Yesterday, I visited the supermarkets in the city of Pula on two occasions. The first visit was planned, the second one not so much. The two experiences were different as night and day.
And quite literally so, because the first one happened early in the morning - the second one in the evening. In the first hour of the dark.
There is a small bank office at the entrance of the supermarket called Konzum. The office in my hometown is closed since the start of the COVID - 19 thing, so the nearest bank is this.
I came very early, before the opening, to get things done quickly. Before the majority of people arrive. Since many bank offices in smaller towns are closed, this place is often crowded.
Here you can see my car, parked on the pretty empty parking lot. Behind the car, you can see the big store that sells Italian shoes and some other leather stuff made in Italy.
The part of the parking lot near the main road that leads out of the city is usually occupied by trucks.
Mostly delivery trucks, I guess.
Usually, I find these suburban places with supermarkets and storage areas very boring. Too boring to photograph. But this time, while waiting with no one there to chat with, I felt inspired to take the camera out of the bag and do a bit of visual exploration. The little shopping cart house shown in this photograph looked kinda cool. The morning bus unexpectedly entered the scene.
Less than a minute later the bus was parked at the bus stop near the trucks. In this shot, I added a bit of yellow filter in Photoshop to get a bit of diversity with these similar shots.
Here I tried the black and white through the channel mixer option in Photoshop.
When the stuff in the bank was done, after taking this shot with many shopping carts and an advert that states FRUITS AND VEGETABLES KEEP US IN MOTION, it was time to go. It's written in Croatian, of course. And it rhymes.
I drove away, but I didn't drive far.
Just a kilometer or two, to the nearest shopping mall.
A seagull was resting on the tall monolith with names of all the shops in that shopping area that looks like a v8illage with the large square in its center.
There was some work in progress on the main road that passes by the mall and continues towards the historic center of the city ...
... and the seagull was busy cleaning his feathers, high above that working day scene.
I observed the work for a minute or two ...
.. took a series of shots ...
... and then entered one of the stores in the shopping mall.
After visiting a couple of stores and buying all that I planned to buy, it was time to do a bit of photography again. Nothing special, just some ordinary, mundane scenes on the parking lot.
I saw an old man passing by the line of stores ...
... and the contrast between that small real human figure and the oversized, two-dimensional people on the adverts in the storefront windows looked slightly surreal. It definitely looked like something worth shooting.
Some minutes later ...
... my focus was on the road again.
This sign is pointing the alternative direction to the city's center while there is work in progress in this area.
While the road crew was busy ...
... these two excavator machines were quietly sleeping just across the street from me.
At one point the ambulance entered the scene. Nothing dramatic, the medicine van was just passing by.
I took another shot and then decided to return to my car and drive away.
While passing by the roundabout near the shopping mall, I took the last four photographs. Fifteen minutes later I was home. And pretty sure that I won't see the city again. I mean, not today, at least. But I was wrong, and I didn't know it back then.
Quite a few hours later, in the evening, I was in the city again.
On the parking lot ...
... in front of jet another suburban store.
This one is called Pevex.
The glowing white letters on the black background of the night looked like something drawn in Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator. In this photograph, the thing didn't look like a pretty large three-dimensional object photographed on the supermarket's roof.
A friend called Denis, better known as 
While Denis was inside the big store ...
... busy exploring the shelves and buying things ...
... I was waiting in the parking lot.
I wasn't alone. Another friend was there with me.
A relatively small Konzum store was recently added to the big Pevex that is here for almost two decades now ...
... but this isn't the same Konzum that was mentioned at the start of this post. I mean, it is the same brand, a part of the same chain. But that one in the morning was a much bigger store. More or less like this nighttime Pevex.
Small groups of people were walking in and out of the stores.
One of the ladies that work there was watering the plants.
I found some surprisingly photogenic scenes, nicely lit by the streetlamps, scattered around the large parking lot.
This tree under the lamp was especially interesting. The barren branches were lit in a very artsy way. It looked like a setting for a portrait created in the studio.
Soon Denis was out of the supermarket ...
... and we all drove back to Medulin, our hometown.
AND THAT'S IT. HOPE YOU ENJOYED THIS CHRONICLE OF AN
ORDINARY SHOPPING ON A DULL WINTER DAY. AS ALWAYS IN THESE POSTS ON HIVE THE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE MY WORK - THE END.
