Pictures of Cities I visited in Spain

In 2004 I was sent to Madrid to work in a project that a client was developing with a Spanish company, I spent around 9 months there, traveling to Costa Rica only every 3 months. Because of this, I had the opportunity to visit several different cities and small towns inside Spain. It was a great experience.

Back then, during half of my trip I used my first digital camera to take tons of pictures, which was a Sony Cybershot of 2 megapixels, I say I had it during half of my trip because on December 31st, 2004 somebody stole it during the celebration of New Year's in Plaza del Sol, I was super sad because that same day I returned from a trip to Rome, so I hadn't had time to get the pictures out of the camera, so they stole the camera with most of my pictures from Rome, can you imagine?. The only good thing was that because of that I had to buy another camera, I saw it as an opportunity to buy a better one, so I bought a Sony DSC-V3 that had better features and it was greater in general.

I would like to share with you some of the pictures I took, since they are too many I selected my favorite picture of each city in Spain that I took during that time I spent there, just keep in mind that the ones taken with my first camera don't have great quality like the kind of photos you can take nowadays ;-)

Aranjuez

Best part of Aranjuez are the gardens, they are simply amazing, also the palace.

El Escorial

The Monastery is just impressive, if you ever go to Madrid you have to go there.

Toledo

Like all towns in Spain, Toledo is very beautiful, the cathedral is spectacular, the streets, all of it.

Avila

The best part of Avila is the wall that goes around most part of the town, it is simply amazing and a great place for taking photos.

Salamanca

I think the oldest European university is here.

Guadalajara

Our trip to Guadalajara was totally unexpected, we were planing on going somewhere else but there wasn't a train available that day or something happened, I don't remember, so we decided to go to Guadalajara, it is a very small town where the most interesting thing to see is this huge grave.

Barcelona

If you haven't seen "La Sagrada Familia" then you have to, go go go. I spent around 4 hours going through it all. I was amazed with the whole architecture. Plus Barcelona is a city that you have to visit, you have to go see all Gaudi's buildings and parks.

Granada

Best of Granada "La Alhambra", unbelievable!

Segovia, Spain

This place is super beautiful, the Cathedral and the Alcazar are gorgeous. From what I heard the Alcazar was used as a model when Disney created its famous castle, not sure if this is true though.

Cuenca

Small town famous for its hanging houses.

Valencia

The whole architecture of Valencia is amazing.

Seville, Spain

This is a picture of Plaza España, the design is great, I loved it. This place was used in Star Wars: Episode 2 to represent part of Naboo.

Madrid

And finally, Madrid! This is a picture of the Communications Palace in Madrid, I took it during Easter week when coming back from the Catholic celebrations in La Almudena Church. I was a bit concerned because I didn't have a tripod and there were a lot of people walking around, but I was able to figure it out and i think it turned out great with the moon and all.

Spain is definitely a beautiful country with a lot of wonderful places that I would love to visit again with my new camera to take tons of photos, maybe some day!

Orchids

My sister and my Mom love orchids and both have a lot of them on their gardens. As for me, I have only a couple that my sister gave me.

When they blossom they all look so great that I have to take my camera and take tons of pictures of them. I am going to show you here some of my favorites, don't ask me their names though, because I have no idea.

Roses

I just want to share some of my favorite pictures of roses that I've taken.

Merry Christmas 2010

I don't usually decorate my house a lot during Christmas, however I do enjoy when I see a beautiful Christmas tree, as you can imagine, I enjoy taking pictures of it.

We had our Christmas dinner yesterday at my brother in law's house and their Christmas tree was gorgeous so I took a lot of pictures of it and I want to share them with you here.

The tree:



The presents:



The decoration:









I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and hope you have a wonderful new year!

Photography class: Assignment 1 - Playing with light

As I mentioned before, I am taking a digital photography class and I want to share with you all the homework I have to do.

My first homework was to play with light when taking a picture, to be more specific I had to:

• Select an object, any object.
• Use a lamp to provide the light.
• Put the object and the camera in a fixed position.
• Use the automatic setting of the camera without using the camera flash.
• Take pictures of the object lighting it with the lamp from all possible angles.

I took a lot of pictures of several different objects, I couldn't find the right one until I tried with a small wood sculpture of an old man, it was perfect because it is very expressive.

Here it is the first set of pictures I took:

This assignment was very interesting, I was able to see how the light affects the object and how you can create look different photos of the exact same object, making some of them better than the others just by position the light in the right place.

The light can make the same object look very different, sometimes it looks like if the object was moved, you can control how much of your background would be displayed, all of this affecting the composition of your photo, so you definitely want to play with light.

At the end I did another round putting getting a bit closer to the old man and moving him a little bit:

As you can see, the light can affect how the dimensions of your object are displayed, depending on the position of the light the object can look flat, but by moving the light you can show the tridimensionality of the object by playing with the shadows.

