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The Most Interesting Man at the Alhambra

by Brian on June 18, 2014 in Travel

They couldn’t take their eyes off of me. Even when I raised my camera to photograph them staring at me, they never even blinked. Apparently self-consciousness is something that develops at a somewhat later age.

These weren’t the first group of boys to fall under my spell that day. And for some reason they were all boys who did. Sadly, my power to enrapture doesn’t work on anyone else. I know this from long experience.

At first I barely noticed the stares of the gaggles that passed me as I patiently waited for the clock to strike my allotted entrance time to Spain’s Alhambra Palace. The ones pointing were a bit more obvious. The laughter got my full attention.

I could perhaps understand being the butt of one joke. But this was something different; a universal mocking to which I alone missed the punch line. And then I got it.

Proof of Onward Travel Required

by Brian on June 16, 2014 in How To, Travel, Travel Tips

We knew we were taking a small risk by showing up at a border crossing without proof of onward travel. We never really thought it would be a big deal, though. It’s not like we were trying to enter Soviet-era Russia on our U.S. passports. We were just trying to board a train to London from Paris.

“Can I see your tickets home, please?” It was among the first of many questions we were asked by the British border agent standing between us and our train.

We didn’t have tickets “home” (wherever that is) or anywhere else for that matter. We were planning on spending the next five months in the U.K. We only just started thinking about where we’ll go afterward. We’re nowhere even close to booking tickets to wherever that might be.

A Flowering Tree in Granada Spain

by Brian on June 11, 2014 in Europe, Spain, Travel

What is the Best Camera for Travelers?

by Brian on June 9, 2014 in Travel

That is the question I’m asking myself this morning after my existing camera tumbled to a watery grave over the weekend. The above photograph is the last one my poor Sony NEX-7 will ever take.

Over the last four years of travel I’ve taken a bit of a round trip in terms of camera technology. I started out with a creaky old Lumix point-and-shoot that simply wasn’t up to the task. After a couple of months I traded up to an entry level Nikon DSLR. That camera is responsible for most of the images appearing on this blog.

The Nikon was a great camera to shoot with but somewhat less of a joy to carry. The burden wasn’t terrible when we traveled by car, but once we traded in our wheels for backpacks the size and weight of a big camera became more than I really wanted to bear. So late last year I downsized my DSLR to one of the new mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras.

After spending a considerable amount of money on my new camera kit, it didn’t totally blow me away. The image quality was about the same as the camera I had given up. And while the body of the NEX-7 is smaller than that of my old DSLR, it’s not exactly tiny once you add some lenses to the equation. I still ended up filling my old DSLR bag with the NEX 7, an 18-200 MM zoom lens and a 10-18 MM wide angle lens.

Now that I’m forced back into the camera market, I’ve started to wonder whether it’s time to regress back to a point and shoot.

Google’s Overambitious Anonymizer

by Brian on June 6, 2014 in Travel

Hoisted from Google Street View, this is exactly the kind of thing I’d have done as a bored 20-something programmer tasked with writing an algorithm to blur out all the faces and phone numbers that inevitably get scooped up by Google’s camera car as it photographs every inch of the world. And thus, the rise of the Feline Privacy Movement is born.