The evening after the way early morning on the coast, my Dad passed out early and I was restless, so I decided to go out and wonder around to find some interesting pictures to take. Without comment, here is what I found:

The morning after the metal workshop we got up butt early in the morning and hopped on a bus with the whole gang to the northern coast of Spain.  The idea was to get there before the sun came up so we could get the sunrise and see the villages come to life.  We broke into three small groups so we wouldn’t completely overwhelm the small towns with our photographic awesomeness.  I ended up at Calella de Palafrugell just before the sun peaked over the horizon.  It was just enough time to make this panorama.  That’s me on the left, and on the right are John, and my Dad.

Once the sun was up, we quickly realized that it was far too early for most people in the village to be awake… especially being Spain, where most people don’t eat dinner until 9 or 10 o’clock at night.

Today we went to a metal working shop that people from the workshop had found.  [Update:  This shop was called Forjador.  Check our their site for their awesome work.] This is the wrought iron type of place where they make railings and all types of custom metal work. They don’t do much by machine however, unlike many of their contemporaries. It allows them to make completely insane works of art that go into peoples homes and businesses. Here’s the workshop, at least the part that we were in most. There is a larger part to the left, but this is the interesting bit. That anvil weighs about 2000 lbs by the way… it sits on a tree stump.

This is the man who shared his work with us and told us what was up… at least he told Dane what was up and my Dad and I got some of it second hand. I wish I could remember his name. Actually, I need to get his name and email address from Dane so I can send him these pictures. Anyway, he was a great guy and had no problem talking to us about what he was doing… no problem at all. He talked a lot.

Welcome to day four. This is going to be a long post, so I’ll apologize in advance. Many of these pictures are intended for the other participants of the First Light class, so I’ll forgive you if you don’t spend too much time looking at those. That reminds me, if any of you are interested in learning more about travel/journalistic photography, I can’t stress enough the excellence of these First Light Workshops. If you have any interest, you should definitely check them out.

Back to the photography! On this day we took a bus up to the wine country (like the Sonoma valley, but in Spain) and we split into three groups at three different wineries. At this moment I can’t remember the name of the one we were at, but as soon as one of my photofriends ™ emails me to remind me what it was, I’ll put it on here… also, I can’t remember the name of the lovely woman who showed us around the place, but more about her later.  [Update:  This is the Mas Tinell Winery in Vilafranca del Penedes in the Barcelona provence.  Thank you Rich for filling in the blanks]

There weren’t many people working the day we came, the weather was crappy so they sent everyone home early since picking grapes in the rain is no fun at all. Here is one of the die hard workers that were left, cleaning up the juice vats. Mmmm, vats of juice…

Welcome to day three of photo-a-thon Barcelona. On this day we went into the city for more La Merce action. We had two options, either a parade of giant statues of dead royalty or giant towers of people, the castelleres, or as I like to call them “man-stacks.” I went with the dead royalty parade because it looked to me like I wouldn’t be able to make much of a picture with my limited lens selection (17-35 mm or 85 mm and it seemed at the time that I was going to be across a square from them the whole day). In retrospect and in respect to the awesome images that others who stayed with the “man-stacks” made, this was perhaps a poor, but not fatal, decision. Barcelona, the people and their homage to the man who found our continent:

On the way to the parade there were many interesting people to photograph… some of them were rather suspicious of me and the other 8 people thrusting giant lenses in their face… perhaps not a surprising reaction.

Hello again from Barcelona. On Saturday night we went to the La Mercè festival in Barcelona. We were there for the Correfoc, the fire run that takes place during the festival every year. The evening started off with the kids Correfoc, the slightly less aggressive kiddie version of the adult, stab you in the face with my flaming firworks poker, Correfoc. Here is a shot of the crowd looking down the street from where the parade ended.

The kids (and adults) have to be fully protected because they’re basically strapping bottle rockets onto poles and just letting them spin. The result is flaming hot bits of evil that rain down on all below bringing burnination and property damage. I was bundled up with a hoodie and a clear filter on my lens, even still having these flaming baddie bounce off my hands and face was an unpleasant experience. Luckily (for you) I’m hard core and got this totally awesome picture of one of the fire wielding kiddies.