Travel Wrap-Up; It Was An Amazing Journey!!!

Good Afternoon Everybody,

After two months traveling over twelve thousand miles, and 18,282 photographs later we finally made it back home.  We finally arrived back in the USA last Thursday late afternoon. This past weekend was a whirlwind with unpacking and also attending some family functions that were on our calendar before we left. This week it's “noses back to the grindstone” and back to work.

Wrapping Our Trip Today and Tomorrow

What a great two months we had on the road traveling to all parts throughout Italy, Spain and the Mediterranean.  Conducting an exciting and I believe an informative week-long class with my friend and good buddy Clay Blackmore in Tuscany and meeting so many new photographers was certainly one of the highlights of the trip.  Another of the highlights, for me, had to be traveling for 12 days on our Mediterranean cruise. 

Then it was on to Spain for my two days of programs for the photographers of Spain – where we also made some new friends and wonderful acquaintances.  My special thanks to Rudy (left) and Marcus (right) that made our visit to Spain such a special treat.These last two months were probably the most exciting time in our lives and we enjoyed every single minute of every single day of it!

But today’s post is to bring full circle our travels and experiences in that last week of our trip.  Today I want to share with you a few more images and a few more stories of some of the places we visited in Spain. Then in a day or two I want to share with you the images we captured during my Spanish workshop in Madrid. We had a great class and a beautiful model allowing me and the workshop attendees to again capture  some terrific images.  Look for that the post to hit either tomorrow or Thursday.

Spain Travels Wrap Up

As I've mentioned a few times before at DigitalProTalk, trying to keep the blog going through eight weeks of intensive travel has been quite the challenge. The early-morning risings and the long days left very little time to really spend on the blog. And, I need to tell you, if the choice was between the travels and the blog and I chose the blog - LaDawn would probably have tossed me overboard otherwise ;~)

Anyway, were back in town for a couple of weeks so I’ll try to get things back to the regular schedule. Now, there is one hitch to the regular schedule. We've got Thanksgiving next week and we leave for Cabo, Mexico for three weeks that following Saturday. But, as followers of DigitalProTalk know, that even while in Mexico – a trip we make every year – I’ll continue to keep the blog running.

These last eight weeks provided “tons” of blogging material that I want to share with you. Topics will include photography, lighting, composition, color, speed-lighting technique – you name it, I’m going to cover it in the following weeks.

Let's get right onto our travel wrap up. During our eight weeks on-the-road we pre-arranged several tours. One of those tours was in Madrid, Spain where we spent half the day checking out the city. Now you may be thinking I'm about to throw up a beautiful photograph of Madrid right about now but, that's not the case. One of the most interesting things I noticed while traveling in Madrid was on a stop to the Hard Rock Cafe in downtown Madrid.

We climbed off the tour bus for a short break and as I was perusing the rock 'n roll memorabilia on the Hard Rock Cafe's wall I was taken by one promotional banner in particular. Check it out - it's announcing a concert with Little Richard playing with none other than the Beatles from way back in 1962. What I thought was particularly interesting and telling was the fact that little Richard had top billing over the Beatles.  Anyway, back to the sites of Madrid.

Madrid is a first class world city – on par with NYC.  It’s busy, noisy, and full of energy.  And yes, with all the new construction going on, parts of the city are pretty much steel and glass.  It’s kind of a cool contrast when compared with the medieval, historic parts of the city.  It’s certainly an architectural combination we don’t see here in the states.

I have to say, that I learned one thing about European travel – probably travel for any part of the world – but particularly here in Europe. You can read any travel guide you want but, the common denominator is it's always about the fabulous museums, unbelievable cathedrals, and the food. We enjoyed plenty of it all!

I have to tell you that I was most impressed with our visit to the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain.

Here was simply an un-believable collection of classical artwork that needed at least two days to walk through, digest and enjoy. We only had allotted four hours but took advantage of every single moment. Most impressive to me were the a 90 Peter Paul Rubens paintings on display at the Prado. What's interesting is the fact that the last Rubens painting was auctioned for $75 million. You can do the quick math - the value of the Rubens paintings in the Prado must be worth upwards of $7 billion! And, you could walk right up to them and enjoy them – close and personal.

One of the most amazing facts for me in learning about Peter Paul Rubens was the fact that he painted over 1500 paintings in his nearly 40 year painting career. When you do the math that means that he painted nearly 40 paintings a year. These paintings, many of which are 5’ x 7' and larger, were painted at a rate that averaged nearly four per month or one per week!  What is mind blowing about that fact is to look upon those images and figure out how he did it. Sure Rubens was one of the finest painters of the time and had some great students which also helped with his amazing output of work. He sometimes just painted the hands and the faces and let the students carry on with the rest of the painting. But still four paintings a month for 35 years or so – WOW!  

Oh, and also let’s not forget, he was a well-known diplomat of the times traveling throughout Europe as well . What an amazing individual.

On To Toledo – Not  Toledo, Ohio

One of the highlights was our side trip to Toledo, Spain about an hour south of Madrid. The ride on the bullet train was super relaxing too and you got a chance to enjoy the beautiful country side along the way.

Why don’t we do this is the US as well? A great and inexpensive way to travel! 

Toledo is full of history and beauty and is an absolute joy to visit and we had a picture perfect day for our trip.  Toledo was also home to Miguel de Cervantes who wrote the world's best-selling 16th century novel Don Quixote, which is considered to be one of the most important and influential books in the history of publications.

As with all the medieval cities we visited on our travels we were equally impressed with the city of Toledo.

Not only did it showcase the fabulous Toledo Cathedral dating from 1226 a.d (above), the oldest synagogue building still standing (below) in Europe (14th century), and amazing museums all of which I was able to photograph in, made for a spectacular visit on Tuesday afternoon.

Another one of our highlights of our travels to Toledo was, once again, all the art that was available for viewing throughout the city. Some of the museums were even FREE to visit.  Most prominent was the works by El Greco one of the most famous Spanish Renaissance painters.

Now an interesting fact about El Greco is that's not really his name. It's really Doménikos Theotokópoulos but as you can see signing with his real name would take up half the canvass so he chose to sign his name to most of his paintings as El Greco which means The Greek.

I happen to be a big fan of his work and it was quite the treat to see so many of his famous paintings first hand.  Here was the surprise:  The viewing conditions were quite dim and you really couldn’t enjoy the full richness of El Greco’s color palette under the museum lighting.

Heck, the paintings are 500 years old – the museum wants them around as long as possible so they keep the lights dim;~)  The image above gives you an idea what the art looked like under the museum lighting conditions.

But, after fiddling with the exposure with my Canon 5D Mark III I got an amazingly different result – a result that let me really appreciate the full range of color, contrasts, and tones used by the artist. Just look at the same image below. 

With the properly exposed (illuminated) image that you see above, it’s a spectacular difference and gives one a brand new and very enthusiastic response to the art work.  I photographed several images in the museum just so I could better appreciate them once we returned home.

_________________________________________________________________

Hey gang, that’s it for me today.  I hope you appreciated the posts these last several weeks. It’s not only been fun for me to share with you some of our visual adventures but I also hope I brought a photographer’s eye to all the locales we visited these last two months.

I’ve still got one more post to get up from our travels – my workshop in Madrid.  I promise – it will be much more photo and lighting centric so please stay tuned.

See everybody soon and Buenos Días for now, 

David

At Many Levels, The Most Amazing Experience Ever!

Good Morning Everybody,

This is going to be a short post today but I hope you find it one of the most amazing series of images ever!  Barcelona, while famous for many things, is most famous for it's architecture.  And, a lot of that fame is the result of the many buildings throughout the city by the very famous early 20th century architect and figurehead of Catalan Modernism, Antoni Gaudí.

The most amazing building of all - yes, in all of Barcelona, has to be the Basilica of the Sagrada Família.  This cathedral, still under construction, is simply the most beautiful sanctuary I have ever visited.  And that's saying a lot especially since we were in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome just days before!

