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Posts Tagged ‘Barcelona’

Visit To Barcelona

14 Mar
Red bikes used in Barcelona bike sharing program

Bikes parked at a bike sharing stand in Barcelona

This week I had to take a trip to Barcelona for work.  The visit was brief but pleasant.  As is the case with all of my trips to Spain it took a few days to get adjusted to the Spainish meal times.

The company cafeteria opens at 1:00 in the afternoon with the the peak lunch period  around 2:00.  That has a knock down affect on dinner as well.  It is not uncommon to schedule a business dinner to start at 8:00 or 9:00 in the evening.

So after arriving back in Switzerland on Friday night I am still trying to adjust to ‘Spain’ lag as I call it.  Friday night, thanks to some late flights I was in bed around 2:00 in the morning.  Even last night I had trouble getting to bed before 1:00.

I am hoping I can recover from all of the bocadillos, and cuchos (cream filled donuts) and get back to reality for a change.

I did have a major revalation during the trip this week.  I am convinced that I am completely and utterly addicted to coffee.  So much so that I get really bad symptoms of caffine withdrawal.    I was reading somewhere that it can take somewhere between 2 and 9 days to go through complete withdrawl.  I am now on Day 3 with no coffe or tea and I feel pretty good.  I think I have riden out the storm.

I don’t think I’ll be able to remove caffine from my diet completely, but I am going to try to cut my intake.  It will be a tall challenge.  Especially considering that wonderful coffe machine beltching out the fumes of fresh ground coffee beans that sits about 10 feet (3 meters) from my desk at work.  Let’s see how long I can maintain the will power.

 
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Balconies of Barcelona

29 Nov
Balconies in Barcelona

I have posted before about windows being a view into the lives of the people that live inside a building. I think balconies offer a similar perspective. Seeing peoples laundry, plants, and tables and chairs gives you a perspective on the the lifestyle of the people that live in the building.

When we were in Barcelona there was an apartment building right across the street from our hotel. Each morning when I would wake and look on the window there would be different laundry hanging. This image is just one the series. I’ll have to put a few of them together and see what I get.

I have been a little slow to catch up on going throught my photos this month. I really want to get through them so I can start on my yearly travel book that I like to make. It usually takes be about 2 weekeneds to finish the book and I need to order it before I make the trip home for Christmas so I guess it is time to get started.

 
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Weekend in Barcelona

25 Nov


I had a business trip to Barcelona on Monday and Tuesday so we decided to go a bit early and spend the weekend wandering around from one resturant to another enjoying the local cuisine and culture. It was a great way to relax and get away from the gray Swiss weather.

Not much to say about the trip right now, other than it was alot of fun and a good chance for me to practice a bit of my extremely rusty Spanish.

 
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HDR Images From Barcelona

25 Feb
La Pedrera, Barcelona Spain

This past weekend I had a chance to spend a few days in Barcelona. As always I brought along my full compliment of camera gear including a couple of additional pieces of gear that I normally don’t carry as well.

In addition to my st camera and compliment of basic lenses I brought along a flash, two extra lenses, an extra camera body and 2 tripods. So why all the gear? My wife had decided to get me a photographic tour from Barcelona Photographer as a birthday gift.

Since it was the off season for tourism in Barcelona, Barcelona Photographer was offering private tours. The cost was a little higher than their standard package but considering we would get a personal guide for my wife and myself I thought it was still a good deal. I was hoping the tour would be a good opportunity for me to get some guidance from a local on the best locations for some great shots of Barcelona, while at the same time giving my wife a chance to learn something about digital photography with a digital SLR, a step up from her standard point and shoot camera.

I chose to do a night photography tour since I enjoy capturing night landscapes. Barcelona Photographer also offers day tours as well.

Our tour guide did a nice job of understanding our needs. He catered more towards working with my wife to teach her the ins and outs of a the basic functions of the digital SLR while pretty much leaving me alone while I took advantage of his past experience and comments on best spots or angles to photograph from.

As this was a private tour, I felt like there wasn’t a lot of structure, and getting started was a little slow. The guide did a lot of asking questions about what we wanted to accomplish and after about 30 minutes of wandering and just conversing I felt like we really got started. I think most of that time was the guide just trying to figure out what we wanted to get out of the evening.

As a more experience photographer I don’t really want to comment on the quality of the instruction because that wasn’t my goal. What I got out of the tour, and I think what was the best value for me was the insight from our guide about the best locations to shoot.

Many of the great shots that I got from Barcelona were not taken during the tour itself but where rather taken during second trips to the same locations, or other spots that the guide recommended we return to during the day. Given that the tour was a fast paced 3 hours, I wanted to return to some of the locations when I had more time to be methodical and take photographs at a nice leisurely pace.

The tour gave me a great opportunity to practice my HDR (High Dynamic Range) image capture techniques. All of the photographs I am including in this post were based on HDR techniques. This is the first set of photos that I am really happy with. I am finally figuring out how it all works.

 
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