Quick trip to Colombia
First of all, hi. I'm new here 
I discovered smugmug not long ago and after this trip I decided to get an account and put my photos from my most recent trip to Colombia in here! I know this forum is for comments on the trip itself, but if it is not against the rules please do critique the photos themselves and my gallery http://www.pablogaviria.com. If it's against the rules to do it in public feel free to send me private messages, I feel like I can use all the advice I can get right now. This is sort of a hobby right now because I am not getting paid to do it, but I take it very seriously and would love to do it for a living one day!
You should know before I see these photos and hear my travel story that I was born in Colombia and lived there until I was 17. Then I moved to the states and really had little contact with Colombia except for the 3 times I've been back since. I am now 26.
On with the story. My parents sponsored a trip for me to go to Colombia to get some dental work done because insurance companies refused to cover me here in the states. That's another story, but the point is that it was cheaper to do in Colombia so they sent me to Bucaramanga, Colombia and I took an extra week to travel by bus to Barranquilla, Colombia (where I was born) and Medellin, Colombia (a city I had never been to before)
The image above is of a woman that sells "cellphone minutes" on the street. This didn't happen when I lived there, but I guess since you only pay for calls you MAKE and not for calls you RECEIVE, a lot of people get prepaid phones and just use "cellphone minutes" that can be found anywhere in the street whenever they need to contact someone.
Homeless people are sad and hard reality in Colombia. A lot of them are mentally ill or drug addicts too. They become sort of characters in a neighborhood and everyone knows them. It's very normal in Colombia.
I snapped this photo from a distance. I think I like the photo because it reminds me of Colombia the way it was when I left it. I was about their age when I left and meeting with someone after school was the only thing that kids that age were concerned with. Sure, school too but the good memories were at least for me outside of school.
This is what Bucaramanga looks like from an upper class type of mall.
This is from the same mall but from a different spot and at night. I really wanted to go take some urban photos from other places but pretty much everyone I knew suggested against it. They claimed that my Canon t1i might be too flashy and attract criminals in places where I would usually not be at risk. Some said I might be able to do it with caution, which was very tricky for me. I kept asking what they meant by caution. They said for example, don't make your camera very visible, yada yada. I decided not to risk it at this point as this is my first ever DSLR camera and I worked very hard to get it and it's not insured or anything...
After I was done with my doctors appointments, and with 3 wisdom teeth less in my mouth and a lot of pain I took a bus to Barranquilla to meet my family that still lives there. I took this photo from inside the bus. I hated taking photos from inside the bus because my lenses are not that awesome to begin with and the extra dirty, often tinted glass didn't help, nor taking photos from a moving vehicle. But there were some great landscapes that you could see from the bus. I particularly liked this one, I think because I don't remember ever seeing trains in Colombia before! I am certain they were there, I just never personally see them. However I did see them while going to school in St. Louis and Chicago and as a photography student you can imagine I took so many pictures of trains and train tracks it's not even funny.
An abandoned gas station shot from the bus. Colombia actually has a lot of oil. It is right there next to Venezuela, however gas prices were even more expensive than in the US! I pay about $2.50 a gallon here. Prices were around $3.50+ there if I remember correctly. A lot of people have started getting they cars modified to run on natural gas as well as gasoline, which means they have to install a huge tank in the trunk and when you fill up the gas tank everyone has to get out of the car.
I also snapped this picture from the bus, I think in or around the town of Cienaga, Magdalena. I thought it was so pointless to sweep the outside of your house if, well, the outside of your house is all dirt. But I suppose if you lived there you'd develop a different sense of what dirt is. Maybe a dirty front yard means other types of trash like, plastic bags, glass bottles, dry leaves. Who knows?
Another picture snapped from the bus. Also in Cienaga. If I remember correctly, this lady is gathering salt. That white stuff you see is places where sea water settled and evaporated leaving just the salt. People then come and pick up the salt.
Finally I got to Barranquilla. I gotta tell you, I feel a little guilty about the photos I took in Barranquilla. The reason why is because I shot mostly the ugly stuff in Barranquilla. In general I know I shot a lot of stuff that doesn't promote Colombia as a place where foreigners should be going for vacation, but particularly in Barranquilla I shot all bad stuff and Barranquilla has a lot of really nice neighborhoods and is actually in my opinion the most American-like city in Colombia, if you were to only look at the wealthy neighborhoods. This picture and the next pictures coming up were taken downtown, near a main street called Paseo Bolivar. The area is dirty and has a lot of street vendors that have invaded the side walks.
