jacobblogs

Tag: Photography

Posts that mainly focus on photography.

  • Barcelona, Spain: 4/6, 4/7

    Here’s the first of Barcelona! I’m currently sitting in the courtyard of my hostel (very quiet at the moment, I think most people are out exploring right now), eating some fruit I picked up a bit ago, and writing this post.

    I don’t know how old this building is, but it certainly isn’t new. The hostel feels like modernity built into ancient bones.

    4/6: Sunday

    All I did this day was sleep. The previous day, I left Boston at 6PM on the 5th, flew for about 6 hours to Lisbon and arrived at midnight Boston time, or 7AM (on the 5th, still!) Lisbon time. There, I went through customs (A tired border officer said nothing to me and simply stamped my passport. Easier than getting into Canada!). After another two hours of waiting, I hopped (more like slogged) onto my connecting flight to Madrid.

    Once in Madrid, I took a taxi to the train station I’d booked a train to Barcelona on. At this point I had already been awake almost 20 hours, and was really starting to feel it. Unfortunately, the train to Barcelona was another four hours or so – in total, when I arrived at the Hostel, I hadn’t slept (properly) for over 27 hours. Lesson learned: it may seem cheaper to split some travel into a couple of tickets, but I would have had a much better time had I paid $100 more for a direct ticket.

    Once I got to the hostel, I took a much-needed shower, then fell asleep (at around 6PM Barcelona time) until the next morning.

    4/7: Monday:

    Being in Barcelona is really cool, but not knowing the language kind of terrifies me sometimes. Most casual interactions can be passed with a smile and nod, but interactions at restaraunts, for example, need some type of common language. My first stop was a cafe for breakfast – cafes are SUPER common here, I pass them every 3 minutes when walking in the city, it seems.

    The tuna was very oily – I suspect it was from a can submerged in oil. In this case, it actually helped a lot to make the sandwich less dry.

    “No ingles” was the server’s response to my poorly pronounced “hablas ingles?” – but he was, nontheless, a server, so he sat me down and handed me the menu (a QR code to their online menu). After some deliberation, I ordered a Cappuchino, a fresh-made juice containing Apple, Lemon, and some vegetable I don’t remember, and a Tuna Sandwich with Avocado. All were delicious and fresh. I think it cost about €13.75 (~$15 USD), which (considering the quality and atmosphere) seems on par or better than what I would expect to pay in the US.

    Freshness, excellent taste and reasonable prices seem consisten in all of my food experience in spain so far. Coffees (while much simpler and less sweet than what we Americans are used to) are usually only a few euros, and I haven’t paid more than €15 for anything yet.

    Even the pidgeons here are different! They have much pinker colors and iridescence on their wings. There’s a nest in the courtyard of my hostel, and they make the weirdest sounds! Sometimes they sound like owls. I have learned not to sit under that tree!

    After this, I headed back to the hostel and finished yesterday’s blog posts about Boston.

    Lunch was at a cafe that was a 3 minute walk from the hostel – a chicken feta salad with an excellent honey mustard dressing, sundried tomatos, and a tasty acaii smoothie. This was one of the more expensive meals I’ve had – coming in right around 15 euros.

    Then, I headed to the beach, and spent a LONG time laying in the sun. It’s too cold here to swim, but the sun has been hot and shorts and a t-shirt is comfortable during the afternoon. On the warm beach under the sun, the light breeze made it perfectly comfortable. I did use sunscreen, which is the only reason I don’t look like a lobster today.

    After this and some other things, my path back to the hostel took me through the parc (park) where the Arc de Triomf (not the one from Paris) is. Feeling especially like a tourist (something I am trying to avoid looking too much like here, lest I get squirted with water guns), I took my camera out and started snapping various angles.

    The sun was setting behind the arc. In one of my last classes, I learned that the less-defined edges where the sun is backlighting the arc are due to how different wavelengths of light refract differently. Since light is a wave, the edge interacts with the light going around it, and different colors bend slightly differently. Especially in older cameras like this, this creates “chromatic abberations” – or purple-blue fringing around more distant edges.
    I had to wait next to a crosswalk for a bus to pass before I could take this. Standing out in the open like that with my camera makes me feel like I’m sticking out like a sore thumb, but at least this is an area people expect tourists with cameras.

    I also snapped some photos of nearby interesting architecture. The abundance of balconies here is cool!

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    I’ve also been enjoying trying street photography. The camera I brought has a screen that will flip up 90 degrees so I can hold it at waist level and see what it is seeing – handy for when you don’t want people to realize they are being photographed.

    This man running his dog on bike caught my eye. I wanted to get a shot more directly from the side, but was too late with the camera.

    This building looked nice. Sometimes that’s all it takes for me to snap a photo, and sometimes I think too hard about it and decide not to.

    I especially liked the pastel yellow between the beige and grey.

    This woman walking her dog also caught my eye, and I feel pretty good about this photo! There’s a slight bit of motion blur to show them walking, and the camera actually focused on them. This was one photo taken from waist height so it wasn’t obvious 🙂

    There are plenty of dogs in Barcelona, and people walking them!
    This one turned out better than I expected – it was while I was walking by, also shot from waist height. The motion blur of the close tiles is pretty cool.
    This guy had a funky bike, but I caught him just after he went into the bush. Since I was moving the camera, there is a slight motion blur, but he is sharply in focus. Maybe I should try more motion blur photography.

