Grape Harvest in the Penedès wine region of Spain. August 2009.

The end of August marks the beginning of grape harvest season in the Penedès wine region of Spain. Tractors overloaded with grapes crowd the roads and create traffic jams on the normally empty roads. Even the locals who know the back-road shortcuts aren’t immune to being stuck behind a grape harvesting machine or truck hauling grapes back to a winery. Small villages in the area run communal grape presses and the smell of wine production fills the air as you pass by them.

The harvesting process is pretty straightforward, but takes two distinct forms. Younger vines in flat areas are aligned in perfectly straight, evenly spaced rows with the growth direction controlled by wires and stakes. This allows for a mechanized harvesting machine to easily pass down the row and harvest the grapes leaving the vines intact. Older vines, such as those in the photos are allowed more freedom to grow and require hand picking as they are far more delicate. Hand picking allows the wine maker to be more selective about the grape quality, leaving grapes that might be past their prime on the vine.

These Macabeo grapes will likely end up in the production of Cava, a Spanish sparkling wine.

Grapes need to be harvested at different times depending upon any number of factors: the type of wine being created, sugar content of the grapes, altitude of the growing reason, variety of the grapes harvested, etc., but ultimately the winemaker is at the mercy of the weather. The combination of rainfall and temperature can decide the quality of the wine produced each growing season long before the harvesters step into the field.

Hand harvesting allows for the selection of better grapes.

Grapes are transported directly to the winery to be crushed shortly after harvest to make sure they don't get to warm.

From the field the grapes are brought directly to the winery for timely processing. It’s up the winemaker to decide how to process them to create each specific type of wine. Temperature, type of juice extraction, length of time the grapes are allowed to remain with the skins and other factors shape the wine from the very start so every step in the process is important in achieving a high quality wine. Exactly how much wine that can be produced from a field is dependent on the growing conditions, age of the vines, and the processes of the winemaker.

Photographers Notes

I had a chance to attend the grape harvest of a local winery while I was in Spain during August. It was a great chance to see the starting process in wine making, and gave me more respect for how complex the winemaking process really is. Between endless grape varieties, harvest times, extraction processes, and then fermentation and bottling, there are so many factors that go into producing a quality wine, that sometimes it seems like it takes a lot of luck to come up with a good formula.

The lens hood on my 70-200 was a magnet to the fine dirt that the grape vines grow in.

The field was pretty dusty, as it was in fact a field. I tried to find some interesting angles which had me laying in the dirt or climbing on the trailers covered in grape juice. I came away with a dusty camera, but no harm done. I used my Canon 30D with my 70-200 F2.8 IS, 17-40 F4 and 50 F1.8 lenses. On second look at the photos, I could have brought my speed light as some of the shots were shot in the early morning and could have used some fill.

I hope you enjoyed reading this. If you made it all the way through, please leave a comment with your thoughts. I’m going to be doing regular photo essays and would love any feedback on how to improve.

Panoramic of the Penedès Wine Region of Spain, 2009.

Click to view a larger version of the photo. When the image loads in the lightbox, click and drag to view the entire panoramic.

Photo Notes

Shot on my Canon 30D and 17-40mm F4.

I am currently doing a WorkAway in the Penedès Wine region of Spain a few hours outside of Barcelona. My host runs a wine tourism business which partly specializes in giving tours of the wine region on bike. This Sunday we set out for a 30km ride to see some of the sights around the area. Click “continue reading” to check out the rest of the photos.

Bike issues right away caused some delay.

Leaving the place where we are staying is a 3km uphill climb. As soon as we got to the top I shifted and the chain came off, got tangled in the back wheel and bent the rear derailleur. Fortunately we were not too far from home and we were able to grab a different bike.

Grapes from one of the highest vineyards in the region, used mainly in the production of Cava.

1,000 year old tree.

House used as vacation home for Belgian royal family.

One of the regions many natural springs. Very cool, clean and refreshing water.

Blackberry season. They provided a much needed energy boost.

Human tower building during the La Llacuna village festival.

The village of La Llacuna, Spain was the last stop on our bike ride before heading home. We initially stopped in to grab a beer and sandwich, but the village was having a festival so we stayed to watch some of the performances.

Dancing during the La Llacuna village festival.

A performance during the La Llacuna village festival.

Photo Notes

All photos were shot with my Canon 30D and 17-40mm F4. I started using a circular polarizing filter on the lens and it makes the sky and colors stand out dramatically. The filter is an no-name brand that I bought at the Shanghai photo market. Normally I would shy away from using cheap filters (I don’t use a UV filter on any lens), but for the price it really enhances the photos. I’ve heard of some people having problems with cheap CPL’s adding a green color cast, but in my experience when shooting RAW this has not been an issue.

I had the opportunity to shoot This Will Destroy You at Lido in Berlin, Germany last Sunday. This Will Destroy You is an instrumental rock back from Texas that I discovered earlier in the year thanks to one of my favorite web comics, Questionable Content. Since then it’s been on non-stop playback. Check out the rest of the post for some more photos and some photo notes.

Photo Notes

Concert photography continuously pushes the limits of my 30D and lenses. Thankfully the lighting was better than I was expecting which allowed me to get some decent shots. Even with decent lighting and my 50mm F1.8 and 70-200mm F2.8 IS, I still had to shoot at ISO 1600 the entire show. I decided to go with black and white processing as I feel that fits the mood of the music better. If you have not checked out This Will Destroy You, you can visit their MySpace page here.

