So today in my German class I had to give another 10 minute presentation, which I found out about after we got back from Barcelona. That has, necessarily, taken up most of my time the past few days, and so it’s looking like I won’t really be able to dive into all the Barcelona blogging I want to do until this weekend.

It would have been handy had the presentation been on Gaudì, the artist who designed many striking (or strikingly odd, depending on your point of view) buildings in the late 19th and early 20th century. While there will be  a post coming up about Gaudì’s work, that post isn’t on tap for today.

But no, my class presentation today was about American history and politics.  My 10 minute presentation was a bit longer than 10 minutes. OK, maybe even a bit longer than 20 minutes. I’m not sure. But hey,  try compressing the history of American politics into 10 minutes. In German. The German word for “Declaration of Independence” — Die Unabhängigkeitserklärung — takes  a good 10 seconds to try to pronounce just on its own, IMHO. 😉 For the record, my teacher said the stress is on the first syllable, Un.  Knowing that does help a bit.

Anyhow, I bring up all of this by way of an excuse for yet again having only a single photo from Barcelona to offer today. Just before we took the bus from the Plaça Catalunya to the airport on Sunday, we stopped to look at the fountains there. The sun was quite bright, which put the figure in the fountain in shadow from where we were standing.  The splashing water behind the statue was kind of a blur in person, but in my mind’s eye I envisioned a photo where the statue was in shadow, but the water drops were more visible when mixed in with the spray. So, I snapped a photo, and then today on my computer I tweaked the contrast and shadows a bit to bring out the water drops.

Thinking about this photo today reminded me of two quotes from Ansel Adams:

In my mind’s eye, I visualize how a particular… sight and feeling will appear on a print. If it excites me, there is a good chance it will make a good photograph. It is an intuitive sense, an ability that comes from a lot of practice. 
Ansel Adams

You don’t take a photograph, you make it. – Ansel Adams

I’m not sure that I’ve made a great photo here, actually.  I’ll call today’s attempt my “first version” of this photo; when I have a bit more time, I think I may try to improve on it. But I always find it interesting to consider the difference between taking a photo and making a photo, and how the sense of the photo, I mean the feeling that you when looking at the photo, can completely change with a few tweaks in my digital darkroom. Learning about  how Ansel Adams’ always approached his photography this way — i.e. reading that Ansel Adams made (in a real darkroom) some of his most famous works — really changed how I think about photography.

Anyway, enough blathering on about the craft of taking and making a photo.  At the end of the day — literally — this was a particularly nice fountain near our hotel in Barcelona.

Plaça Catalunya Fountain, Barcelona