    I was starting to get hungry at this point (the walk back was about 30 minutes, and with all the photos I was taking, it took more like an hour). A kebab shop happened convenitently across my path, so I popped in and got one (which I forgot to photograph).

    I didn’t want to be too touristy with my camera, so didn’t try for a great shot here. The kebab shop’s ingredients bar looked good through the window – probably pretty effective marketing, especially since it worked on me!
    I also snapped a selfie in the mirror while waiting.

    Again, I had planned for this post to cover three days – but I think I will split it again, since today (4/8) has a lot of photos 🙂

    All for now!

  • Boston 4/4 & 4/5

    Here’s the second half of my boston trip!

    Bova’s Bakery, where I got breakfast (and my passport-retrival celebration tart the night before)

    I had planned to go back to Bean and Leaf Cafe for another burrito, but ended up sleeping in till almost noon! By the time I got showered and out the door, they were closed. Instead, I headed to Bova’s and got a few pasteries. I did stop at the coffee place again for another espresso, this time with a shot of hazelnut!

    Wonder how this street got its name?

    I wanted to check out the Boston Common (a large park in the opposite direction of the North End), so after finishing my breakfast at a table next to the burial grounds, I started walking (and snapping photos).

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    I ran across another historic graveyard on the way, and snapped a few more photos of gravestones.

    This one was crazy! Not only did it have the angel of death at the top, it also had a scene carved into it, plus other intricate details.
    Another scene at the top. Death VS an angel of some type? Not sure…
    A graveyard friend!

    After the graveyard, I finally got to the Boston Common. The Common itself was large and pretty busy (and there wasn’t a lot to see), but right across the street is a garden park, so I spent a lot of time walking around taking photos there.

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    While I was walking, I saw another (cute!) guy with a camera. While I was taking the photo below, he got a picture of me! He came up and asked me about my camera, and we had a conversation about photography and he showed me the photo of me he’d taken. I don’t remember his name though, oops!

    A monument in the Common, seen through the buds on the trees.

    Walking back to my hostel, I snapped a few more photos of the interesting architecture along the way.

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    Something about this lion caught my eye

    After another short rest, it was time to head out for dinner and to explore the MFA (Museum of Fine Arts) with a friend I met along the way.

    This is the best picture I had :( One problem with old digital cameras is their poor preformance in low light situations. A steadier hand and more careful setup of the shot would have helped, but for quick food photos when taking the picture isn’t the main focus at the moment, I typically just shoot and hope it turns out.

    Dinner was at Hobgoblin in Chinatown, a jazz bar style restaraunt with live piano music and delicious thai food with my friend. It was their recommendation, and it was great!

    Next, we took the Orange line train to the stop closest to the MFA. I really enjoyed taking the subway the few times I did in Boston – it was clean, about as fast as driving in a lot of cases, easy to navigate, and way cheaper than Uber!

    We did not have enough time for the MFA (a full day seems like it might be enough? we had two hours), but we did get through a couple of exhibits on ancient art (and a few from only a few hundred years ago!). I found a lot of pieces that had patterns I think would look really cool as tattoos, so I took photos for future inspiration.

    This bowl and several others near it had a simple design of a bunch of hands reaching across or into the middle.

    This bowl is from 10th-11th centry Iran, and features a peacock.
    The simple leaf design on this jar is really pretty. It is from the Song Dynasty during the 11th-12th centuries.
    This design makes me think of Ginko leaves a bit, but I forgot to take a picture of the information plaque.
    A cute ceramic mouse (or rat?)
    I really liked the blue on this bowl. I only noticed the subtle koi pattern in the middle while writing this!
    Josh, do these count as ducks? This is what I imagine you duck farming would look like…

    My friend I was exploring the museum with. The high contrast made this a little challenging for the camera, but I like how it turned out!

    We accidentally wandered into an administrative wing of the museum, and found this eery-looking empty conference room. This photo is through two windows, there is outside air between the window I shot this through and the one outside the conference room. The reflections also make it interesting!

    After the MFA closed at 10, we headed home. The next morning, I got breakfast at another coffee shop (this time a sour cherry cheese danish! Also delicious) and had a slow morning in. It was raining in Boston, and I got this picture from the window of my friend’s apartment (28th floor!).

    The green park is the Common, where I was exploring the day before! My hostel would be to the right of the nearest skyscraper at about 2:00 from straight on.

    That’s all for my Boston trip! Today’s itenerary in Barcelona is still up in the air, but it involves getting lunch and dinner, going to bed on time, and exploring! I might check out a museum, the beach, or a local park. Who knows, maybe all three?

  • Spooner’s Cove, CA

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    Surprise! I’ve not quite left for Boston, but since I graduated last Friday and have nothing to do, I’m joining Elliot on a trip down to LA for a conference he has there. To split the trip up into smaller segments, we stayed the night in Morro Bay. When I was driving home after my 2023 internship, I stopped at Spooner’s Cove and wanted to come back.

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    The beach here is made up of probably a few billion little pebbles, a coarse sand. The cool part is that there are so many different types of rocks that make up the sand, and you can spend more than an hour picking through the sand for little treasures. (I know, ’cause we did!)

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    So, enjoy these pictures from Spooner’s Cove and its multitude of little gemstones 🙂

    All these photos were taken with my Olympus C740, a 3.2MP digital camera from 2003. I found it at a thrift store on my way down to LA last summer for $5. It was really grimy and scuffed up, but a little cleaning and 4 AA batteries and it worked! It’s since become one of my favorite cameras.