Last week I set up my DSLR to capture a timelapse of the clouds to see them swirl, but they were blowing by so fast that it wasn’t worth publishing the video.

Here are some photos I captured with my iPhone camera on my midday walk today.

You may remember these street lights from last week.

See how the striations zigzag back and forth? Odd!

Crazy November skies!

This tri-lamp seemed particularly photogenic.

Oh yeah, I totally framed the subject off to the side like a professional photographer.

Only one of these orbs is radiating its own light.

The maritime walk is lined with these weird loopy lamps.

So, naturally, this shot was obligatory.

There was another photographer out that night with a tripod, so I walked up to him and said something like, “You came better prepared than I”. He said that he’d read something about how, “You can tell, merely by the quality of photographs when an amateur photographer has started using a tripod”. Rather trite, but it’s true that using a tripod will improve almost any photograph. I’m pretty pleased with my ability to take these shots without a tripod, but I look forward to experimenting with longer exposures.

I’m doing this post in Spanish, too, for my local fans. So bear with me.

On Saturday, when I awoke from my nap, the missus instructed me to make a paté sandwich for my daughter’s afternoon snack, and go down to the town park where she was playing with her Spanish grandfather. I’m still not entirely sure what make me grab my camera on the way out the door, but I think I was expecting to get some cute grandfather-granddaughter playground shots. When I got to the park, they were playing on the swings, but soon there were too many kids at the playground, so we left and went for a walk…and what a beautiful walk it was! The tide was high, the sunset was beautiful and there was the tiniest sliver of a moon. I was so lucky that I’d taken my camera!

El sábado, cuando me desperté de mi siesta, la señora me dijo que hiciese un sándwich de paté para la merienda de mi hija, y que bajase al parque donde ella jugaba con su abuelo español. Todavía no sé exactamente lo que me hizo coger la cámara antes de salir, pero creo que fue para sacar algunas fotos de “abuelo y nieta” jugando en el parque. Cuando llegué, estaba columpiando, pero muy pronto se llenó el parque de niños, y decidimos dar un paseito…y vaya paseo fue! La marea estaba en su punto más alto, la puesta de sol estaba increíblemente bonita y sólo había un rayito de la luna. ¡Y yo me había llevado la cámara!

The bollards would cuddle too…if they could.

Los bolardos también acurrucarían…si pudieran.

Nora swings.

Nora columpia.

Moon and plane.

Luna y avion.

The water was so placid.

El agua estaba tan plácida.

I told you it was pretty sunset, didn’t I?

Te dije que era una puesta del sol bonita, ¿verdad?

Boat and moon.

Barco y luna.

Water like glass.

Agua como cristal.

It looks like a watercolor painting, doesn’t it?

Parece una pintura de acuarela, ¿no?

Tree and moon.

Arbol y luna.

In the six years I’ve lived in Colindres and walked the maritime walkway, I’ve never once seen Mount Buciero reflected in the water like this.

En los seis años que he vivido en Colindres y he andado el paseo marítimo, ni una vez he visto el Monte Buciero reflejado en el agua así.

Reflected Colindres.

Colindres reflejado.

Panorama. I might have to change my blog header…what do you think?

Panorama. Tal vez voy a tener que cambiar la cabecera del blog…¿que pensais?

Good night, Colindres.

Buenas noches, Colindres.

The fishing boats were in.

The marina, for all the non-commercial vessels.

They look tiny from across the harbor.

Reflection fun.

I hadn’t seen this boat with a figurehead before.

It was probably an unfortunate docking incident that caused her rhinectomy.

Two boats with the Colindres coat of arms. Notice the others in the background.

Ropes.

Joggers on the lighthouse pier.

This chevron of different water texture was interesting. Probably caused by grass just under the surface?

Those buildings in the distance are apartment blocks in nearby touristy Laredo. No need to go on holidays to Benidorm to see beachside high rises.

Tree and a woman fishing.

Posts try to define the border of the tidal basin. The water does wet them at high tide.

I wonder how straight they were originally?

