Under the microscope

Now here's a picture with a bit more 'Christmas sparkle' to it, and there should be a prize for guessing what it is. There is no real explanation behind the idea except to say that someone has decided to view different alcoholic drinks under a microscope, the results of which form an impressive and highly colourful piece of art.

Each image is created by taking a pipette of the selected drink and squeezing a single drop of it onto a slide. The alcohol droplets are then allowed to dry out completely, which can take up to four weeks in an airtight container (the whole process can take up to three months). Simply using a standard microscope with a camera attached, the light source is polarized and passed through the crystal, and the photo is taken.

All I need now is a microscope for Christmas!

Wonder Wall

The front of our Bodega is south facing, and during the peak summer months is not only one of the hottest places on earth, but is also one of the brightest. I think that to call it a 'sun trap' would be something of an understatement, and I'm surprised that my car tyres have not melted before now..... you get the general idea - it's hot and very sunny.

One of the downsides of this used to be that the minute you stepped in through our front door, you were immediately faced with a very stark contrast (and not only in temperature). I think it would be fair to say that our entrance hall was a little bit dull, with not too much much natural light, and also a style of decor was just a little bit dated and on the drab side. Entering from the very bright sunlight it did not exactly lift your spirits!

Of course, all that has changed. A lick of fresh white paint, some drastically improved lighting, and a huge montage of brightly coloured photos on our wall, now add a bit of sunshine to our interior too.

This new selection of photos actually serves two purposes; not only does it add to the colour, but it also includes various pictures of the cellar and vineyards at work. So if you happen to be visting on a dark day in the middle of November, you can still get an impression of how Castro Martin looks at brighter and busier times of year.

Just as a footnote for any budding photographers amongst our readers - my pictures were actually printed and mounted in Germany, using a company called Whitewall. They offer a very wide selection of frames and mountings using only top quality materials. For example, we opted for original photo prints with aluminium backing (Lambda print on Fujicolor crystal archive paper with UV foil protection). Whitewall also provide their customers with a very efficient professional colour management service, and all at a very reasonable cost.

And no, before you ask, they are not paying me any commission!

The view from my roof

Click to enlarge

It occured to me the other day that although I had written about our "Sobre Lias" wines I hadn't taken too many pictures of the subtly amended labels. With this in mind I rushed home yesterday afternoon to take a few snaps before the sun disappeared - the forecast had correctly predicted that it would be raining today (which in reality turned our to be something of an understatement).

Whilst the pictures were not actually taken on a roof per say, they were taken on a roof  terrace overlooking the local town, and if you look carefully you can see a reflection of this on the shoulder of each bottle.

On the subject of roofs (or should that be rooves?), our outbuilding that has been undergoing renovation is now nearing completion, and thank goodness the new roof was fully in place before today's torrential rain. Next week I will post a couple of before and after photos..... the transformation is quite dramatic.

On the lees, on the beach

In my previous post you can see a guy clambering over a hotel roof for the sake of his art, whereas my photographic effort today is much more modest, with feet very much on terra firma (or sand to be more precise).

Having said that, crawling across our local beach on my hands and knees at dawn this morning must have looked a bit odd to passers-by. Perhaps they thought I was a drunk, and that I had been hitting the Albariño bottle for breakfast!

Anyway, I do like to keep a current library of different bottle shots, and of course, our association with the sea makes such a setting an obvious choice for a picture. The useful thing is that the Spanish are not really what you would call 'early morning people' (especially after celebrating their World Cup success of the night before), and so the beach was very much deserted when the sun came up today. You can take my word for it!

Man on a hot tile roof

Now, I consider myself to be a reasonably enthusiastic photographer, and as you have probably guessed, I also love messing about in Photoshop. Having said that, even I would draw the line at scaling a hotel roof for the sake of my art like the guy in this photo. I was pretty taken-a-back to watch him climbing like a cat across a steeply sloping tiled roof just for the sake of getting a better panorama - he must have been 30 or 40 metres above street level and appeared to be wearing just a pair of normal street shoes!

Quite how he got out onto the roof in the first place is another story, but let's just hope that the picture he got was worth the effort.