Taking photographs here isn’t easy, the toughest is too avoid clichés. Blue sky, white clouds, white houses and flower pots – it is all too easy to make postcard pics or fall into the “Doors of Frigilana”, “Windows of Almuñecar”, “Flowerpots of Salobreña” trap. This might sound silly to non-photographers but I am struggling hard to come up with a new, fresh perspective, I literally lie awake at night thinking about how in the world I could capture all that white and blue with flower accents and make it look not like the next person’s pictures. And it’s really, really hard and I don’t think I am succeeding. There is something about photographing the conventionally ugly like a rundown shipyard (been there) or an old industrial plant (done that) that makes it easier to avoid the cliché. If you send 20 people out to take pictures of that ship yard they will come back with 20 sets of very different pictures - maybe not conventionally beautiful pictures but individual, characteristic pictures. But let 20 people loose on Frigiliana and you’ll have: beauty, blue, white, flowers, door knockers in shape of hands, black cats on white stairs, the occasional “pensionista” sitting on a red bench against a white house, azulejos with house numbers - all so pretty and all so similar. Okay, so am I really complaining that this place is too nice? I guess so, unthankful brat that I am, but its true beauty sure makes for a more challenging “interesting” subject than ugliness. The bad weather over the last few days helped a bit – grey skies break the routine and give everything a more 
dramatic, less typical “Sunny Costa del Sol” look but it is still flowerpots against white houses against grey skies. I tried silly stuff like “white on white” – like white steps against white walls, white deck chairs against white floors – gets old quickly and, really, I am not the first one to come up with that one either, nor am I the last one. Now maybe if I convert them into Black & Whites, increase graininess, blow them up, group them, frame them in 
exhibition thin German silver frames it could look, well passable – but that has nothing to do with photography, that’s post processing. Anybody has any ideas – let me know quick. I don’t expect Florence to be any more ugly.
Yesterday I cheated on one of the 5 most important men in my life: my expensive, Silicon Valley, Asian, non-gay, artsy hairdresser. Alan, I love you, but my hair was a mess after 3 months and so I sought the professional help of Marie-Isabell in the little peluqueria halfway down the 46 steps towards the iglesia. She did a decent job, and given that the whole washing-cutting-blow-drying job cost me 15 Euros, tip included I really can’t complain. I am glad it is over, though, the women among the readers will understand what a scary undertaking it is to trust ones hair to an unknown quantity such as Marie-Isabell especially when one has no idea how to say “for-heavens-sake-don’t-cut-a-millimter-more-than-absolutely-necessary-and-make-sure-there-are-decent-layers” in Spanish. I was so nervous I could barely say a word in Spanish at all let alone understand anything she said in “Andaluce” which turns out to have – like many dialects - a preference for dropping endings, stringing words together or dropping them altogether. So “hasta luego” becomes “luego” – that’s easy just like “see you later” becomes “later” - I can even wrap my mind around “Bueno dia” or “gracia” or “do ciento” but use that same principle on a long and complicated sentence that has something to do with “cortar” (cut) while scissors are dangerously close to cutting short bangs and you might understand the degree of my unease. So it’s done, it won’t win me any prices for “best groomed tourist” or “most innovative haircut on the eastern Costa del Sol” or anything like that but I do not dread looking in the mirror any more than normally and I guess I can’t ask for much more.
