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Picture The Journey

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.
-Mark Twain

Without getting too sappy and sentimental, my goal is simple: to do everything in my power to give back to the department that guided me to the biggest adventure of my life, and provide an opportunity for another to do the same.  Come down to the Pour House; have some beer from around the world, or around the corner; and buy some art.  Half of the proceeds will be donated directly to the USF Study Abroad scholarship programs.

Click Here to RSVP on the Facebook Event page.
What: A silent auction featuring prints of various size and subject taken all over Europe.
When: Friday, December 2 from 3PM to 12 AM
Where: The Pour House

Take a look below at some of the prints to be featured:

Coming Up Blank

Living Rock, the property we stayed on in Italy, is an ancient monastery turned yoga retreat owned by a Scottish woman, Rosamond, and her family.  It’s situated on the crest of a small mountain/molehill in Tuscany, near the town of Serre di Rapolano.  Another host concerned with self sustainability (albeit for a slightly different reason than most), Living Rock has a pretty large vegetable patch, and an olive grove with almost 100 trees.  It’s the perfectly quintessential Tuscan villa.

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First Class

I really need to start cranking these posts out before I forget everything that happened this year.

Spain

After our time in France, Caroline and I had planned the next 3 months to be spent on farms all over Europe.  We figured “Hey, we already bought the plane ticket to get here, we might as well make the most of it.”  First stop was Spain.  Given the Spanish summer’s tendency to get hotter than a jabanero in soaked in napalm before being launched into the Sun, this turned out to be a good plan.

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Back In The Saddle

Finally, and regrettably, back in the States, but I’m now 4 months behind on my blog, so I guess I have something to occupy me until school starts again.  Nothing left to do but dive right in.

Breil-Sur-Roya

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Parli Inglese?

Not much to say today, way to busy packing for the next part of the trip. I’ll come back and write descriptions for the pictures at a later date, but seeing as I’m probably going to be without interbutts for at least the next two weeks, I figured I would post a ton of pictures to hold you over.

A few weeks ago, Caroline and I spent the weekend in Torino (aka Turin) Italy. I’m not super fond of Italy, for a number of reasons, but I’m always willing to go somewhere new. After miles of walking, entirely too much gelato and chocolate, and 0 comprehension of the Italian being spoken around us, we were exhausted. All in all, not a bad weekend, but it wasn’t enough time to form a proper opinion.

Post comments on any pictures if you want more information on it, it’s even easier now that you can connect with Facebook! Make sure to like the pictures, and share them too. See you again in a couple weeks.

Onwards to Spain.

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Best Time I’ve Had So Far

Instead of procrastinating and doing nothing while I’m waiting for a quiet day in the house to record the Post Production process for a Behind The Scenes video I’m making, it’s time to post some recent pictures.

Todays adventure was to a tiny village in the Côte d’Azur called Èze. This adorable little village is much like St Paul de Vence, only slightly less well known. Like SPdV, Èze was an ancient Roman village and tries to remain relevant today as a colony for artists, as well as a completely affordable luxury hotel, Chateau De La Chevre D’Or (starting at only 340euro per night!). Interesting factoid: engineers still don’t entirely understand how the Romans got the running water up to Èze.

One of the main attractions of Èze is the Jardin Exotique which hosts a number of species of cactus and other desert flowers. A little odd, seeing as the French Riviera is pretty far away from anything that could be considered a desert, but clearly they thrive here. Maybe it’s the rocky cliffs or all of the dry French humor that keeps them alive (get it? dry humor?).

The thing that brought me to Èze 4 times on this trip isn’t the chateau, the garden, or the art shops. If you’re savvy and have a good pair of shoes, there’s a trail that leads from Èze Village (at the top of the mountain) all the way down to Èze Sur Mer (at the coast). It’s about an hour and a half on the trip down if you go quickly, and frighteningly long on the way back up. I can’t give you a time for sure, because I haven’t been brave enough to try it. The best part of the hike, though, is finding the hidden waterfall. About 20 minutes down the hill, you begin to hear water flowing faintly. As you continue, it grows louder and louder until you can hear it just around the corner. If you peak through the bushes, you see a ruined building and a path that leads to a waterfall.

It’s easy enough to get to Èze and back from Nice. The #112 bus leaves Vauban station and goes directly to Èze Village two or three times a day (we usually took the 2 P.M.). You can catch it back to Nice later in the afternoon (about 5:20 P.M.), or if you decide to take the trek down the mountain to Èze Sur Mer, you can grab the 100 which runs by every 15 minutes, shuttling commuters back and forth to Monaco.

Finding that waterfall was some of the most fun I’ve had since I got to France. I love the sense of discovery and adventure that comes with finding something hidden, something that not everyone gets to see.

Time to check out some photos. I’ll update this post in a few days time when I finish editing and uploading the BTS for the creation of this panorama of the waterfall. Check back soon!

Update:
So here’s the how-to video for making panorama’s. Enjoy!

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St Paul De Vence

Honestly, I don’t have a whole lot to say in this post.  I really don’t remember a whole lot of the day I took these pictures.  This was the day of the absolute worst headache I had ever had in my life.  I woke up the next day and looked at these pictures as if someone else had taken them.

That being said, St Paul De Vence is one of a handful of medeval villages here in France.  Like many others, St Paul de Vence has done a fairly good job at remaining relevant in today’s modern world by becoming home to dozens of artists, museums, and galleries.  There’s also a few touristy shops here and there, but for the life of my I don’t know how they stay afloat (land prices in St Paul de Vence are usually over 10,000€ per square meter, or about $1300 per square foot).  St Paul de Vence also has some really fantastic views of the surrounding mountains and rural areas.  You can even see snow capped mountains way off in the distance on a clear day.

