Alex the Photo Blog

Just a quick update from Cat Island!  During the day I took the Gro-Pro out snorkeling on a local island and we kayaked through the mangrove to a secret beach.  Last night was the rehearsal dinner and dancing.  Nicci, the bride, surprised everyone by hiring a local drumline, Junk-a-Noo, to bring a 45 minute conga line (without stopping the music) through the resort!  Then, between beers, I was running back and forth on the beach getting star trail photos.  Having an incredible time at the Fernandez Bay Village!  Here are a few shots from the day:

Yes, there has been a blog slowdown.  I knew you were worried, but don’t be!  I’ve been out and about through the east coast and midwest with not enough time in the day (or sleep at night) to blog enough!

I was recently awarded an incredible photo assignment for architecture photography that has put me in Boston, New York, DC, Minneapolis, and Chicago in less than a month.  I was also able to shoot for a wedding in Hilton Head and visit my brother’s family with Keri.  It’s been an insane September for me so far spending less than 4 days at home between August 30th and Sept 24th.  I’ve been on 6 rooftops, 6 planes, in 4 rental cars, and in over 25 office buildings.  I had NYPD graciously move police cars and bomb surveillance units out of the way for one of my shoots and have also sat with my tripod for an hour and a half waiting for a shadow to move out of the way.  I’ve sat in rush hour in 5 cities yelling at the clouds to go away (I’m not counting Atlanta rush hour- I see that all the time).  It’s been an incredible assignment, with still a few more cities to go.  Luckily I have time on the last few- the reason why I visited the cities I did when I did was to catch them before the leaves fall off the trees.  The other cities up next are southern or California.  I’m neck deep in editing for these (some of these aren’t final products yet), but I’ll share a few quick highlights.

…nevermind that jerk in the pic.  Someone should have stolen something out of his open camera bag.

Here’s my map of August 30th to Sept 24th (click for larger):

Keri and I touched town at Gatwick airport at 7am Wednesday morning (2am EDT).  We haven’t gotten too much done due to jetlag and a sinus infection/cold, but we have walked around a good bit.  Our good friends Trevor and Sophie have been nice enough to let us crash with them in their flat.  Below a shot of their living room/kitchen/dining room/office/laundry room.  It looks like one of the “living in 412 square feet” displays at Ikea.  They also have a bedroom off to the side and a bathroom just out of frame.  You can see all of the bedding and suitcases piled up from Keri and I.  Today we plan to see the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, and Big Ben.  Hopefully the rain will hold off so I can keep my camera outside of my rain jacket.  More to come hopefully!

A chance sighting of Kylie Minogue apparently filming a new music video.  We just saw pedestrian traffic stopped and had no idea what was going on.  Moments later, a short pop star ran by with film crews chasing her.

A few more photos from Friday’s Firenze post.

The hostile’s dining hall.

We kept wondering why the train stations kept saying “Firenze” and not “Florence.”  I can honestly say Keri and I gave Italian the old [community] college try before hopping on a plane overseas.  We found about 8 hours of Italian on CDs and listened to them all in about 2 months.  I knew 8 hours of listening in the car wouldn’t get me to conversational Italian, but I thought it would at least cover “why the hell isn’t Florence on the map?  Should we ask someone in what city The David is located?  We eventually figured it out… and arrived in the artist’s city.

To be honest, we were expecting something different.  We thought Rome was going to be a big, busy, bustling city; Florence would be a small, artsy city easy to get around; and Sienna would be just a big neighborhood town.  We were right about Rome and Sienna, but we overestimated the quaintness of Florence.  We’re not saying we didn’t like Florence, because we did experience some amazing art, stayed in a beautiful former convent, and Keri met “Bernini”- her new baby lamb leather jacket.  Florence just seemed full of crazy mopeds, long lines for museums, and a few unfriendly waiters.

I’ll start the photo series with our first moment of peace from the trip.  Between the 5 missed standby flights to Italy, going to Germany first, getting acclimated in Venice, and the sightseeing in Cinque Terre, we began Florence with our first moment of downtime- laundry day.  Because Keri and I flew standby, we had to pack roughly 3 weeks of clothes in a “carry-on and one personal item.”  Florence was about all our wardrobe could handle without offending the natives.  We settled into the Setti Santi Hostile (Seven Saints)- a former Catholic Convent- for a few hours of laundry, napping, and relaxation.  The window you see immediately below opened to an olive orchard.

The Ponte Vecchio and a close-up of the stilts supporting the retail shops that open to the inside of the bridge.

A random opera singer on the street.

And onto the market day 2.

This woman freehand embroiders fabric in about 20 seconds.  Pretty amazing to watch.