I can’t claim credit for noticing this. A woman walking near me told her companions, “Hey, look! Three suns!” The stillness of the nearby water reflects the sun only at angle of incidence, like a mirror, but the choppier water further away reflects it at all angles.

My walk continued inland, away from the water, for a bit. Those photos will be in a subsequent post.

Upon considering several places from which to view the race, I decided that seeing them cross the iconic Colindres-Treto bridge would be a good place, so I walked down to the harbor and picked a spot. It was still only 1:40 PM, but all the benches were occupied and people were generally milling about around the road. On my way to the bridge, I saw people setting up signs cheering on some guy named Cobo, whoever that is…not that I could name any pro cyclists beyond Armstrong and Contador.

I got to the bridge and found the usual group of men that are there on all sunny days, standing around doing a superb impression of the intro to King of the Hill, with their fishing lines hanging off the bridge. Finding a place to attach my GorillaPod to film the race was tricky, but eventually I settled on a metallic structure near the bridge. Then it was just a matter of waiting. Soon, normal civilian traffic ceased and all the cars were police vehicles. I passed my time practicing a panning motion blur photography technique I’ve been wanting to try. If you track a moving object with your camera as you press the shutter with a slower than normal shutter speed, you should get a shot where the subject is in focus and the background is blurred. That’s the theory anyway. It’s quite challenging in practice without a tripod.

Then…the race arrived! It lasted for all of about 15 seconds. Well, more, actually; according to my video, the time from when the first cyclist passed until the last cyclist passed was a full 16.1 seconds.

About a zillion cars with bicycles on top passed, with license plates from all over Europe, and then the road was open to civilian traffic again.

My HD video camera attached to a metal scaffold to film the race.

The view of the harbor 90° to the right of the previous shot was too pretty not to capture.

The leader, it turns out, is this guy named Juan José Cobo, a local Cantabrian man from Cabezón de la Sal, who, after today’s Stage 19 of the Vuelta a España, is leading the race overall. Go Cobo!

Something about this picture gives me the impression that the cyclist is hovering just above the ground.

The pack.

This is that motion blurring effect I mentioned.

Cool, huh? I definitely need more practice.

Some of the license plates the drove by. Belgium, France, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Germany, and…Moldova???

The local Peugeot dealership is rooting for Cobo.

The whole experience was pretty interesting, in that it was somehow a superposition of excitement and boredom. I think that, even more so than most sports, watching cycling live is much more about having a good time outside with friends than actually seeing incredible athletes.

It’s worth viewing larger. The first two pictures were slightly blurry, so I actually had to digitally blur the third one to match the others.

A close-up of just the changes in the last twelve months. Although she is a bit taller and her hair is longer, the biggest changes have happened between her ears.

Looks like there’s one more spot on the couch for a 3.5-year-old…

This one really should be in a frame on the wall. Wow!

Jacob, our phearless phrolicking photographer.

Happy birthday, Jacob.

Compare these to last year’s similar introduction to strawberries.

“Okay, can we stop now?”

Nevertheless, I’m quite satisfied with the outcome. One unforeseen, but obvious in retrospect, consequence was that the lamp immediately dried out the strawberries, causing them to shrink, and also provided the mold with a less than fungi-friendly environment. Oh well. Perhaps next time I’ll try using a flash like I did with the larger fungi.

For full berry-rotting excitement, it can be viewed at 1080p on YouTube or Vimeo.

Okay, okay, if I’m to be perfectly honest, this was really my first attempt, which turned out to be very educational about how A) absolutely zero camera movement is allowed, B) the subject needs to be very, very simple, and C) the background can’t be moving at all.

This one is not perfect. My head moved quite noticeably in the original video. I made it by taking a still frame and cutting eye holes in it to show the video behind. It’s by far the best of my eye movement attempts, but you can still see a little movement of the area around the eyes.

I can’t think of an easier subject than a dripping faucet. Even at 720p HD, the gif is only 2.5 MB, so sized down for the blog is safely in the “under 500 KB” goal range. There are no artifacts from a moving subject or camera. I’m very happy with this attempt.

Like with most photography projects, I will now be doomed to run every event I see through a “would this be good for a cinemagraph?” filter.