Given the age of village, I felt like a slightly more vintage look was appropriate in post production.  I used Photoshop to try to mimic the look of old Kodachrome 35mm film.  There’s a number of ways to do this, among the easiest being Photoshop actions, like these. Once you have the files installed, just run them and go from there. Cake.

Check out my Flickr for a few more pictures and my Panorama’s folder for a pano of the country side.

Do Svidaniya, 3 Euro In My Pocket

Sorry folks, no earth shattering revelations today.  Time to get back to the trip at hand.

Caroline and I heard about this Russian Orthodox Church and decided to take our next sunny day to go and check it out.  After walking halfway across town we came across the church and thought it’s exterior was rather beautiful.  The grounds of the church were nice as well, with a pretty good amount of grass and tree’s surrounding it.  A pleasant contrast from the numerous condo’s in this area. Continue reading →

*Canada and Mexico Don’t Count

As I sit here and procrastinate on starting to edit the mountain of pictures I’ve taken over the past few weeks, I had a startling realization:  I completely forgot to post about one of the most transformative events in my life.  The first time I ever really* left the States.  That’s what I’m here to do today.  One last history lesson, I promise.

Disclaimer:  This isn’t a post about photography, it’s a post about me with some photography added on.  If that doesn’t float your boat, find your Nemo, tickle your pickle, or jolly your roger go ahead and proceed to the bottom of the post to take a gander at the gallery, or click here to check out the Flickr Album with all of the pictures.

The Epiphany

It’s hard to describe what this trip meant to me.  It’s easy to fall down a slippery slope of cheesy, sobby bull when writing about things like this.  I’ll try to avoid using terms like “eye opening” or “life changing,” and instead just give a short anecdote of my moment of epiphany.

It happened as my flight taxied onto the runway in the very early hours of the morning, in Amsterdam.  I got lucky with my seat assignment and got the window of an exit row (score!).  I settled in, stretched out, and exhaustedly rested my head on the hull as I looked out the window.  It was around 6am, and somehow I was surprised that sunrise looked the same here as it did back home.

Here I was, 4650 miles (give or take a couple) away from where I live and all I know and, for the life of me, I couldn’t tell the difference.  I was, in that moment, incredibly depressed.  After spending 6 months building up this trip in my head, building the expectation that the second I would step foot outside of the US that everything would be fundamentally different (even though I hadn’t fleshed out how), I was faced by the fact that it isn’t.  When it comes down to the core of it, pretty much everything is essentially the same.

And then, in the next moment, I was happy.  Happy because for the first time in my life my eyes were opened (damnit…).  It was the first time I absolutely knew, way down deep, that all of the labels we put on ourselves to differentiate us from each other amount entirely to bullshit.  ”We’re different from them because we do this and they do that, we look this way and they look that way, blah blah blah.”  It all means nothing when you take into context that we’re all the same species living on the same wet rock.

Never been happier to be proven wrong.

The Trip

Apart from all that, this week was probably one of the best ways I could have imagined spending Spring Break.  Don’t need the details, lets just do a CliffNotes timeline:

Arrive in Prague, stop at hotel, nap, pub tour, first Czech beer, sweet techno club, empty pockets, sleep, wake up sick, stay in bed for 3 days, best chinese food ever, Theresienstadt Concentration Camp, bar, Jewish Quarter, bar, Prague Castle, bar, leave Prague, 15 hour layover in Amsterdam, lost in Amsterdam, home.

Awesome.  Thanks, Sue.

Okay, enough of that nonesense.  Time for pictures.

Need Moar Jiggabites

First: an announcement.  I realize that many of you may not be here for my witty writing and insightful advice, and may only be interested in seeing the world (or at least pictures of it).  In this light, I have decided to upgrade my Flickr account and upload the vast majority of the pictures I take, while still pulling out a few of my favorites to talk about here.  Now everyone that reads my blog is happy.  All 7 of you.

You can find the rest of the pictures from today’s post here. Or at least, you will be able to, as soon as I go through them.  All 800 or so.

On to business.  Today’s pictures are pretty similar to the last post because, well, there were taken in the same place.  That being said I’ll keep it short with one or two quick points.

First is a multi-parter.  At an event like this, where the lighting is changing 20 or 30 times a second (parade, night club, war zone, etc), shoot on manual.  Shooting on a program mode, your camera doesn’t have enough time to react to all of the changes in lighting and you’ll end up missing a lot of shots.  Set your exposure once and click away.  As a result of the changing light, you’re going to need to take multiple pictures of the same thing in the hopes that the lighting will be just right for one of them.  This will lead to you taking hundreds of pictures, which brings me to the next subject: memory cards.

SD cards (or Compact Flash if your camera is either really old or really badass) are getting cheaper and cheaper, so there’s no reason to have a low capacity card anymore.  At an event like this, where you’re shooting hundreds upon hundreds of pictures, anything less than 8gb is just not cutting it.  If you’re really desperate, you can settle with multiple 2gb or 4gb cards, but the disadvantage here is potentially losing a fantastic shot while reloading.  Your best bet is to have at least two 8gb cards, just in case.

In the case of SD cards, they come in all different speed classes signifying the read and write speed of the card.  The higher, the better.  I use a class 6 and it works great for my camera (Nikon D90).  If you plan on shooting a lot of HD video with your DSLR, you should aim for a class 10 card, but no less than a class 6.

I think that’s about it.  Take a look through the gallery here and check back later for more coverage on my Flickr.

Once again, be sure to check out Caroline’s blog: Parlez Lentement for more detailed coverage about our adventures.

 

Carnival Has Begun

Last night marked the opening celebration of Carnival. Carnival is the festival season leading up to Mardi Gras, which marks the beginning of Lent. There are only a handful of cities in the world that are really known for their Carnival celebrations, and Nice is among them. Continue reading →