4 weeks, 3 trips, 9000 photos
The last few weeks have been pretty crazy - in a good way!
As the title of this post implies, I have been a little busy over the last month or so. Ok, more than a little busy. I have been extremely busy. I drove about 1500 miles and flew over 20,000. I have hiked, climbed, walked, ridden in planes, trains and taxis, and generally been a whirlwind of activity. I have been to parks, pubs, museums, libraries, train stations, castles, palaces, 3 foreign countries, 1 vacation home, 5 hotels and more airports than I care to think about.
And I have taken photos. Lots of photos. And it has been great.
In this time, I fired almost 9000 photos with my Olympus mirrorless camera, which I am absolutely loving by the way. It's been about a year now that I have had it, and I have really gotten into a groove with it. It's perfect for where I am with my photography right now. It's becoming very well-traveled, which is good for a camera (especially one so small and light!).
But as I have done for years, I have also fired a LOT with my iPhone. I continue to share my iPhone pics in this set on Flickr, but I just don't really do much sharing of the iPhone goodness here on the blog anymore. I have sort of gotten away from doing iPhone posts here.
So I thought that today I would change that.
On these trips (which I will detail below), I also fired hundreds of iPhone shots and put my faves out there on Flickr. But since I have literally 9000 photos to go process - and knowing it will take me forever to get them ready and published here - I thought it would be fun to do a little recap of my recent travels as seen through my iPhone, and thus share some iPhone pics to illustrate everything I have been doing. Which has been a lot.
One thing to note: I just selected a few pics from each location, because honestly, it would take all day to get all the iPhone pics I have from all these spots into this blog post, and I am way too lazy for that! Plus it was kind of fun to pick a few that sort of summarized what each trip was about. But it's always hard to do that; it's sort of like being asked to pick your favorite child.
So here it goes...(and you can click on each pic to view larger in a lightbox)
Week 1: March 13-20, Abiquiu, NM (1800 photos)
It was Spring Break here in Texas, so as a family we decided it would be fun to head over to New Mexico and see some sights (and this was the driving I refer to above - it's a long way from Austin to New Mexico!). We have been there many times, as it's sort of the closest place to go if you want to see mountains and other interesting landscapes. But since most of the past trips have been to Santa Fe (which I do love), instead for this trip we decided to rent a house in the little town of Abiquiu, NM which is about an hour northwest of Santa Fe. It's best known as the former home of the famous American painter Georgia O'Keeffe, and the landscapes there are just incredible. Interesting, strange, beautiful - and incredible. So we hung out and relaxed, and hiked, and explored, and just had a great time. And I took a few pics (ahem). We even saw a few animal carcasses - fun!
Week 2: March 22-29, Copenhagen, Denmark (3200 photos)
Ah yes, lovely Copenhagen! I returned home from New Mexico, spent a day washing clothes and repacking my bags, and then hopped on a plane to lovely Denmark! Copenhagen is a beautiful city, and this was my 3rd visit there. I really do enjoy the place. It's just awesome. This was a business trip, but even so, I was able to squeeze in plenty of photo time in my off hours. I truly saw so much here that it is almost hard to remember. I shot all around Nyhavn, their historic harborfront area, and of course all through the city center too, with lots of architecture and street scenes and churches and palaces (all high on my list of things I love to shoot!). But I also made a visit out to the little town of HIllerod, where I spent the afternoon wandering around and shooting at Fredericksborg Castle, which was awesome. So plenty of great pics coming from this trip.
Week 3: March 30 -April 5 - home for a week of rest and to see the family! Yay! (0 photos)
Sleep. Must get sleep. Oh yeah, and the Easter Bunny came to town too! I devoured some Peeps. Yum.
Week 4: April 6-14 - Dublin, Ireland (1800 photos) and Glasgow, Scotland (2000 photos)
After a week at home (and some much needed rest), I was off again, back to Europe (oh darn). This was another business trip, and it started in Dublin, which is a place that is absolutely near and dear to me. I love that dang town! The Irish people are just wonderful and the Guinness honestly tastes better there. It's true! Ask anyone who's been, and they will tell you the same. So in my off hours in Dublin, I hit all the sights I intended to hit: churches, the University, lots of street scenes, a few pubs (you get thirsty with all that walking!) and even a little trip out to the seaside village of Howth, where I walked on high cliffs next to the Irish sea. Good times!
And so after about 5 nights in lovely Dublin, it was off to Glasgow for the last leg of this business trip (and the end of this crazy 4 week period). I arrived here on the Saturday, which gave me the full weekend to get out and shoot this awesome Scottish city. I also had the good fortune of meeting up with my good friend Mike Murphy, who came up from London for the weekend. We shot like crazy here, and it was excellent. On Saturday we hit a bunch of spots in the city, dodging a little rain here and there. On Sunday we headed out to the nearby town of Falkirk, where Mike's old friend Steve met us, and the 3 of us spent the day firing like crazy at the Falkirk Wheel and The Kelpies. This was a great day, both because of the company and the sights. You just don't get to see stuff this interesting very often. And it'a always nice to wrap up a good day of shooting by stopping in a pub for a couple of pints.
Mike took off back to London on Sunday evening, and I was left to my own devices that evening and Monday evening, and so both nights I hit the streets around dusk and blue hour with my favorite little toy, the Panasonic Leica Summilux 15mm f1.7 prime lens. It's great to walk around and fire that thing in low light - without a tripod, mind you - and get great results. I only wish I had a prime lens years ago! Where was I when that memo went out??
In fact, I went without using a tripod ON ALL 3 TRIPS. I actually brought it with me to New Mexico and Copenhagen, but never even got it out. So when I was packing for Dublin and Glasgow, I decided I may as well leave it at home. And guess what? I never missed it! (Though I will say, I do love my tripod, and have no plans to get rid of it.) Obviously there are some things you prevent yourself from being able to do without a tripod on hand, but I have found that for much of what I do, it isn't necessary. I may write up a future blog post about that, as I continue to evolve my style of shooting. It sure is great to travel light. I actually only had the camera and two lenses the whole time, so that all fit in a small backpack. It felt great!
And speaking of future blog posts, since I now have this collection of 9000 photos to process and share (really, isn't that a few years worth of work??), I also have a huge (or, huger than before) backlog of blog posts to write up. In fact, I was going through my folders for the images from these trips, and have counted - no exaggeration here - about 40 different blog posts that I want to do, covering different sites on these various trips. And yes, each post would contain a good 10-20 photos. So yeah, I have my work cut out for me, don't I?
Well, that's a little summary of the last few weeks of my life. It's been great, and it's been fun, and it's been productive. But it is nice to be back at home with the family, and I hope to find some time to process a lot of these photos, and to share them here. In fact, you'll see the first one in a few days, so please come back!
