2310 - behind the curtain

October 23, 2012 in 50, abandoned, architecture, bar, barcelona, bokeh, colour, flower, multilayer, nex 7, plant, red, restaurant, sel, sony, spain, square, townscape, trip, urban

setup: sony nex 7 with sel 50 f1.8 | 50mm | f1.8 | ISO100 | 1/500 | lightroom 4.2

for any reason i didn't take to barcelona like i'd thought in advance. too many areas were overcrowded from tourists - ok, i'd expected that. too many restaurants, bars and discos offer medium quality for a lot of money - i'd expected that, too. and too many pushy locals have bothered us in simply any situation - also that was to be expected.

the biggest problem was that under the influence of the these facts the wonderful city itself was often invisible or at least behind an ugly curtain. only in the early morning the pure and beautiful barcelona had the possibility to show up.

cu, trshptr

1910 - top view

October 20, 2012 in 30, architecture, bar, barcelona, light, memorial, monument, nex 7, night, restaurant, sigma, sony, spain, square, street, street lamp, townscape, trip, urban

setup: sony nex 7 with sigma 30 f2.8 ex dn | 30mm | f2.8 | ISO1600 | 1/25 | lightroom 4.2

urban development is definitely a topic that i could have studied, too. for me it's very interesting to see and investigate the history and structure of cities and towns i visit.

i don't want to go into detail too much, the (german) wikipedia article about the placa reial is very detailed and profound. but one fact is worth to be called: antoni gaudi, one of the most famous architects of spain ever, (who had designed the sagrada familia, the most prominent building of barcelona, you might know it) has also projected the "sheltered lanterns" on this placa reial.

the square that is located next to the world-famous street ramblas, the square where our hotel is directly attached to and the square where we look down from our roof terrace. time to catch a breath and relax.

cu, trshptr

1008 - blurry flashback

August 10, 2012 in 50, architecture, b+w, cobble, fountain, lisbon, monument, nex 7, night, pattern, people, portugal, sel, sight, sony, square, street, street lamp, townscape, urban

setup: sony nex 7 with sel 50 f1.8 | 50mm | f2.0 | ISO400 | 1/80 | lightroom 4.1

today in the morning all my beloved ones left me: marv and tina's mum had to depart to stuttgart for a wedding ceremony of a relative of volker, who is tina's mum's life partner. tina had to go to work, she is currently on duty. and nila was straying.

so what should i do on a lonely day off? all transactions were already transacted and all tasks fulfilled. but today i couldn't motivate myself to do anything beautiful (till the evening) and fell into a sort of limbo. well, i vegged out under the sun umbrella in the yard and went through the pictures of our last trip to portugal. fortunately my mood was lifted by viewing the images of this great trip and i braced myself up and set on the bike to ride to the lake and swim some minutes.

the really remarkable point of today was the flashback i had when i was investigating the pic of today's posting. the rossio square in lisbon is in my opinion one of the most beautiful urban places that i've seen in portugal. both at daytime when tina and i read our books under the slightly splashing water of the fountain and at night when we strolled about the square, this place appeared as a very inspiring surrounding. it has been the setting of celebrations, revolts and executions and today it's a preferred meeting place of locals and tourists. in addition to that the great architecture with the curved pavement patterns, the wonderful fountains and the monumental buildings at the edges of the square cap it all off.

cu, trshptr