Photography

Shopping – Raval Style

Shopping for a Television - Raval Style
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  Barcelona prides itself on being a modern, stylish and prosperous city, but I would contend that this is largely a marketing fantasy. The main tourist thoroughfares are almost like theme parks, portraying a view of the city tailored specifically to the vacation industry. But as soon as you step literally a few 10s of meters away from the main streets in the center you enter a parallel world that is more reminiscent of a developing economy than one of the most highly regarded cities in Europe. The next few […]

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Photography

Endangered Species

Endangered Species, Barcelona.
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Catalan retirees, El Raval, Barcelona. Catalans are becoming an endangered species in the Raval, displaced by immigrants, tourists and the homeless. Postings are going to be a bit erratic over the next few weeks, due to a combination of work, upcoming travel (for work) and a switch to shooting more with film (which takes more than a week to process and eventually scan…).

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Equipment

New Vintage – The Minolta XD-s Analogue SLR

Abstract Person, Barcelona
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In sudden burst of enthusiasm to try something slightly different, I have dusted-off the old Minolta XD-s and shot a roll of Ilford HP5. All the images here were taken using the Minolta MD 50mm f1.4 lens. There were three aims: to check if the camera light seals are still good enough (the camera is more than 30 years old…) to see if I can still figure out how to focus manually to see of the effect of the smaller camera on subjects… These images were shot in about an hour […]

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Photography

Flight Mode

Skateboarder in mid-flight, Plaça dels Angels, Barcelona
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  Some more experiments with slowish exposures and fill-flash at dusk, Plaça dels Angels, Barcelona. These were taken with the Ricoh GR using the pop-up flash. Probably a longer focal length would be helpful, but the wide-angle with a low point of view seems to work well for these.  

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Photography

Modern Transport

Flying Scooter, Plaça dels Angels, Barcelona
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  Another photograph from the on-going experiment in using a mix of flash and long-exposures for night-time images of objects in motion. Scooters like these are a surpassingly common form of transport in Barcelona – although the levitation is less common… This was taken with the Ricoh GR’s pop-up flash using a 1/10th second exposure and fill-flash while panning. The wide-angle (28mm equivalent) of the Ricoh means that you need to be a bit too close for comfort with some of these shots – probably a camera with a longer […]

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Photography

Rough Night

Homeless in Plaça dels Angels, Barcelona
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Plaça dels Angels, Barcelona. The square is home to both Barcelona’s main modern art museum, and possibly the largest collection of homeless people in the city. There is a seemingly endless supply of old mattresses that provide at least some comfort in the night, but the unseasonably wet and cold weather at the moment is problematic. In a curious twist on the banking crisis many homeless people are now sleeping inside the lobbies of local banks to avoid the weather. The number of homeless people in the city has increased dramatically since […]

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