From the floor to the high vaulted ceiling, you are blown away by this unbelievable visual experience!  Construction on the Basilica began in 1882 and passed it's halfway point in 2010 when Pope Benedict himself came to Barcelona to consecrate the cathedral. Antoni Gaudí spent the last 25 years of his life working on the project. Construction is expected to be complete on the centennial anniversary of Gaudí’s birth.

The design considerations, artistic interpretations, architectural splendor of this edifice is nothing short of an awe inspiring experience!!!  I hope you enjoy the short series of images I've posted today. What you may feel while viewing these images can only illicit the smallest fraction of the emotional awe we felt as we walked through this wondrous paradise of space.

_________________________________________________________

Hey gang, if you ever make it to Barcelona, you MUST make the trip to the Basilica of the Sagrada Família.  It will be one of your greatest life experiences, I promise!!!

David

Don't Cry For Me Barcelona - We'll Be Back! And An HDR Wonderland

Good Morning Everybody,

OK, I know I've changed the words around but what a great world class city - and probably one of our favorites we visited during our 2 month journey throughout Europe and the Mediterranean.  I know it's been a while since I've posted but our travels, as usual, have just been packed pretty tight on this trip. We landed in Spain on Monday, October 29th spent the next few days exploring the city of Barcelona. Both LaDawn and I fell in love with the city, the sites, the history, and the food and wine.  Barcelona is simply an amazing city!

Room With  A View & I Want Seconds!

After a quick ride to our hotel - yes, we did have a room with a view, we settled in, and immediately set off to explore our surrounds.

Our hotel was about 4-5 miles from the city center but that was no problem as the weather was nearly perfect and allowed us to walk for miles through many of the small neighborhoods throughout the city.  Our first stop was a restaurant located not too far from our hotel where we were introduced to a real tapas bar. 

Sure we have tapas bars in the US but nothing like they have in Spain - the assortment of these taste tempting Spanish delicacies can be beyond belief.  Needless to say, our first day of Spanish cuisine was wonderful.

A Wine Lovers Wonderland!

And for the wine aficionados reading this post today, the Spanish wines are delicious and really inexpensive.  To make my point I grabbed a shot of this promo in one of the supermarkets near our hotel.  The price of € 1.72 or about $2.69 a bottle re-affirms that $2 Buck Chuck wines are available anywhere ;~)  The big difference is that a good wine is available in Spain for $5 - $10, we found them to be quite a bargain.

One of the things that immediately struck LaDawn and I was just how clean, like really, really clean the city was.  The fact that they have employees to clean the streets and remove graffiti routinely from the streets, city center, sidewalks sure makes a difference to a tourist's perception of the city. There simply wasn’t a single piece of trash laying around anywhere!

Checking Out Barcelona's Gothic Past

As with most European cities, Barcelona was rich in it's medieval history too. From historic buildings, Roman walls, and century old gorgeous churches.  We were taking one of the guided tours when I decided to wander away from the group, a routine practice of mine that drove LaDawn and the tour guides a little nuts.

The guide was going on and on about some Roman wall - we had seen plenty in Rome - but I was more interested as to what the inside of this huge old cathedral, the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, had to offer. 

I wandered in and was blown away by the utter beauty of the interior of this magnificent building.   I didn't want to leave.  Every corner of the amazing historic edifice offered even more unbelievable things to see as I continued to explore.  Needless to say, I did lose the group for a while but I didn't care.  What I was seeing was far more interesting and inspiring to see.

Checking Out The Rest Of The City

After the tour, we continued to walk the city for hours. Our stroll took us to several areas of the city including down the famous La Rambla Drive all the way to the boat harbor. 

We then found our way passed the Arc de Triomf built in 1888.

The shop that most caught my interest was what appeared to be a butcher shop. Turns out these shops were selling the very famous Serrano ham, a real delicacy in Spain and very expensive – something like around $45/lb. More hammy details here.

What the heck, it looked good to me.  I just kept thinking that seeing the pig leg displayed like this put a whole new meaning to the big turkey legs we enjoy at our Renaissance Festivals often held in the Fall through-out parts of the United States. 

