Lrntn's Blog

Drive home

24Feb12

I’ve been mostly lazy about taking photos, or even editing the ones I’ve taken months ago. On the other hand I’ve been on a slight kick to delete things, and came across a few I took on a drive home a few months ago. The effect of the morning sun streaming through the pine trees was just magical. With one hand on the wheel and one on my P&S, this is what I got through the windshield.

See you next time.

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Tags: photography

In and around La Serena, Chile

17Feb12

A few photos from my last full day in La Serena last September. I really don’t know what towns we went through, other than they were along the drive to experience “El Desierto Florido”, or the flowering desert in Chile. There’s not a single flower photo below, which I’ll explain in a second. This is the phenomenon that occurs every five to seven years, when there is enough rainfall that the deserts and mountains burst into a profusion of flowers. This was supposed to be one of those years. Even so, Desierto Florido is a sporadic occurrence and lasts only from September to November.

As I mentioned in this post about being determined to see penguins in Chile, I was also fixated on seeing the desert in bloom. After all, I just happened to be visiting during one of those years, so how could I skip it? It would have been at least a two hour drive to the desert, and not something I was about to do on my own. Because it was still early in the spring/tourist season, there was a guided tour to the desert only one day a week — a few days after I would have been gone from the area. Like I said, I was determined, fixated, obsessed, single-minded, unwavering . . . and so managed to find a driver/guide for a half day. To make a long story short, it wasn’t quite what I expected — maybe I was expecting the Keukenhof tulip garden in the Netherlands, or maybe I wasn’t quite in the true desert itself (the Atacama desert, which would have been 8 hours away), or maybe because there were more flowers a few weeks before (according to my guide). But, I had a great, great day! I started the day, expecting to see flower carpets everywhere, but instead was completely captivated by the little towns and abandoned houses along the way. There were beautiful flowers dotting the mountains and roads, but it soon became obvious that I was less excited by that than by what I saw below. My guide clued into my preference pretty quickly — after asking a few times if I wanted to stop to see more flowers, and getting in response “uh, no, that’s OK . . . already saw that”, and at the same time being asked to slow down for every dilapidated house — more like, “oh, what’s that? Stop!” (He’s a Swiss-German national and speaks four languages and conducts private tours all over Chile. If anyone ever wants his info, I can find it, and actually will look up his website to drop him a recommendation note . . . better late than never, because he really was fantastic).

So, the moral of the story for me is that the detour, the unexpected, is often more satisfying than the expected — this seems to occur without fail on every trip I take. Plus, probably another takeaway for me is, go with what you love. Because I’m sure that a true flower enthusiast or nature photographer would have gotten images I didn’t or couldn’t, as my heart went out to something entirely different than wildflowers even though my original purpose was to see them. In any event, I’m certain I’ll find things to fixate on everywhere I go, wherever that may lead me, and that won’t change.

If you want to see the glory of the Desierto Florido, just Google “images of”. Thank you for stopping by and I hope you have a lovely weekend.

Filed under: Chile, Colors, Travel | 7 Comments
Tags: photography, travel

Happy Valentine’s Day

14Feb12

Filed under: Misc | Leave a Comment
Tags: photogrpahy

For photographer geeks only

08Feb12

How totally true is this! What an awesome ad. I came across this today and was just going to post it on my FB page, but decided I needed to share it here. The ad apparently first appeared in UK’s Digital Photographer Magazine in 2008. (It would have been just a tad more perfect if it had said “I gaze at the sunset with my love” instead of “with the woman I love”, but I won’t get all feisty feminist on you here).

And since this post is kind of random, I want to throw in a random recommendation too. Have you heard of 500px.com? I just learned about it recently, even though it’s been around in its current form since late 2009. It’s sort of a super Flickr, where photographers can showcase their best work, and have a chance to be featured on the “popular page”, based on viewers’ ratings. I really haven’t figured all the ins and outs of this site, as I don’t plan on joining any time soon. Do check it out. The photos are simply stunning.

I’ll be back next time with more photos from . . . Chile. Yup, still slowly working my way through them (my four prior posts here). I rarely take this long to sort through photos from one little trip, and not like it’s a burden, but I do feel like I have to “get rid” of these photos soon. See you next time.