Blowhole at the waterfront of Xcaret Park near Playa del Carmen, Mexico.
Where are Kevin and Ruth now? Playa del Carmen, Mexico.

Where are Kevin and Ruth going next? Toluca on December 24th!

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

One of our goals for our upcoming Spain trip...

My father spent about six months touring around Europe way back in 1954. He was an avid photographer, and he took a lot of slide photographs on that trip. Ruth had scanned and digitized all of his old slides and we now have them all saved on our laptops.

He spent quite a lot of time in Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. Coincidentally, we will also be spending quite a lot of time in those countries over the next three months.

So, one of the things we want to do as we're traveling about is to find some of the spots where he stood to take some of these photos, and try to replicate the exact same photo from the same spot...63 years later!

Should make for some interesting photo opportunities.

Here's an example...

Taken by my father in 1954.

Found on the internet. No date available, but you get the idea!

There are 100 or so photos like this from those three countries, so that ought to keep us fairly busy as a hobby while we're over there. We won't necessarily plan our days around it, but if we see that we're close to one of his photo locations, we'll likely make a detour.

Fortunately, he was very detailed with writing things down. Each slide has tiny little writing on it that says the date it was taken, and some fairly detailed location information, although we might have to do some detective work on some of them. He even has the f-stop and shutter speeds from the camera settings he used to take the photo. Too bad they didn't have GPS coordinates back then!

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If they had these binoculars at this price here in Canada, we would be buying a pair. We're in the market for some new ones. But, at least our American readers can take advantage of a great deal...


And, for our Canadian readers who want to spoil their dog...




24 comments:

  1. Cool project! I've got an itinerary planned out for a future trip to Spain (hoping to do it for a milestone birthday). There are a couple adventure activities I'm hoping to do that it seems like you guys might enjoy - not sure if they were already on your radar. The first is the via ferrata by Ronda (probably more expensive than your typical activities for gear and a guide) and the Caminito del Rey/King's Way north of Malaga, which has had substantial refurbishment to make it safer and accessible - but last I checked you had to get entrance tickets pretty far in advance.

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    1. Thanks Sarah. Yes, we had already planned on doing Caminito del Rey, but hadn't looked into the other one, so thanks for that too! Lots of tickets available still, but some weekend dates are sold out already.

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  2. Sounds awesome. With Google Earth's help you may even be able to get some of those GPS coordinates in advance. And I second the suggestion of visiting the amazing Caminito del Rey---some tix do seem still available at https://reservas.caminitodelrey.info

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    1. Yes...exactly! We will be doing Caminito del Rey...lots of tickets available for weekday visits.

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  3. That is a fantastic way to honour your father! Looking forward to seeing the old vs. current photos.

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    1. We are looking forward to this little task ahead, it should be a lot of fun.

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  4. Oh wow...what a cool idea. Hope you find many, many places dad visited.

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    1. I hope that we are able to find quite a few of the same places too. :-)

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  5. What a great trip you have planned! Can you tell me what method you used to digitize old slides? I did a little research online and one of the suggestions was to use a camera, can't imagine that would work.

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    1. We are really looking forward to it, especially because we will be traveling in an RV which is one of our favourite ways of traveling around and seeing the sights.

      Quite a few years ago my Dad bought a "Film and Slide Converter" so that I could convert the slides to digital format. It has worked quite well and I am sure that the newer ones are even better. I think Kevin will include some info in our next blog post about a similar one which is newer.

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  6. Sounds like it will be a fun hobby to keep you extra busy on your journey.

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  7. So looking forward to following your trip. What a great project.

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    1. Can't wait to tell everyone about our adventures! :-)

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  8. He was indeed a good photographer! Love the pic. My son is a good photographer but I am not. I tend to take pictures of meaningless landscape pictures...some fortunately turned out to be awesome i.e. massive glaciers in Alaska, orcas with baby, otters floating in ocean on their backs and geese migrating in formation. I did take some building photos that I thought were beautiful or unusual.

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    1. Yes, he was a good photographer and he only keep a very small amount of the photos that he took. Kevin also took up the love of photography when he was young, he even had his own dark room in the basement of his family's house. We are looking forward to this fun task ahead of us.

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  9. That sounds like a very interesting project! I have been thinking about digitizing old photos from my mom of her time in my birthplace in Heidelberg Germany! Looking forward to your adventures!

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    1. Yep, it should be fun, we are definitely looking forward to it. It would take me or my Dad ages to do all of his and my mother's photos, they have so many of them. One day I will sit down with him and do just that.

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  10. What a great idea!! That should keep you all busy for sure!!

    www.freedom2roll.blogspot.com

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    1. Thanks, we think it sounds like a great idea too, and yes it will quite us busy and maybe out of trouble. ;-)

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  11. I can hardly wait for that adventure to begin. Meanwhile I am looking forward to your grans and Xmas.

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    1. We are looking forward to Christmas with the family as well, especially being able to watch Cameron and Sadie opening their presents. This will be our first ever Christmas with them. :-)

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  12. Enjoy your trip in Spain. I have been to Ibiza this year in January. It was such good fun!

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    1. Thank you, we are looking forward to exploring much of the southern portion of Spain in the next couple of months. It should be an interesting and fun time for us both.

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