With this posting I will begin to add photos from my Spain portfolio.  It is a huge collection of photos and I will necessarily be very selective in choosing those that represent both quality and diversity.  At this point I am very pleased with the quality, but diversity of subject matter is a challenge.  Most of my images occupy two general groupings, architectural and street photography, the latter being things of interest I saw on the city streets of Spain.  As we travelled across and around this beautiful country by coach I saw hundreds of landscape compositions I would like to photograph; alas, photographing from a moving bus is not possible if one hopes to produce quality landscapes.  Not that I didn't try, but it's safe to say not one of those images will even be edited.  So I was left with photographing in the cities; architecture, people and street subjects were the order of the day.

I consider myself kind of a novice at capturing people photos.  It's not so much the technical aspect of capturing the image that I find challenging, it's capturing close up portraits.  I'm just not comfortable with approaching someone and pushing a camera in their face.  Therefore, most people photos are candids of folks going about their daily business.  Sometimes they are aware they are being photographed, sometimes not.  I try to be as non-obtrusive as possible so that they will remain comfortable doing whatever they are doing.  In any case I take care that the image of whatever is going on is in good taste.

The other challenge is of a geographical nature.  We're I to simply dump all my photos into a portfolio called Spain it would be a huge collection even while being selective.  I have decided to use several portfolios similar to what I did in Italy.  At present I'm contemplating regional portfolios to include the regions of Castile y Leon, Catabria, Basque Country, Navarra, Aragon, Castile-La Mancha, Valencia, and Andalusia; additionally there will be separate portfolios for Barcelona, Madrid, the Alhambra, the Seville Cathedral, and probably the Grand Mosque of Córdoba.  We also visited Gibralter which some will know is not part of Spain but rather part of the United Kingdom.  Even so we visited it as part of our Spain adventure so it too will be included in the Andalusia collection.  Should even this segmentation produce portfolios that are too large I may decide to further fragment them to more manageable size.

I had the pleasure of reading LAUDATO SI' a short time ago, the encyclical of Pope Francis occasioned by the threat of climate change to what Francis refers to "our common home", the Earth, home to all humanity and all that lives on the Earth.  This encyclical quite frankly expresses the philosophy, theology and morality that inspired me and hence my photography for over 50 years.  While climate change prompted Francis to address this issue his scope goes far beyond just that, indeed it addresses a morally based use and treatment of the resources given to the custody of man to be accessible to all.  While this dialogue has been part of our debate for many years I don't think anyone has put forth his thinking in quite such succinct and elegant terms.  So what does this have to do with photography?

I think those who photograph the landscape, wildlife, flowers, insects, beautiful works of man, portraits, etc., will instantly make the connection.  We are celebrating beauty, beauty in nature, beauty in our environment.  When that beauty is despoiled our subject matter goes away.  Even those who photograph the wreckage we wreak are doing so to make a point, to expose our careless actions and disdain for that entrusted to our care.  Photographing beauty is a response back to God, praising Him for what we find good in His creation; photographing wreckage is one way to inform us of our abusive nature.

Man's careless treatment of what I find praise worthy has been a pet peave of mine all my life.  We trash our highways with garbage, we clutter our cities with graffiti, we set our forests afire with careless disposal of still burning cigarettes, we pollute our waters in dozens of different ways, and now we are pumping millions of tons of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere on a daily basis.  I have even found full scale dumps 30 miles into the backcountry of the Sierra Nevada where horse packers were too lazy to haul out their trash.  These included things like rusty cans, bottles, even things as large as stoves.  I've often seen old license plates nailed to trees in places that ought to be treated with reverence.  The list could go on and on.  

Laudato Si' challenges us to a new way of thinking about our "home".  No longer do we have the luxury of thinking of our resources as inexhaustible, or that somehow no matter how much abuse we subject it to it will miraculously repair itself.  Every day we become more aware of the damage we inflict on our surroundings and the creatures that inhabit our home.  Yet there are still those who refuse to acknowledge what they see and refuse to believe the science that tells us our consumerist "throw away" society is not sustainable.  It's time for all of us to "own up" to our own responsibility for the care of our environment, and if changes are warranted...make them.

