This is Santander from above, a relaxed hilly town in Cantabria in the northern part of Spain. This is where I spent most of my time in Spain, and the easygoing mood of the town totally captivated me.

So - my post from the other day about flickr and onexposure generated a few responses - well - it wasn't my intetion to trash flickr - it was more about how and why the pictures that gets highlighted in explore, and what makes those pictures get there. But I still stick to my opinion about it - there is more hype in flickr than quality work - but not to say that there isn't quality work there - like my friend Francesco stated, this group - http://www.flickr.com/groups/greenteagallery/ - has a lot of awesome solid pieces of photography. But I would be interested to know what percentage of those pictures in that group made it to explore - because in my opinion, a very big majority of those pictures belong there, and need to be exposed as a representative of the quality of work displayed in flickr. But I would assume that majority of them DIDN'T make it to explore, hence my disappointment. And as Ilan mentioned in his post, some people have figured out ways to get their pictures in explore pretty easily by manipulating the system, adding to my disappointment even more ....

A Drive through Switzerland

A drive through Switzerland is everything that I thought it would be. Mountains, lakes and the requisite chocolate stops makes this one of the more memorable road trips in Europe.

Cliché

Aside from the pristine beaches, there is another side of Jamaica landscape that I noticed when I ventured out from the sheltered resort area. When you venture inland, there is a plethora of other scenery that is very different than the tourism posters of Jamaica. I happened to walk off the hotel property, and stumbled upon the edge of golf course which was not really part of it, but still was very well taken care of. Either way, anybody would be more than ecstatic to have it as their backyard.

On a different note, I wanted to mention something about photographic cliches. Photographic cliches are images that are created with motifs that are very common, such as sunrise/sunset beaches, mountaineous landscapes, rocks in water, autumn leaves, white fences - and lone trees. I've probably rattled off about 70% of the recent pictures you've seen on the web (and possibly on my blog). The truth is that in the current digital age, and the easy access to camera equipment/technology, its pretty hard to be original, especially for amateurs like myself. All this is a little depressing unless you're a creative genius, and so the philosophy has to change. So if you're not going to create the next original masterpiece, then I guess the thing to take note off is whether you're having fun, and whether you believe in what you created (or are creating) - IMHO, its all worthwhile as long as that requirement is met. Also, I strongly believe that once you are having fun and believe in what you're doing, you will end up creating that masterpiece at some point. Yes, the lone tree motif has been done many times before, but I'm fairly confident its not that rampant in landscapes of Jamaica (I hope). This is my thought process in the ever changing, saturated world of photography of today. What is your approach?