Ten Days in Spain! Visiting my son and his mother, my best friend. Thousands of pictures.
I spent most of the time in the historic university town of Salamanca (the image here is Salamanca’s Plaza Mayor). When I left for Spain, I had two goals: to take more photographs than I do at a typical wedding (easily achieved), and, as a photographic topic, to take lots of pictures of ceilings. It might sound like a strange theme, but the churches have marvelous, vaulted ceilings, each different, with crisscrossing arches. So I was always looking up.
Other themes emerged, sometimes conscious, such as deciding to shoot Salamanca at night. The stone from which most of Salamanca’s historic buildings are chiseled have a yellow hue, and the city officials have recently made the excellent decision of replacing the white lights used to illuminate the buildings at night, with amber ones. The buildings are beautifully lit, and the amber is gives the city a unity, and the buildings look as if they were built from gold. I love Salamanca at night.
Other themes emerged unconsciously. When I got home, I noticed pictures of staircases, over and over. I don’t know for sure what these staircases evoked in me–transition, possibility, timelessness; or maybe I just liked the lines. In any case, I ended up with lots of pictures of stairways.
Most of the pictures were taken in Salamanca, though some were from excursions to Valladolid and a few small towns. I’ve included the file names, which hopefully will help a little if you are interested in knowing what you are seeing.
I’ve divided the galleries into categories to make the images more accessible (click on the category name at the top left). The categories are not neat, sometimes overlapping. I put the pictures of the cathedral ceiling, for instance, in the cathedral folder, not the ceiling folder. I had lots of little choices like this. It disturbs my sense of tight organization, but seems appropriate for a city as vibrant and diverse and multifaceted as Salamanca.
This post is in: Spain
