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A young Loki in his “curtain fort”, July 2010. Love that look… like… WHAT?? Hahaha.
12 Thursday Jul 2018
Posted animals & pets, casa azahar, cats, throw back thursday
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A young Loki in his “curtain fort”, July 2010. Love that look… like… WHAT?? Hahaha.
23 Friday Feb 2018
Posted food & drink, gastronomy, photos, sevilla, tapas, wine
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bodegas izadi, maria trifulca, photography, photos, rioja, sevilla, vicugofoto, wine
[click on image to enlarge]
A rather unusual event this week, being a combined cata by Bodegas Izadi, and a photography class given by Vicugofoto, which took place at the Restaurante Maria Trifulca, at the Triana end of the Isabella II bridge.
The building is an obvious landmark, with a history interesting enough to be worth a short digression. It was originally built in the early 1920s as the offices and boarding point for the steam river boats to Sanlúcar de Barrameda at the mouth of the river, but after some 50 years of operation it could no longer compete with cars, buses and trains. In the 80s it was converted into use as a restaurant (El Faro), and a few years ago passed into new hands as the Maria Trifulca. The name comes from the river beach near Heliopolis which was hugely popular during the 20s and 30s, until an explosion in the nearby gunpowder factory resulted in a great tragedy and the beach was closed down.
The photo class was quite basic, more a demonstration of various tools for lighting and other technical aids than about technique and framing. There were ten of us participating and we each took turns trying to get the “money shot” of the various dishes that were brought to us.
This was followed by the wine tasting organized by Bodegas Izadi, a relatively small Rioja winery founded in 1987, with food pairings prepared by the restaurant.
We started with Larrosa, a very nice fresh rosada which was probably my favourite, paired with two types of nigiri. Next up was Blanco FB, a fruity white that nicely paired with salmon tartare. Then onto the Reds. A 2015 Criaza with char-grilled octopus (probably the best food of the evening), followed by Selección with the main course of grilled presa Ibérica, and finally El Regalo, another red, with the cheesecake dessert.
Thanks to everyone who helped organize the event, and the staff at Maria Trifulca.
12 Friday Jan 2018
Posted casa azahar, cats, computers, iphone
inSo HEIC is the name Apple chose for its new HEIF standard for photos. HEIF stands for High Efficiency Image Format, a more streamlined way to store image files. Using advanced, modern compression methods it allows digital photographs to be created in smaller files sizes, while retaining higher image quality than its JPEG alternative. Which sounds great EXCEPT that nobody else is using this format other than Apple, so it won’t download on my computer, blah blah…
After locating an app that would convert HEIC to JPEG, a friend told me that it was actually possible to turn off the HEIC option on the phone, so I have now done that. I mean, I now have 256 GBs and am sure I’ll never get up to using even half of that, so I’m not really interested in saving space. Anyhow, Morcilla looks just as pretty in JPEG, wouldn’t you agree?
02 Friday Jun 2017
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One of my favourite Instagram feeds is by Sevilla-based JoseToro.0, which features, well, people walking. Wonderful slice of life photos (go have a look and come back). Then last December José started a second account called JoseToroWalkers (also the hashtag he uses on his personal account) as people from around the world have been capturing #josetorowalker images and sharing the hashtag.
So here is my first one, captured while walking from one bar to the next (yeah, I know…). And it turns out that this fellow is quite well-known in the barrio. You can also see it on my Instagram here… https://www.instagram.com/p/BUzaDnvjR9p/
29 Friday Jul 2016
Posted food & drink, instagram, sevilla
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