Colombia is notorious for a particular crop, but as a visitor you’re not very likely to visit any farm growing that! However, they are very openly proud of their coffee and many farms welcome visitors. We visited a typical farm with a guide, Juan-Paolo, who was a former employee.
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Historically, Getsemani is the area of Cartagena where African slaves lived during colonial times. The Spanish had imported them (after they’d killed off most of the native population) to build their fortifications: the city walls and the Castillo San Felipe de Barajas. They were housed here, outside the city walls, away from the grand homes of the soldiers and merchants who controlled it.
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For most of us photos are an integral to our memories of life’s events. How we remember them is shaped by the moments we captured. In my travel photography I am usually juggling two aims. I want to capture the ‘what’, create a documentary record of each trip. But I’m also interested in ‘how’ I record and remember it, striving to create the best images I can.
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Colombia is one of the most colourful countries I’ve ever visited, possibly the most colourful. So it seems counter-intuitive to present it in black and white. Yet however colourful the destination there are always likely to be at least a few images that I feel merit experimentation. Ones in which form dominates the composition. Ones with strong contrasts and patterns.
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Cocora was a princess, daughter of Acaime, chief of the local Quimbaya indigenous people. Today she lends her name to Colombia’s Cocora Valley, where the native wax palms (the national tree) grow up to 60 metres and live for about 200 years.
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You can’t really miss the unique style of Colombia’s most famous artist. Whether on canvas or in sculpture, his figures are exaggeratedly rotund. The innate humour of these people, and animals, is often offset by sharp political commentary or by pensive contemplation of his own life and family. Indeed the theme of family is central to much of his work.
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A number of you seemed to enjoy seeing my Colombian orchids. Now Denzil gives me an excuse to share some more flowers from that beautiful country.
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How do you find peace in a city rife with crime and violence? During the 1980s and most of the 1990s Medellín had the reputation of being one of the most violent cities in the world.
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February is my least favourite month! That’s why we often choose to travel somewhere warmer at this time of year. Consequently, I spent well over half of February in colourful Colombia, and the remainder in wintery London, so you can guess what the majority of my highlight photos from this month will have been taken!
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Colombia can claim to have one fifth of the world’s birds, an amazing 1,954 species. That said, we saw relatively few of them. This may be in part because we went to the wrong places at the wrong time of year. And in part because we’re not experts and neither did we do any specific bird-watching activities.
