With a elevation of 4'478m (14'692 ft), Matterhorn is the most famous mountain in Europe. Situated in the European Alps, at the border between Switzerland and Italy, it has in fact two names. To the north (Switzerland) and the most part of the world is known as Matterhorn, while on the south slopes (Italy) is referred to it as Mount Cervino. However, Matterhorn is quite far from being highest in Europe or in the European Alps. The north and east faces oriented towards Switzerland are the most dramatic, and they form the most popular image of the mountain, being found on many Swiss souvenirs and chocolate covers.

I have visited two times already the surroundings of this ...

I wasn't supposed to visit Paris at this time. It happened just after the Catholic Easter in April this year (2008). I was planning to visit my family in Romania during these free days. My wife's mother was in Paris for visiting, and my wife was supposed to return from Romania to meet her mother for a few days in Paris, while I should have stayed a little bit more in [link=http://www.dreamstime.com/timisoara-romania-rcollection6945-resi8]...

Recently I am finding more and more of my photo in use. Sometimes friends point them out to me, sometimes I find them myself by chance or by deliberate search...

One of the most spectacular find was the discovery of my pictures in a book. I was just browsing in a local library here in Switzerland inside a new edition of a book that I've purchased some time before and have discover the addition of some pages with pictures. Among them, quite a few were mine:

It is about a book named "Living and Working in Switzerland" published by a British company.

The images were credited ...

With the occasion of a general assembly of a engineering association, I had the opportunity to visit the Holy Land in March this year. The first three days we spent them in Haifa, enjoying only the views over the city from the hotels on Mont Carmel and endless meetings and seminars at Techion University. Just a few hours before of our departure we had the chance to go as down as the Baha'i temple and gardens for visiting. I was surprised to find out for the first time about the Baha'i faith and religion and enjoy their magnificent gardens. However, the time did not allow as to visit the famous Carmelite Monastery, the port or the beaches of the city.

The last two days of the trip we took part in some organized tours, one to Jerusalem and the second ...

I am very behind in relating my traveling experiences... As I was mentioning in my last blog post (Tokyo revisited), during my holiday in Japan I have also visited a few places outside Tokyo.

The most notable one was Matsumoto Castle:

Towards the west costs of Japan, under the shade of the Japanese Alps, Matsumoto Castle is one of the last standing original wooden structure of the military architecture of the 16th to 17th century. Due to its appearance is nicknamed Crow Castle....

After spending the Christmas in London, we flew to Tokyo to visit my wife's family. We spent here about 3 weeks. In 2003-2004, I have spent one year as a master exchange student in Koganei, Tokyo, and this is my second visit since then. It is in Tokyo where I first came into contact with photography and where I have started contributing to Dreamstime. A big, modern city, Tokyo offers countless opportunities for photographers, specially travel photographers like I consider myself to be.

Even as I have spent a lot of time here, every time I find new places that I haven't visited, as the magnificent Hama-ryukyu...

I spent my winter holidays in Japan, as we have not visited my wife's family for two years. Unlike the other visits in Japan, this time we decided to change planes in London, United Kingdom. In Christmas time, the plane tickets are going skyrocketing, but we found a cheap window on the Christmas Eve - 24th of December. Setting the long flight (London-Tokyo) in this day, the full price of the ticket met our budget and we even decided to fly from Geneva to London the last working Friday of the year - 21st of December: a result of 3 days in London.

We later discovered that you cannot find cheap hotels in London, at least not on Christmas time. We decided for a Youth Hostel - one of the most expensive of this type that I've stayed at, and probably with the worst conditions ...

In the last weekend in September we went to visit some friends in Nancy in Lorraine province of France. We left Lausanne in a Friday afternoon and with the help of a GPS system we managed to arrive at night in Nancy after around 4 hours of driving. We spent that evening in a bar, catching up with the latest news as we did not see our friends for more than 6 months.

Nancy has a population of around 400000, very similar in size with my university city of Timisoara (western Romania), and its the capital of Meurthe-et-Moselle department. The city's history goes back to 800BC, and their glory period was under the rule of Duke Stanislas (as the capital of the Duchy of Lorraine) in 18th century. Stanislas (or Stanislaw in polish language) was the King of ...

In the middle of September I have brought a new car. I was forced to make the change mainly because my old car was registered in Romania, and while now I am residing in Switzerland, I would had to register it here (which can be translated in a lot of taxes and a large decrease in its value - selling price). So, while in vacation in August in Romania, I have sold my old Opel Astra 1992 (still in a good condition) and started the process of buying a new Honda Civic on my return here. I have received the car on 13th of September, and I was so eager to take it for a ride, although with the purchasing, my bank balance was very close to zero. ...No, it is not the car in the right side image... but, you can find a very nice presentation of the model [link=http://www.honda.co.uk/civic/]...

A few months ago, following a forum discussion, I have searched to find any of my photos in use on the WWW. Slightly disappointed at first, as I could only find two sites using my photos, in the time passed since then I found more, and now my list has 7 entries, with some sites using more than one photo. I am confident now that in the future, this list will grow bigger. I decided to present my current list here and try to convince the designer that use my photos to drop a line and I promise include their work in the next episodes of this kind of blogs.

The first find was this. I offered this image for the free section a few weeks before I have found it in use, so I do not know if the image was paid for or got for free, but this relatively ...