Okay, those were just trivia of the traveler’s life. What important things have we seen or done, which important fact about Moorish history in Andalucia have we committed to memory and which educational trips benefiting the impressionable mind of our precious son have we undertaken? Well, we saw another couple of pretty white villages, that must have been really pretty about 30 years ago – that is before they build those awful hotels right between the old town and the beach - and visited two castillos while we were there. Before Max spent 95% of his time talking about canons and firecrackers – now we are up to 98%, the remaining 2% being taken up with request for ice-cream, screams of horror when we want him to eat veggies or encourage him to try a piece of fruit and warnings like: “Mama, careful dog kaka on the street, don’t step in it. Mama, dog kaka!!!” Both villages, Almuñecar and Solabreña, are very nice really, well worth the short trip from Frigiliana. Blindingly white walls, nicely restored castillos and surprisingly few tourists. Those who live in the big hotels
on the beach rarely seem to leave the hotels to venture into the old towns. Beats me, but I guess some people really like staying in hotels. On the way back from Almuñecar it started raining and the sun shone so we got treated to a perfect rainbow against the dark grey sky with a fainter second one outside (Max called them the young and the old rainbow). Well, that was a cliché photo op I wasn’t strong enough to pass up ….
dramatic, less typical “Sunny Costa del Sol” look but it is still flowerpots against white houses against grey skies. I tried silly stuff like “white on white” – like white steps against white walls, white deck chairs against white floors – gets old quickly and, really, I am not the first one to come up with that one either, nor am I the last one. Now maybe if I convert them into Black & Whites, increase graininess, blow them up, group them, frame them in 
exhibition thin German silver frames it could look, well passable – but that has nothing to do with photography, that’s post processing. Anybody has any ideas – let me know quick. I don’t expect Florence to be any more ugly.Yesterday I cheated on one of the 5 most important men in my life: my expensive, Silicon Valley, Asian, non-gay, artsy hairdresser. Alan, I love you, but my hair was a mess after 3 months and so I sought the professional help of Marie-Isabell in the little peluqueria halfway down the 46 steps towards the iglesia. She did a decent job, and given that the whole washing-cutting-blow-drying job cost me 15 Euros, tip included I really can’t complain. I am glad it is over, though, the women among the readers will understand what a scary undertaking it is to trust ones hair to an unknown quantity such as Marie-Isabell especially when one has no idea how to say “for-heavens-sake-don’t-cut-a-millimter-more-than-absolutely-necessary-and-make-sure-there-are-decent-layers” in Spanish. I was so nervous I could barely say a word in Spanish at all let alone understand anything she said in “Andaluce” which turns out to have – like many dialects - a preference for dropping endings, stringing words together or dropping them altogether. So “hasta luego” becomes “luego” – that’s easy just like “see you later” becomes “later” - I can even wrap my mind around “Bueno dia” or “gracia” or “do ciento” but use that same principle on a long and complicated sentence that has something to do with “cortar” (cut) while scissors are dangerously close to cutting short bangs and you might understand the degree of my unease. So it’s done, it won’t win me any prices for “best groomed tourist” or “most innovative haircut on the eastern Costa del Sol” or anything like that but I do not dread looking in the mirror any more than normally and I guess I can’t ask for much more.
Okay, those were just trivia of the traveler’s life. What important things have we seen or done, which important fact about Moorish history in Andalucia have we committed to memory and which educational trips benefiting the impressionable mind of our precious son have we undertaken? Well, we saw another couple of pretty white villages, that must have been really pretty about 30 years ago – that is before they build those awful hotels right between the old town and the beach - and visited two castillos while we were there. Before Max spent 95% of his time talking about canons and firecrackers – now we are up to 98%, the remaining 2% being taken up with request for ice-cream, screams of horror when we want him to eat veggies or encourage him to try a piece of fruit and warnings like: “Mama, careful dog kaka on the street, don’t step in it. Mama, dog kaka!!!” Both villages, Almuñecar and Solabreña, are very nice really, well worth the short trip from Frigiliana. Blindingly white walls, nicely restored castillos and surprisingly few tourists. Those who live in the big hotels
on the beach rarely seem to leave the hotels to venture into the old towns. Beats me, but I guess some people really like staying in hotels. On the way back from Almuñecar it started raining and the sun shone so we got treated to a perfect rainbow against the dark grey sky with a fainter second one outside (Max called them the young and the old rainbow). Well, that was a cliché photo op I wasn’t strong enough to pass up ….
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