Monday, September 29, 2008

Spain! (part 4)

Welcome to day four. This is going to be a long post, so I'll apologize in advance. Many of these pictures are intended for the other participants of the First Light class, so I'll forgive you if you don't spend too much time looking at those. That reminds me, if any of you are interested in learning more about travel/journalistic photography, I can't stress enough the excellence of these First Light Workshops. If you have any interest, you should definitely check them out.

Back to the photography! On this day we took a bus up to the wine country (like the Sonoma valley, but in Spain) and we split into three groups at three different wineries. At this moment I can't remember the name of the one we were at, but as soon as one of my photofriends (tm) emails me to remind me what it was, I'll put it on here... also, I can't remember the name of the lovely woman who showed us around the place, but more about her later.

There weren't many people working the day we came, the weather was crappy so they sent everyone home early since picking grapes in the rain is no fun at all. Here is one of the die hard workers that were left, cleaning up the juice vats. Mmmm, vats of juice...

Most of what they make here is Cava, the Spanish equivalent of Champagne. If you're familiar with Frexinet sparkling wine, then you've had Cava. It's from this same region near Barcelona.

Look at that totally Hawt! photo action of Jay Kinghorn shooting our guide explaining sedimentation in wine bottles. I show this photo to demonstrate his awesome technique, and because my photo of same scene is no good. By the way, Jay is a great workflow teacher and a master Photoshop/Lightroom dude. Check out his web page if you need someone to help you figure out what to do with all your photos... also if you're interested in learning how to better use your computer for photo work...

This is a rack of muscato, a sweet dessert wine. We had some after dinner, it's tasty.

Although it might look like it from this picture, no radiation is used in the production of this wine. We were given a full tour of all their cellars. Lots and lots of wine, but not much light. Gots to be creative with the flash.

Why is this thermometer in Fahrenheit? I know it wasn't 75 Celcius. Maybe it's a humid-o-meter, I'm not sure, but I like this picture.

This was our guide for the tour, she also happens to be the wine maker. She's a pro! She told us all about how the bottles are filled, about the corks, about cleaning the bottles... all that kind of stuff. She was unbelievably kind to us and spent over an hour walking us around and showing us her craft. Once I find out her name and where she works, I'll make sure she gets these pictures.

Corks!

Grapes!

Mi Padre!

Now we're moving on to the Mas Ferrer winery where we had a tapas party and drank a lot of Cava. We all piled back into the bus and made our way to this little hole in the proverbial wall.

Since the wine cellars at the winery from earlier in the day were less than photogenic, it was lucky that we got some time to take pictures in the Mas Ferrer cellars. They were beautiful and old. I hear a rumor circulating around that these were build as bomb shelters, and were converted to hold the wine. Whatever they were for, they're pretty awesome now.

Oooh, a wine ghost!

That's a lotta caps.

This is Albert. He owns this here place and was a great host to us. Cheers to you Albert!

The rest of the pictures here are of participants for the most part, so I'm going to leave it here for now, but some other time, when I'm not getting up at 4 am to catch a flight home, I'll add names to these faces.


















Saturday, September 27, 2008

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.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Spain! (part 2)

Hello again from Barcelona. On Saturday night we went to the La Mercè festival in Barcelona. We were there for the Correfoc, the fire run that takes place during the festival every year. The evening started off with the kids Correfoc, the slightly less aggressive kiddie version of the adult, stab you in the face with my flaming firworks poker, Correfoc. Here is a shot of the crowd looking down the street from where the parade ended.


The kids (and adults) have to be fully protected because they're basically strapping bottle rockets onto poles and just letting them spin. The result is flaming hot bits of evil that rain down on all below bringing burnination and property damage. I was bundled up with a hoodie and a clear filter on my lens, even still having these flaming baddie bounce off my hands and face was an unpleasant experience. Luckily (for you) I'm hard core and got this totally awesome picture of one of the fire wielding kiddies.
More evidence of the protection required to keep the childern from emolating. Somehow I don't think this kind of thing would go over well in the States. Give children fire sticks and let them run free, poking each other with flaming death? Yes!

Look! Dragons! Dragons are awesome, espcially when they've consumed so many children. Those poor, poor children. The Spanish are so trusting to give their children such high powered, pain inducing, dragonmobiles.

Also, devils.

Some kiddies merely stood by and watched, but I must say, their parents were never far away. The kids would run out into the street, then a fireball would appear and the parents would run out and huddle over them. It actually looked a bit like a war zone, what with the fire and the screaming children. Great fun!



When the kids parade was over we took off to grab some dinner at a totally awesome Spanish Pizza Hut. Mediocre the world over!

The adult Correfoc was a completely different affair. Much bigger fireworks, much louder bangs and big dragons with lots of fire.


Also, these guys were way more aggressive, pointing their fire-guns at the crowd, shooting our feet and just being generally more pushy. Here's a totally emo, purple devil-guy.

And dancing, either to avoid catching feet on fire, or for general jubilation. Perhaps some of both.

Cult much?


They had people following along, bringing fresh fireworks and the fire for to light them.

This is another fire lighter fully outfitted for things. He's totally Van Halen from the future. If you get my back to the future reference you get a cookie for today.

This is Jay. Jay Dickman. He's the guy who is running this here photo thingie we're doing. Look how photoriffic he is.