Your photos can become more expressive when positioning the light in the right place, play with it, experience it yourself. If you do, please share your results with us!

It is never too late!!

Back in 2004 and 2005 I was living in Madrid Spain for a few months, I had the chance to go to several different cities in Europe, which allowed me take a lot of pictures of a lot of beautiful places. I wasn't always happy with the pictures I took so back then I thought "when I am back in Costa Rica I'll take a photography class", it was one of those things that I really wanted to do.

Some of the cities I visited were Rome, Florence and Venice, I fell in love with Italy, so back then I also thought "I want to learn Italian, I'll take a course when I am back in Costa Rica", well we are now in 2010 (five years later that you might think is a lot of time) and I can now say that I am learning Italian and taking my photography class, finally!.

I started the Italian course in January and the photography class this month, even though it took me five years to actually start taking these classes I am very excited that I am finally doing it.

So you might be wondering what's up with this story, well my dream is to be able to go to Italy with my husband for a few weeks to practice my Italian and to take great pictures of the awesome cities Italy has. If that is not possible, well I still want to take great pictures of anywhere and anything and to speak Italian fluently with whomever speaks Italian to me :) At the end, what I am trying to say is that it is never too late and you are never too old to do the things you want to do, just make the decision and do them, you won't regret it!

On another topic, I would like to share with you my experience in the photography class, so I am going to document all the different homework that I have to do for my photography class here in my blog, pretty much explaining what the assignment was, what I came up with and what I learned from it, because who knows it might be helpful information for somebody else, so wait for my first assignment.

Here it is a picture of Venice I took in 2005, it has some HDR post-processing:

Moving to the world of DSLR cameras

I am moving to the world of DSLR cameras and interchangeable lenses, I got the new Nikon D3100, 3 Nikon lenses and an external flash, a pretty good setting a friend said. I haven't been able to play much with these new toys yet, but I am been experimenting a little taking photos of Sam. Here are some:

The camera or the photographer?

A while ago I read an article called 15 Incredible iPhone Dog Photographs where the writer wants to show what the IPhone camera is capable of. However for me it was more like showing how sometimes a good photo is not necessarily one that is taken with the best camera.

After reading this article I posted it in Facebook and a friend of mine commented that many times she get comments like "Oh, you take great photos. I need a better camera.", which implies that it's the camera quality/cost that makes the photos good. And she says "it's not - it's the photographer!" and I couldn't agree more.

I know that with a camera like the IPhone camera you have to overcome certain obstacles like the light for example or the lack of zoom capabilities, however you can still compose really good photos.

I have had my IPhone for quite a while now and I've taken a lot of pictures with it because I have it with me all the time and the fact that I can share my photos almost instantly with friends is Facebook is really motivating for me. However, I have never share my IPhone photos anywhere else, not in my Flickr account because Flickr is for my "pretty" and "pro" pictures, but after reading this article and my friend's comment, I thought why I am doing this, why I am not sharing these pictures in Flickr, I should review my IPhone photos and see if I have been actually taking good pictures with my IPhone too. So I started doing it and one of these days I downloaded the photos to my laptop and started reviewing them and improving them and finally posted my first 5 in my Flickr account.

I am not saying they are good, but I like them and I want to share them and get "photography" comments on them, see what happens! I am going to share some of them with you here!

This one I took it from a plane when coming from Houston to Costa Rica, the sunset was great and I wanted to have it. It is too bad I got the window reflection in it and that I don't know Photoshop that much to fix it but I still like it:


This one is my dog Sam, almost 90% of pictures I take with my IPhone are of him. Here he is seated on his Grandpa's chair, he likes to get on it because he can see through the window:


This is from a Gandhi concert that we attended to last week, it was awesome but I was dumb enough to not take my camera, thank God I had my IPhone with me:


This is from the same concert, before Gandhi started playing, the stage, cool tools!!


If you want to comment on the photos just click on them and comment on Flickr or add comments here as well, all comments are welcome!

I am going to be posting my IPhone photos on a specific set in Flickr called IPhone in case you want to keep track of my progress.

Another thing important I learn is always take the picture, don't worry about the camera, just take it!

Gandhi - The Band

I haven't been a big fan of national music, but my husband Carlos is a big fan of Gandhi, so he took me to one of their concerts at Jazz Cafe a while ago, I must say that I really liked it. I liked the music and loved Luis' way of dancing and the way he gets into the "signing zone" so deep that is contagious.

We went to another concert yesterday at Jazz Cafe Escazu where they were going to release their new video for the song "Estrellame". The concert was amazing, they started with some acoustic songs and then the usual rock songs, so good! Federico is amazing with the guitar, it is simply an awesome show to watch and listen.