While making arrangements for our Gothic tour of the city, I spotted a brochure promoting Flamenco dancing. It’s sort of Spanish tap dancing but with much more power, passion, and speed. I have been a fan for years but had never attended a live  Flamenco performance.  Before LaDawn could stop me, (he didn’t even ask) I purchased two tickets for the evening performance.  If you’ve never seen Flamenco dancing up close and personal, and we were up close in the second row center – what an experience – definitely a “goose-bump” moment!  Check out the You-Tube video below to see just how exciting the experience of seeing Flamenco Dancing can be. Enjoy! 

Anyway, it was a wonderfully varied day of exploration, sights and sounds around this very beautiful city.

Catching The Light At The End Of The Day

During one of our visits to downtown Barcelona we decided to opt out of taking the taxi back to the hotel and just make the 4-5 mile trip by foot - about a 90 minute walk. This decision allowed to really dig into the off-the-beaten-path of the city and experience many of the neighborhoods up close and personal, a wonderful experience.

As we approached our hotel, the sun was gently setting against a very beautiful sky and then we found ourselves in this excitingly graphic  public park on the corner, the Parc de la Diagonal Mar.  It’s design and architecture was a visual treat.  I quickly set my Canon 5D Mark III to HDR mode, added my Sigma 12-24 lens to the camera, at the widest setting, and began shooting away. 

I loved the results. We happened upon the location at thee perfect time of day, with the unusual graphic architecture of the park, the wonderfully sleek skyline all combined for some extraordinary images. This was probably one of the highlights of the day for me.

Heading To The Mountains and The Hills Are Alive With The Sound Of Music

We also made a day trip to Montserrat just a short one hour hour drive outside of Barcelona. The tour of the beautiful and historic location wedged on the top of the mountain overlooking the verdant valley below was an impressive side trip for the both of us. 

This monastic location showcases one of the most beautiful cathedrals in Spain and is home to the famous Black Madonna.  But more than that, it is home to one of the oldest boys choirs in Europe, the very famous Montserrat Cathedral Boys Choir. 

The highlight of our visit was a short performance by the young vocal ensemble – a beautiful wrap to a fantastic day trip.  You can give a listen right here.

_________________________________________________________________

Hey gang, That's it for me today.  I'm doing a special post on our top stop in Barcelona shortly so be sure to stop back.  I promise you will be blown away!!!

See ya' soon,  David

Saying Goodbye to Italy and All Points East – On To Spain!

Good Morning Everybody,

I'm writing this as we continue our adventures on towards Barcelona, Spain from Rome.  Today we begin the final leg of our two month trip to Italy, Greece, Turkey and Spain.  We spend a few days in Barcelona and then we're off to Madrid where I present two programs for the Spanish Professional Photographers at their 3rd Convencion Internacional del Foro de Fotografos en Madrid and I have to say, I'm looking forward to getting back into "work" mode and am really getting fired up for my programs next week.

But, that isn't to say that we won't enjoy a little of the sights and treasures of what beautiful Spain has to offer.

Travel Updates:

What a TOTALLY fantastic trip it has been so far!  Our travels throughout Italy have been amazing, but  I must confess, I think our Mediterranean cruise has been my favorite leg of our journeys.  LaDawn disagrees with me. She loved all the cities in Italy and our extended adventures within those locations. I felt totally relaxed for the 12 days we sailed the seas and really enjoyed our sometimes abbreviated stops along the way. I'm ready to sign back up tomorrow!!!

The cool thing about the cruise were the varied ports of call - from Santorini, Greece (LaDawn’s favorite); Naples, Italy; Istanbul, Turkey and all destinations in between - it was a marvelous, beautifully exotic, and for me, a completely relaxing journey. Istanbul seems like weeks ago at this point but still left us with the wonderful memories of their beautiful Middle Eastern art, culture and storied history.

Next it was on to Ephesus, Turkey – another exciting location to visit the antiquity of millenniums past and walk the same road walked by Cleopatra and Marc Anthony. 

