Category Archives: photography

new passport!

11 Wednesday Feb 2026

Posted by in photography, sevilla

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This just arrived! The first passport since I moved to Spain without a photo taken at Enrique Fotografo. After 67 years at the same location in Calle Rioja they closed their doors THE DAY BEFORE I went to get my passport pic. I was desolate when I hobbled over and saw this sign in the window. Back in the day Enrique was the only place in the centre I could get a photo with the specifications required by Canada, and so I just kept going back every five years. It became a kind of ritual, going into a proper studio, first stopping into a small room with a mirror to “arreglarme” and then getting a professional photo taken. No more.

We’ve lost so many long time family businesses like this over the past couple of years and it’s always the same story… building bought for more tourist apartments, the rent skyrockets, the business closes. In this case they have relocated to Tomares, a village outside the city in the Aljarafe. Sadly a bit too far out for me. Oh well, the memories remain. When I left a comment on their Instagram mentioning getting my Canadian passport photos done there for years they wrote back saying…”yes, we remember you!” 🥲

these guys…

12 Thursday Sep 2019

Posted by in iphone, photography, tapas, tapas bars, tapas tours

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The other night I was at Casa Morales on a Sevilla Tapas Tour and I spotted these guys at a table near us. I told my clients that I would love to sneak a photo of them, they were just such a lovely and charismatic group. And then one of them came over and asked if I would take their photo, so I said I would if I could also take one for me. Score! Though you can see that I really do need that new iPhone 11 Pro with its fab wide angle lens (I was against the wall here and couldn’t back up any further).   🙂

moving on from picasa…

20 Monday Aug 2018

Posted by in blogging, photography, work

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Moving on from Picasa… but where to?? Actually, this change came about in early 2016, which basically meant that there would be no more updates or support for Picasa, but it didn’t affect the existing versions. In fact, Peter downloaded the last version for his new laptop last month and it’s been working fine. That is, until Saturday.

I uploaded some photos from the day out, planning to do some editing and hopefully get a couple of review updates posted (my massive backlog is ALMOST cleared!!), but while the photos were uploaded properly into the file, they didn’t show up on Picasa. I thought it might just be a glitch and so I just shut things down, thinking that things would probably be back to normal after a reboot. But nope.

It occurred to me to reinstall Picasa, but then I thought I might screw up my present Picasa “library” which is showing everything I uploaded before Saturday. I also checked with Peter and his Picasa also wasn’t showing new photos he uploaded, so the possibility of losing everything seemed likely. Damn.

The thing I have always liked about Picasa was its simple editing options, and also that it was easy to scroll through the library that showed all my photo files. It also had a text option, so I could add my watermark, a collage maker, plus I could export the edited photos to other files at smaller sizes, keeping the originals in the original files. Google Photos, the recommended substitute for Picasa has only basic cropping and filter features, so it’s useless for me.

What to do?? I mean, photo editing is a HUGE part of my job, and I’m really stuck if I don’t have some means of doing this. I tried downloading the Windows Live editor, but that one doesn’t appear to be working either. I also tried GIMP and have just spent the last two hours totally frustrated with it, which is the same experience I had with it a few years ago. I’m sure it does wonderful stuff if you know how to do them, but it is not a user-friendly platform at all, and is very “clunky” in terms of finding the uploaded files and then exporting them.

I honestly don’t know what to do next. Any ideas?