Digital · Photography

A trip to Barcelona

My wife and I spent the weekend just gone in Barcelona to visit the Christmas markets and just wander round the city. It’s the first time I’ve traveled overseas so close to Christmas and I was a little concerned that we might get caught up in a mass of travelers going home for Christmas, but everything went very smoothly and, while Barcelona was pretty busy, the travel was not.

We had a very nice time just wandering about the place, not doing anything in particular other than visiting shops and markets and eating nice food. We visited the Sagrada Familia as there was another Christmas market there, and I did consider going inside the cathedral, but I would have needed needed to book tickets in advance and there were none available to buy on the day as it was fully booked. My wife isn’t particularly interested in visiting cathedrals anyway, and I would have felt a little guilty if I was dragging her around the place while I took photos and admired the architecture, so I wasn’t too concerned about missing the opportunity. Maybe I’ll get another chance one day.

I shot a roll of colour 35mm film while there, but it will be after Christmas before that gets developed, but took some more photos with my Ricoh GRIII, including the one posted here today, so will share some of those once I’ve gone through them all.

This large star can be found in Plaça Sant Jaume in Barcelona, Spain. It is titled Origen and was created by Xevi Bayona and Àlex Posada. It projects light from the points of the star onto the facades of the buildings in the plaza.

ORIGEN

Ricoh GRIII

Taken on 20 December 2024

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

Christmas lights

A photo from my first ever roll of Cinestill 800T. I rarely shoot at night, this outing being only the second time I’ve done so (not counting at nightime events using flash). I took my GX7 digital camera in order to meter the shots, setting the ISO to 800 and the aperture to the one I wanted to use on the Bronica. This gave me the approximate shutter speed I needed to use. It was only later that I realised – due to not being able to read the shutter speed dial properly in the dark, that I’d overexposed by a full stop. Thankfully it seems that Cinestill 800T has really good latitude, so all the images pretty much turned out ok.

My family and I refer to the street where this house (and several others similarly decorated with large numbers of lights) as “Christmas Street”. At this time of year you will see people walking down there just to get a look at the lights. It used to be quite unique in the amount of decorations the residents would put on their homes, but in recent years more and more households are going to ever more extravagant lengths to light their houses.

In other news, I’m now on leave for the festive period, so I’m hoping to relax, enjoy Christmas, and (hopefully) make lots of photographs. And my Emulsive Secret Santa gift arrived today, so extra bonus! 🙂

Christmas lights

Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 50mm f/2.8 MC & Cinestill 800T. Grain2Pixel conversion.

Taken on 11 December 2020