And of course, I had to include pictures of Bernini.  The coat that came to Keri by way of an Italian man that knows Keri’s style and size by just one look at her.  No joke.  It was pretty amazing.

Part II on the way…

Day two in the Cinque Terre consisted of a trail hike through the five towns.  You can read about day one and the Cinque Terre here.

Unfortunately we weren’t able to spend much time in the other four cities, though we got to see the sights and have a few bites of food along the way.  In Rio Maggiore (the fifth city) we even decided to take a break and cool down with a dip in the Mediterranean.  The water was so unbelievably clear I had to actually taste it to see if it really was saltwater (yes).  We could easily see 30 to 50 feet below us in the clear blue water… so clear that we got a little freaked out and only stayed in for a few minutes.  Yeah, we’re wusses used to the Atlantic ocean where the water’s too murky to see the imaginary sharks lurking.  I think the worst thing we really had to worry about were topless aging overweight Europeans (no pictures of those, thankfully).

I’ll stop with all this “wordy stuff” and aside from an occassional caption, let the pictures from the hike do the talking.  I am working on some panoramic shots I should have up in a few weeks of the views I couldn’t fit in one shot.

WC = Water Closet = Bathroom

Italian Mailbox:

Keri and my lock on the Via dell’Amore trail between Maranola and Rio Maggiore where couples “lock up their love and throw away the key.”  Keri’s idea…

Though apparently we picked the wrong spot.  Maybe we were blazing a new trail.

I was happy to be at the lake last weekend, however with no internet, TV, and Keri being sick, I was allotted a ton of time to work on Italy photos.  I think I plowed through 800+, leaving me only with a few more to go.  Hooray for late blog posts!

Cinque Terre was hands down our favorite location of the trip, with Sienna coming in a close second.   From wikipedia:
“The Cinque Terre is a rugged portion of coast on the Italian Riviera.   ’The Five Lands’ is composed of five villages: Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore.   Over centuries, people have carefully built terraces on the rugged, steep landscape right up to the cliffs that overlook the sea. Part of its charm is the lack of visible “modern” development. Paths, trains and boats connect the villages, and cars cannot reach it from the outside.”

When we arrived via train from Venice, we has no idea where we were going to sleep that night- a common theme throughout our entire trip.  With other cities we visited, I would email or call hotels/hostels/bed and breakfasts when we were on our way.  Whichever place responded first got our business for the night.  I must say that with Keri’s preparations we never had an issue in any city.   However, if we came close to having an issue, this one could have been it.  We decided out of the five cities, we wanted to stay in Monterosso because our plan the following day was to hike the 5 miles between all five cities (a common tourist thing to do).  We figured we’d stay at the northernmost city so we could do the entire trail in one day.

We arrived from Venice in the morning because we decided to save €50 and take the 4:30am train and sleep on the way.  We walked out of the train station with our luggage and no email correspondence as to where we could sleep- upon arrival, we found most people in Cinque Terre had no use for the internet or computers in general.  We did however have an amazing travel book with recommendations.  We had no need for a cab because the city is so small and I decided to take a shot at one of the places the book described as having an amazing view overlooking the city.  I found the address, left Keri with the luggage, and climbed a rather large and winding road to the top where the hotel stood.  I was greeted by an older, half-drunk Italian man resembeling the glass blower from Venice.  He informed me that there were no vacancies at their establishment but offered (in broken English) to call a friend to find us a room.  I climbed back down the road to tell Keri the news that “a random hotelier will find us on the street because I have a blue shirt on.”   Sure enough- he did.  A very similar looking Italian man (sensing a theme here?) brought us to his wife at the wine shop they jointly owned to book a room.  She was asian, spoke English very well, and was by far one of the most helpful people we met on the entire trip.  They set us up with a sketchy, dimly lit interior room for the night… but it was cheap, had a private bathroom, and she promised us a better room the next day.  We had a great night with some great food and rested up for our trek the next day.  The following day, the asian woman came through for us and put us in a room so elegant, we almost rerouted our entire trip to stay another night there. 

In this first post, I’ll put pictures that were not taken on our hike, though they may have come from day 1 or 2 in the Cinque Terre.  I will begin with our lunch.  Cinque Terre is known for Sardines… so we just had to try some.

Dinner on day 2:  Mussels with black and white spaghetti noodles.

Handheld shot overlooking Monterroso.

Monterosso at night.  Note the well lit building on the far left is actually a Nazi bunker from World War II.   It is crazy to think that this quiet little beach town was at one point bombed by Allied forces.

A picture of a chef through the window of a restaurant we couldn’t afford.