It was interesting to see how one of the most famous figures in Christian history was also linked to this part of the world.  Standing where St. Paul preached to the Ephesians to joining the thousands of Christian pilgrims to visit the Virgin Mary's holy resting place – amazing, historic, humbling, photographic, and FULL or rich culture and history!

Next it was on to Athens, Greece.  We had no pre-arranged tour scheduled and decided to take our chances with the local tour guides.  This tactic is a little dicey but after being approached several times by other taxi drivers offering their guide services, we settled on the very flamboyant and totally affable, (only pay if you like) very humorous Yannis pictured right - between Joshua and I. 

Once we climbed into his taxi, the adventure began.  He quickly told us that as a taxi driver in Athens, he has two licenses - a license to drive and a license to kill ;~) We knew we were headed towards an exciting adventure from that point forward.  Yannis had spent his entire life in Athens and he knew everybody in town including a few dogs he spotted along the way which he called out to by name.

Over four hours later, we had hit all the sites that we wanted to see, as promised by Yannis,  including the Acropolis Coliseum and Parthenon.

Yannis' tour finished up at what he considered the best baklava shop in Athens - it offered an amazing presentation of sweet goodies a few of which we promptly purchased for our continued travels on the ship. We soon agreed with his opinion. Yummy!!

On To The Greek Isles - Mykonos

After departing Athens - sailing off into the sunset is always one of the highlights of the cruise stops for me - we headed for Mykonos - one of the Greek Islands' treasured jewels.  The island is quite interesting to explore with all the twisting and turning walkways always seemingly to lead to another shop or two for the ardent explorer and shopper.

Two cool things about Mykonos - the little Venice section of the town and the five windmills that stand sentry-like over the town.

Our visit was short but still pleasant and interesting certainly from a photographic point of view.

One More Famous Island To See Off The Coast Of Napoli

Our last stop was the city of Napoli or Naples as we know it in the states.  Napoli's claim to fame - they invented the pizza!!!!  This is the only country in the world that thinks pizza is a food group;~) Anyway, Naples is supposed to have the best in all of Italy.  That may be the legend and part of their claim-to-fame, but we had sumptuous pizza in other cities as well.

Because LaDawn and I had already visited Naples as one of our previous destinations we opted to take a hydrofoil ride to the Isle of Capri and continue further up the mountain on a chairlift ride to the top of the island.  The day was beautiful, the sun warm and sights were breathtaking! It is a shoppers dream come true, sorry LaDawn no room in our luggage for any new treasures!

I'm still amazed how the tour busses navigate the super narrow serpentine roads leading around the island.  They pass each other with only inches (maybe even an inch) to spare, although one of our drivers did wipe out another driver's rear view mirror as he passed - he acted like is was a normal occurrence of events.  Me, I would never buy a new car in this part of the world - dents and dings are evident everywhere, even on our rental car from Tuscany.  Anyway, I digress ;~)

We left Naples about 6:00 p.m. It was a magical time to be heading back out to sea and from the 15th deck of the cruise ship watch the beauty of this city recede into the distance.

After landing back in Rome on Friday, we still had two days to explore a few parts of the city we had missed on our earlier visit two weeks before.  The highlight of our stay this time (besides Mass at St Peter’s Basilica with Pope Benedict VI), was the fact that we had a great balcony room at the Rome Cavalieri Hotel with a spectacular view - yes, that is the dome of St. Peter's Basilica, the largest church in the world that you see to the right in the image below.  We spent hours soaking up the views on our balcony and enjoying a glass of wine during our stay.

Today it's off to Barcelona, Spain - a fabulous world class city – at least that is what we have been told by all we talked with before our trip.  Me, I'm looking for the change of menu - out with the pasta and in with the tapas;~) One of the treats for LaDawn and I is sampling the local fare. Sadly we enjoyed our last Italian pizza and gelato in Rome yesterday.  Let's see what we can find in Barcelona today. Our waist lines are certainly enjoying this trip as well!!

_________________________________________________________________

Hey gang, that's it for me today. I'm not quite sure what our  schedule is these next few days but be sure to check back. 

Hope to see you soon,  David