Killings show up every day in the news. Politicians on both sides of the border cast blame. Despite all drug related violence, the citizens of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico have to go on living their lives and have problems of their own to face. The current economic crisis is making it difficult to find jobs and as the city expands outwards neighborhoods are popping up without basic utilities. In early January 2009 I traveled to Juarez, Mexico with some friends to build a house for a family in need. This photo essay is about my time spent there.

This photo tour can be viewed as a slideshow. Simply click on an image to begin play or Click Here.

The neighborhood that we built in was one of the newer areas that lacks many utilities. Many houses get electricity from pirate electrical lines run across the ground that the neighborhood kids play soccer on, and without waste management garbage either goes into the neighboring field or is burned.

The recently cut wood scraps quickly turned into toys for the kids.

This of course happened after the concrete was almost finished.

The young family that we built for has three kids ages 1, 3, and 4 and was living in a small cinder block house. The father had been out of work for a while and was unable to find stable employment. Many people in his condition end up looking for small day labor jobs to put food on the table.

Once the neighborhood kids found out that we had a bag of candy it didn’t last long.

Toothache. I’m sure the candy didn’t help either.

This dog appeared and started chasing the families chicken.

The dog from the previous photos chased this chicken into a fence constructed from bed springs, where it got stuck. It was unable to get out by itself, and was rescued only to find it’s self toted around by this boy.

Handing over the house.

Photographers Notes

I shot over 1,800 images over the trip on my Canon 30D. I switched between my Canon 17-40 4L and Canon 70-200 2.8L IS. Since I was building while shooting my 30D took a beating, mostly from scratching against my tool belt. Some of the paint was scratched off underneath the LCD, but other than that no real damage was done.

In an attempt to bring about order the Mexican troops had been dispatched to Juarez. The only time we saw them was at a checkpoint the first day. We stopped at the checkpoint, and only after leaving did we realize that there were soldiers in makeshift bunkers aiming rifles at our vehicles. I wanted to get a photo on the day we left, but the checkpoint was not operational.

Geese. Lake Byron, South Dakota

I have had the chance recently to get outdoors a bit and try my hand a nature photography. Below are some shots from some recent trips into the area surrounding Lake Byron, South Dakota followed by some commentary.

Bald Eagles

Young Bald Eagle

Compilation of five photos of a young Bald Eagle taking off.

Three Bald Eagles.
I have had a difficult time getting close to the older ones.

Young Bald Eagle

Photo Notes

Nature photography, or more specifically bird photography, as featured here is something that is pretty new to me. It requires long lenses, tests the limits of your equipment and requires serious patience. For most of these photos, the temperature was near 15°F, nearing -1°F with wind. Whenever I was not shooting I had to take the battery out of the camera and put it near a source of heat to keep the battery from dying. Even with that, my 30D which can normally handle 11+ frame burst in RAW, was dropping to about three before having to pause to write for about 20 seconds.

Birds are small and tend not to fly near you, especially in SD during hunting season. My newly acquired Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS coupled with my 30D gives me an equivalent of 320mm, but even that fell short most of the time. I’m sure if I coupled the lens with a 2X Extender I would have adequate reach. One thing is for sure, bird photography requires some serious equipment to pull off correctly.

With all the trouble I had, there were some pretty amazing moments. The large flocks of Geese leaving the lake was straight out of Planet Earth. Also, at one point as I was driving, the young Bald Eagle that was in the last shot followed me beside the road for about 10 minutes. Thankfully I was the only one on the road and was able to stop multiple times for photo’s.

MMMmmm.. The taste of economic destruction in the morning….

Photo Notes

The photoshoot for the images used real shredded US currency that I happened to have laying around. To light it I used an Alien Bee B800 studio strobe with a medium size softbox as well a Canon 550EX Speedlight with an homemade cardboard snoot. The lens/camera setup consisted of a Canon 50mm f/1.8 on my 30D.

This image and others are available for sale via my stock photography site. Please check out the gallery below to view others in the series. Please do not link directly to the image itself, or modify it an any form. Please contact me directly for licensing of the “Credit Crunch” image. Thanks.

I have been shooting some nature shots lately to build up my stock portfolio. While out one day at Lake Byron, South Dakota, I found this large flock of geese and created a few panoramics which I combined into one. Click to view the large version. Once loaded you can drag it around to view the whole photo.

Aaron Marsh of Copeland. Omaha, NE @ Slowdown.

Lights

Lydia

Lovedrug

Copeland

Photo Notes

Thanks to Lydia I was able to get a photo pass for this show featuring four great bands.This show was the first test for my new Canon 70-200mm 2.8L IS, which arrived a day before. The switches on the lens are a bit loose and I kept bumping the AF and IS off unintentionally, leaving me with a bunch of out of focus images. I got some gaffers tape from the mixing booth and taped over them, fixing the problem; I have yet to remove the tape, and will probably leave it on permanently. Lights and Lydia had pretty poor lighting which added to my problems, but by the time Copeland went on the light levels had been raised giving me a bit more to work with in regards to shutter speed. Even at F2.8 and IS I shot at ISO 1600, testing the limits of both the lens and my 30D.

Overall it was an amazing show, it’s always great having the chance to photograph the music you love. If you have not checked out these bands I highly recommend them: Lights – Lights Ep, Lydia – Illuminate, Lovedrug – The Sucker Punch Show, Copeland – You Are My Sunshine. Illuminate and You Are My Sunshine have been on almost constant repeat since the show.

Ever since I was a child I have been fascinated with old barns.
I can remember driving to my grandparents house in Iowa and staring out the window searching for the old broken down barns. This past weekend I had the opportunity to travel around some hilly back roads of Iowa searching for barns of my childhood. Here are some photo’s from the trip.