I wish they get more attention from other people in the world, because they are a worldwide class band that deserves all the fame they can get. They are really good and I am proud they are Costarican.

If you have a chance to listen to them, take it, specially if it is live! You will enjoy it!

For now, I share with you here their new video, enjoy!!



If you want to get more information about the band go to grupogandhi.com

Monteverde, Costa Rica

In Costa Rica there is a place called Monteverde, which is one of those natural paradises that you have to visit at least one time in your life before you die and I'll tell you why, but let me first tell you a bit about of its history.

Monteverde is a small town located in the Guanacaste province of Costa Rica, it was first inhabited by a few Costa Rican families who lived from agriculture. During the 1950s a group of Quakers migrated from Alabama to Costa Rica, they bought about 1500 hectares which they divided among the families. They were very concerned about nature, so they saved a part of the land to preserve nature, this piece of land is known today as The Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve.

The Monteverde reserve is one of the most amazing wildlife sanctuaries in Costa Rica and in the American continent, it includes eight distinct ecological zones and it protects more than 400 species of birds and over 100 species of mammals. You can find here the endangered Bellbird, the Resplendent Quetzal, the Emerald Toucanet and 30 species of hummingbirds.



The families that established in Monteverde during the 1950s initially lived from agriculture, they created a cheese factory called Monteverde, which cheese is sold all around the country. But also, several years ago they started living from Ecoturism, right now Monteverde is one of the most popular places visited by tourist from all over the world.

In Monteverde there are many different Eco-friendly tours that you can choose from. The most popular ones are walking through the hanging bridges, which is like walking on top of the rain forest, it is an amazing experience. In addition to this you can take tours to do canopy, sky trek, bird watching and night walking, a tour that allows you to see the wildlife during the night.



You can find a lot of different type of restaurants in Monteverde, the customer service is always great, people treat you very respectfully and very friendly and of course the food is to die for.

I went to Monteverde for a couple of days last year during my honeymoon, we had a great time, we took the hanging bridges tour and we went to see the hummingbirds, it was an amazing experience, you can really get in touch with nature and you get the feeling that you are walking on trees.

If you have a chance to visit Monteverde in Costa Rica, don't miss it, you won't regret it!

A guide to Cusco and Machu Picchu

In January this year, I was sent to Lima, Peru for work, so I took one day off to go to Cusco and visit Machu Picchu, which always has been one of those places that I have in my list of places to visit before I die.



During my trip I had some good and bad experiences; in this post I am going to tell you about some tips, so you can have a better trip than mine.

In Cusco you can find a lot of different tours that you can take and there are tons of different agencies that can arrange these tours for you, some of these agencies are more expensive than the others.



I was told that it is better to reserve these tours when you are in Cusco because there you can find cheaper prices, which is true. However, I recommend to make the reservations before you get to Cusco, why? Well, because in Cusco there are a lot things to do and see, so wasting time looking for the right agency and prices requires a lot of time and effort and it can be really stressing, specially because people in Cusco tend to be very persistent and they can overwhelm you with offers and a lot of different prices and options. Try doing the reservations via Internet, but even there look for different sites, you can find several different options for different tours and prices.

Another thing I was told was, get to Cusco early in the morning, have some rest and then do the City tour in the afternoon. Well you can certainly do that, but if you get affected by the height it would be better for you to not take any tour the first day and just relax, maybe walk a little bit around Cusco and get used to the height. Believe me, it is really hard doing all that walking on the tour if you are affected by the height, you don't enjoy it the same way.



Something really important to take into consideration is, have plenty of cash with you, most of the stores and restaurants are pretty reluctant to accept credit cards and if they do accept credit cards, they will probably charge you more. Also, if you want to buy souvenirs it is easy if you have cash, because some of the nicest souvenirs are those you can buy on the streets or on the markets and for people in these places is really hard to accept credit cards.

Another tip, when buying something, you can always negotiate, so do it and you might be able to get something in a really cool price. Also, walk a lot and compare prices, you can find the exact same thing cheaper in another store. Be aware when somebody offers you cheap Alpaca or Baby Alpaca coats, most of the times that is not real Alpaca, neither Baby Alpaca; both of these materials are expensive.

When you do the City tour, there is a visit to a Church (I don't remember its name right now) that you have to pay extra, I think it doesn't worth to pay that extra money, there is no much to see inside, they have a bunch of rocks but then you can see similar rocks in the other places you are going to visit.



Take a lot of water with you or Gatorade, because you have to do a lot of walking, so it is good to keep your body hydrated. Bring fruits and energy bars as well, because it is hard to find where to buy food in these places.

There are many nice things to see, so keep your camera battery charged, you wouldn't want to run out of battery in the middle of a tour. If you can, take a tripod with you, this would help you take better pictures, but bring one not too big so it is not heavy and hard to carry around.

