Spain! (part 3, a little behind considering we're on part done)

Welcome to day three of photo-a-thon Barcelona. On this day we went into the city for more La Merce action. We had two options, either a parade of giant statues of dead royalty or giant towers of people, the castelleres, or as I like to call them "man-stacks." I went with the dead royalty parade because it looked to me like I wouldn't be able to make much of a picture with my limited lens selection (17-35 mm or 85 mm and it seemed at the time that I was going to be across a square from them the whole day). In retrospect and in respect to the awesome images that others who stayed with the "man-stacks" made, this was perhaps a poor, but not fatal, decision. Barcelona, the people and their homage to the man who found our continent:

On the way to the parade there were many interesting people to photograph... some of them were rather suspicious of me and the other 8 people thrusting giant lenses in their face... perhaps not a surprising reaction.

The beginning of the parade... these are the little guys. I'm not sure what the story is with them, but here they are. Lovely horses, no?

Look at this guy's face. Yes, this in not a mask. I wish I had that face.

The beginning of what I think are some guys who are supposed to be representative of a plague or some such thing. I'm not sure, I'm just making things up now, but some of them were banging on wash tubs:

...some were throwing flower (not pictured, but that dude in the back got me right in the camera with a hand full of flower):

...and this lovely little girl was smearing people with black oily stuff. If you're wondering where that hand is going, it's going right up to my face to smear me with the stuff.

Oh look, a non-hostile paradeer! How nice. She gave me candy, and I give her the fame and fortune that comes with the internet.

Ah, a giant. One of my few good pictures of them. Those damn white skies and cluttered backgrounds made for rough shooting.

"Please leave now so people can get to my both and give me money" is what I think her face is saying.... that or "let me go home now."

Another little king guy. Check out the eyes in the mouth. Nice ehe?

Hey, it's a guy. This is at lunch. After we had enough of giants and white skies we went to a place off La Rambla to eat. This here is Dane, one of the participants of this little photo-party. He's a great photographer, and is all geometrical. He just graduated from college in California and now he's living in Barcelona, trying out his chops as a photographer. I think he'll do just fine. He's serving up a giant non-paella paella (it was made with pasta instead of rice, go figure) that he and Burt of "Burt Fox" fame were sharing. That thing is bigger than my head... and my head is huge.

This is Joanna, another participant-type-person. She's from Portugal and is moving to Cape Verde to be a rich and famous photographer. Hopefully she'll remember the little people.

Look! A tourist in Barcelona! It's a good thing I'm so quick on the shutter, it's not often you see one of these. They're also quite skittish, you have to be careful to sneak up on them so as not to scare them off.

No squirrels were harmed in the making of this post.