowly lose that fresh perspective of a naive first visitor. Living in Ireland is helping as I do come and go, but also it tears me apart each time I have to go back.

In a sense it is like these two pictures – Crack and Interruption.