I hope these tips help you on your trip to Cusco and Machu Picchu!

Cinepolis Costa Rica dealing with too many people!

These past two weeks most of the students of Costa Rica were on vacation and that coincided with the premier of a lot of major films like Get Smart!, Wall-E, Handcock and Batman The Dark Night, so as you imagine all the movie theaters were packed with people these past two weekends.

We went yesterday night to Terramall to watch Batman, we were really excited about it, we wanted to watch it in the VIP theaters to be more comfortable. We arrived there around 6:30 pm, the parking lots were incredible packed, there were cars parked even in the sidewalks, so people were not able to walk freely and it was hard to drive in the little roads of this mall, fortunately we found a spot in the underground parking lot, that was luck.

When we got to the movie theaters upstairs, there were no more spaces in the VIP rooms, only for the 11 pm show, but that was too late for us. I asked the guy if there were spaces in the regular theaters, he said that he couldn't help me, that if I wanted to know, I'd have to go and stand in line in the regular box office. That just sucked because I knew he could have given me that information, it was that he just didn't want to help me, what a nice treatment.

I was amazed by the amount of people there, it was incredible. There was even a sign saying that the 11 pm show was opened because there were too many people wanting to watch Batman, what a nice touch of Cinepolis opening that show, right?.

However, I was really disappointed with their service, you had to stay in a long line to be able to buy a ticket, once you buy it you have to go and stay in another line for around 2 hours if you wanted to get a good seat. People that wanted to buy popcorn and drinks had to stay in a line for half and hour, how hard can it be to serve popcorn and a coke? Come on!! The worst part of this is that while we were waiting on these lines, there were so many people that it was so hot, everybody was sweating, not cool!

Another thing was that I needed to go to the restroom, that was bad, there were no toilet paper, the toilets were all dirty, most of them, there were no even towels to dry your hands, thank God there was soap and water to wash your hands after using those dirty toilets.

I like Cinepolis, because they have nice theaters, but they need to be more prepared for when they are going to have this amount of people, it was just crazy, the service was so bad that I was wondering that if what was paying for the ticket was really worth it.

They should enable an Internet service so you can buy your tickets online and have numbered seats so people don't have to stay in a line for so many hours just to get a nice seat, check this site to get an idea: http://www.yelmocineplex.es/ideal_yelmo_cineplex.html

Also, they should hire more people to keep the restrooms clean and to serve popcorn and cokes faster and they should improve their air conditioning as well, it is just a matter of keeping their customers comfortable and happy with a good service, I think that is a good investment!

Tricking your mind.99!

In my last trip to the US, I spent a month there, we had this cable that had a lot of Infomercial channels, the rest of the channels had a lot of commercials as well.

It was funny, because after being some time there, I got this phrase in my mind "ninety nine", why? I'll tell you!

You know that most selling companies would sell their products with a price that would be something like $X.X9. This is a selling strategy that will make you think that if you are getting a product with the price of $9.99 it would cost you $9, when in reality it is costing you almost $10.

What it was interesting to me is how far they gotten with this, everything was something 99, you would see Gas offers at $2.99 a gallon, a shirt $9.99, the monthly payment for a car $199.99. The worst part is that it works, you see the payment for the car and you don't think that is $200, you think that is $100 and something.

Strategies.99

Moab - Utah

I have a new job in a company that has its headquarters in Park City, Utah. I have to go there for training, I spent a month up there.

One weekend, me and my boyfriend went to Moab, somebody suggested it and we took the advice. To get there we had to travel around 4 hours, but it was worth it.



We got there around noon, we had lunch and then we went to Arches National Park where we spent the rest of the day.

Arches is just a great park, you can see these big walls of red rocks, very impressive. We did some hiking in some of the trails that take you to the main arches in the park, it is pretty cool.

The next day we took a Jet boat tour, it was pretty amazing, because you get to see a lot of cool things that you wouldn't see in any other tour. The tour lasted around 4 hours and includes a stop so you do some hiking to see mummified trees, we didn't get to see them that day, apparently there was a flood so we couldn't walk there. The tour guide was very funny, he really knew all the nicest spots and their history.



We wanted to do a 4x4 tour as well, but we didn't have the chance, we hope we can do it next time. We want to take a tour that is during the sunset so you can take great pictures.

In Moab Main St. you can find excellent restaurants, we went to an Italian restaurant called Pasta J's, it was just great, I really recommend it.



Moab is a really nice place to visit, you have a lot things to do, especially if you are into the outdoors activities. Just be sure to take the right shoes and clothes for these activities, inside the park there are a lot of sand places,so if you are wearing sandals, that might be and issue.

I took some pictures in case you want to check them out!