Category Archives: travel

It’s colorful.  It’s fun.  It’s artsy.  It’s both hip and cool.  It’s annual.  It’s El Paso.

It’s Chalk the Block, and it’s a truly unique El Paso experience.

Every year, the streets of downtown El Paso are blocked off, people armed with multicolored chunks of chalk and knee-pads arrive, and sidewalks and streets are turned into a canvas for the creative endeavors of artists both local and from out of town.  The epicenter of this annual happening is the historic San Jacinto Plaza, also known in times past as Plaza de los Lagartos (Alligator Plaza).  Vendors abound.  Savory smells waft into the air, carried aloft by smoke from charcoal- and gas-fueled grills.  Artists who use more traditional media sell their wares from tented kiosks.  Professional “graffiti” artists apply their talents to city mass transit buses that are made available as additional ‘canvases.”

It you aren’t having fun here, amid all this color and cacophony, then you’re actively fighting it.  Charge your batteries, stow some extra memory cards, and bring a digital camera . . . or two.  You’re going to need ’em:

. . .  may live in beautiful surroundings.

If you ever get up Seattle way and rent a car, make sure you head south to Tacoma for a day trip to the Museum of Glass.  If you’re into photography you’ll be very glad that you did.  Unfortunately, photography of the indoor exhibits is prohibited, but the outdoor exhibits more than make up for this prohibition.

Especially colorful and very fun to photograph are the artworks of Dale Chihuly in the incredible Chihuly Bridge of Glass.  The walls are lined with individual pieces displayed within enclosed glass walls.  But it’s the ceiling that will really get your attention.  Above you, light streaming through, are colorful works of hand-blown glass pieces overlaid in a jumble of intense colors, shapes, and textures.

Photographic hint:  If the light is too dim for your camera to take pictures at a low ISO setting, don’t up the ISO too far or you’ll start getting “noise,” the digital equivalent of “grain” in film photography.  Instead, you may want to employ some of the tricks we learned in Available Light Photograph Without a Tripod.  Set up your camera with a two- to ten-second delay.  Place it onto the floor of the bridge with the lens aimed toward the ceiling.  With your head and shoulders out of the way as much as possible, depress the shutter release button halfway to set the exposure, then depress it completely to start the timer for shutter release.  Back out of the way and let your camera do its thing.

The results may astound you:

Today sees the final installment of our New York-Bermuda-New York adventure aboard NCL’s Norwegian Dawn in May of 2008.  On Monday you saw some of the sights we captured in hustling, bustling New York City.  Wednesday you heard the tragic tale of the fellow passenger we lost at sea shortly after our departure.

Today we continue with our photo journal of Bermuda.

Enjoy: