Full of tourists during the summer months, it clears in winter leaving space for snow, mist, and emptiness. Locals carry on with daily life in town, whilst the walks along the sea promenade are eerily beautiful and quiet.
It is always one of our favourite places in the world to spend a few days, and we always think of Mangalia with special fondness.
Thailand. The humid and hot land, with smiling people driving in infernal traffic. A country with houses that spill their guts out in the street. Food stalls everywhere, delicious. Back streets with rats, big lizards, monkeys and tropical forests on islands. Tourists, odd pairs of old European men holding hands with young Thai women. A mix of amazing and baffling that might be the thing for some, or create irritation for others.
Iceland. Just so that there is no suspense. A “hot” touristic place, up to the point where locals are starting to moan that their local pub is now full of happy snappy tourists.
We’ve been there twice, both times with a couple of friends. Once to experience the music scene in the capital, and once to hit the road and do the full tour of the island.
It stroke me from the first time I’ve been there how good machinery ruins look on that magnificent island. Like in no other place. You can find them on the side of the road, in the backyards of remote farms, and at the end of a long empty road of some farm land, where black sand begins.
Some of them are really famous now, tourist attractions by all means, some of them are just sitting discarded by a family who has no need of them anymore. I assume it must be the fact that they are few people there, so far from each other especially in the villages, that it makes no point to transport them at a scrap yard. It looks like most farms or houses have their own machines’ cemetery.
I guess that for our mind, pre-filled with sci-fi movies imagery, it is the closest we will be to a post-apocalyptic scene outside a built set.
Put together in a series they also tell a nice story of the dots you tick as you circle the island, offering a rusty paint like snippets of a great land. They also capture all means of transport used by man, but also strange inner machinery cores unidentifiable for the common eye. Impossible film blends perfectly with every scene, capturing the right mood, or even adding its own fantastic layering. You just need to treat it nicely in the harsh conditions of Iceland. A warm pocket will do in most cases though.
Iceland is a bit like a miniature Earth itself, and is chilling in its majesty and in the fact that it can make you feel like one of the last people remaining on the planet.
Would go to visit again any time, any season. There is no shortage of things to see. And meanwhile, who knows, some more discarded objects will gain some beautiful patina.
This year we went to Cuba, just before a highly anticipated invasion of the small island by the friendly neighbors from the States. A country like no other, we thought it only makes sense to shoot our memories and the city-scapes seen with a Red Konica Pop, a great fun camera, easy to use and which produces excellent results, in both colour and black and white. Be aware though, Cubans didn’t reach yet the stage of stocking photo films again. The joy of memory sticks and digital images is quite the hype there.
You can find the camera for sale on our website and in our Etsy shop. Camera is in great working condition and has just the right amount of Cuban dust on it to make it perfect.
We’ve decided to enlist a bit of help from Etsy, and we’ve created a decoy store on there.
Our main digandgift website will remain the main inspirational source for any gifts you might want or dream of.
And to add to the recently posted items on Etsy, here you go…some gift ideas. Do contact us for further details on items that are not listed.
More to come…