In the past ten years my wife and I have made five trips across the Atlantic to European or Middle East destinations.  We are just back from Spain, the thirteenth European country we have visited.

One might ask what I find so compelling about Europe.  Well, as a serious amateur photographer interested in architectural photography there is no better place to go.  One certainly does not have to travel to Europe to find good architectural subjects, but the diversity and "old world" look found there is pretty hard to find elsewhere in my opinion.  In my travels I have found each country visited to be unique in what it offers in architectural style.  There are also fantastic opportunities for landscape photography as well; it's just that I've found myself mostly in urban environments where architecture and "street" photography is the "target of opportunity".  In terms of landscape photography I tend to think the western United States and Canada the place to be, but when it comes to architecture I favor Europe.

Photography aside, travel is a wonderful opportunity to expand one's cultural perspective.  Growing up my generation was led to believe that the United States is first in everything.  Well, I long ago put that myth to rest.  Yes, we lead the world in many things.  This is a fantastic nation and we are most blessed to live here, but we can learn much from others and foolish to think we have all the answers; it is simply arrogant to dismiss the rest of the world as irrelevant.

So, what of Spain?  Well, for one thing it is one of the more economical countries we have travelled in for quite some time.  The Euro vs. the dollar is very favorable right now which may be the main factor.  But I don't get the impression that Spain has had the volume of tourists that countries like Italy, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have experienced.  Consequently prices are perhaps a bit more reasonable than other destinations.  This is possibly in process of changing though.  Tourists have found Spain and several tour companies are operating there now.  If you hanker to see this country I wouldn't put it off too long.  It was also noted that Spaniards are not as proficient in the English language as many other Europeans are, possibly because of the above.  We found few who could speak English, but it is true their English by and large is better than our Spanish!  But this should not be a deterrence; one can get by.  Otherwise Spain is a vibrant, modern country.  In some respects their infrastructure exceeds ours'.  Roads, for instance, are far better in Spain than in the United States, and I think I can make this statement with some degree of knowledge.  Having travelled the breadth and width of North Anerica by motorhome the past ten years I can safely say roads in the United States are by and large atrocious.  Having travelled a good portion of Spain by bus I must say I was struck by the difference.  This is something to provoke alarm.  Europe invests a greater percentage of its GDP into infrastructure than we do; it shows.  We are not keeping up with the demands being placed on our infrastructure and I think we should be concerned about that.  European lifestyle too is far different from ours.  They are not as frenetic as we tend to be.  We are in great hurry to get wherever we are going.  We are so hung up on our so called "work ethic" that  we forget to live.  We are up early (often times in the office by 7:00 a.m.) and still there at 6:00 p.m.  They, on the other hand, start their day later and end it later.  Maybe this is due to time differential?  Americans are looking for supper at 5:30-6:00 p.m; Europeans don't seem to think about dinner until about 9:00 p.m.  City streets and "restaurantes" are buzzing with activity far into the night.

Photography in Spain was outstanding.  I wasn't able to do much landscape work as it's impossible to shoot from a moving bus, but I had foreseen that and focused on street scenes and architecture, and I will have to say the experience was on a par with Italy, that is outstanding.  The cities we visited offered outstanding depth and diversity, as well as color.  Every city seemed unique in what it offered.  From the narrow streets of old Seville and Toledo, and the splendor of the Alhambra in Granada, to the space age architecture of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilboa, and the surreal designs of Gaudi in Barcelona, it was like being in a candy store.  My camera actually became warm to the touch on several occasions.  The only drawback was time.  Without exception I wanted much more time in every city visited.  For instance, we spent one day and part of another in Barcelona, hardly enough time to warm up.  It's like spending one day in Yosemite and thinking one can do it justice.  Simply impossible.  The only answer for an "overview" trip like this is to research very carefully and be focused, ready to hit the ground on arrival.  We had about two hours in Madrid's Prado museum, and while we viewed much of its Spanish art the Prado warrants far more time, perhaps like the Louvre or Metropolitan Museums, a lifetime!

I am currently well into the editing phase of my Spain project.  There are over 4,000 images to sort through and edit so it will take some time.  What I'm seeing so far is only stoking my desire for more. Spain will take a prominent place in my "Visions of Europe" portfolio in the near future.