This particular stand sold fruit juices.
The outside of an abandoned house.
Homeless man sleeping on the street. This was... too common in downtown Barranquilla. I could have taken a lot more of these but at this point I knew I was not in the safest of places and tried to move as fast as I could, taking pictures without being noticed. The last thing I needed was some crazy or drugged out person coming to beat me up for taking his picture.
This is the Rex theater. It was one of the first movie theaters in Barranquilla. It showed normal Hollywood movies, as well as some Italian movies in the wee days and then it turned into a porno theater. It still functions as a porno theater. It's in a bad part of town too, so it's not like one of those hip gay get-togethers say in Boystown, Chicago. I can't imagine the stuff that happens in there. I asked my uncle about it and he said only gay people go there. It's probably true. I don't mean to imply that most gay people are degenerates or anything like that. Not at all. However because of the intolerance in Colombia towards gay people, a lot of them are confined to expressing their sexuality in these types of ways. They are put in the same category as criminals and perverts.
During this incursion downtown, we got to a point where my uncle, who was escorting me said: Ok, we can't go past this street. And me being the stubburn person I am started asking, why, why can't we go there?? He said it was a lot more dangerous by the next street but I insisted that we went and took a picture and he was too nice to say no. Within one block I found this corner. The plaque on the wall says that it was in this corner that Barranquilla started being populated in the early 1600's. Wow. This is the place where my city was born. I really wish I had wider angle lens with me to have taken this pic in one shot, instead I had to take several handheld shots and stitch them later, so excuse my poor stitching.
A couple of days later I got on the road again to Medellin. This is a shot snapped before getting in my bus. It was a bit of a long trip. I left Barranquilla at about 9pm and arrived to Medellin at around 2pm the next day. It was raining most of the way and the roads are full of curves, though. The trip to Medellin is even more scenic! I traveled at night to avoid making it a longer trip. I was told during the day the buses stop everywhere to pick up and drop passengers. Also during the day they have military check points and they make you get off the bus, show papers and blah blah. I got stopped once and showed my passport and the soldier asked what I was doing there, if I had family in Colombia then gave me a thumbs up and it was all very pleasant. When I lived in Colombia it was actually dangerous to travel by land, you could get kidnapped. This has changed ever since the new President Uribe was elected. He made a statement a few years ago saying it was now safe to travel by land and it certainly looks that way!
Two American girls traveling in the same bus to Medellin with some cows in the background.
More cows on the way to Medellin.
This is near Medellin. The clouds always touch the mountains like that, it's very photogenic.
More of the landscape near Medellin.
Medellin near the bus terminal.
House in El Poblado, Medellin. One of the nicer parts of town. Filled with foreigners, I was actually surprised about that. I stayed in hostel that was packed and I think I might have been the only Colombian, or south american one for that matter.
This was a building that belonged to Pablo Escobar or the Medellin cartel and was bombed during the cartel wars. It seems abandoned now and it's filled with some cool graffiti.
There was actually a lot of awesome graffiti in Medellin!
I took this pic because of the irony in the spelling of the message. If you know Spanish, you might notice it. Otherwise it's a cool graffiti.
Strawberry sale on the street, near the metro station in El Poblado.
The view from a bridge to the Metro station at El Poblado.
The train station at El Poblado. It was not a bad train, really! I had to compare it to the Chicago CTA because I took it everyday for years and I gotta say, while the CTA has a much larger route, the Medellin Metro is more quiet by far.
People waiting for the train.
Girl looking out the window from the train.
The train's route.
Some of the people in the train.
There is a park in downtown Medellin, in front of the Antioquia Museum with a lot of Botero sculptures. I felt really safe pulling out my camera and taking lots of pictures here, as opposed to downtown Barranquilla or Bucaramanga. I don't know if that was naive of me but nothing happened.
Man sleeping in the park. I hope he didn't get sunburned.
People and the butt of a Botero.
Another Botero.
Two street sellers. They are VERY common. They sell anything from coffee and candy to cigarettes.
Another street seller.
Girl playing in a fountain, bum in the background.
Homeless people looking for probably food or stuff to recycle and get some money from or just a quiet place to sleep.
Man hanging out in the park.
More homeless people.
As I said before, payphones are completely useless in Colombia now. It wasn't like that when I lived there. I guess they sort of are in the US now as well, but at least they are still used once in a while in the US if your phone breaks, or I dunno, something. In Colombia is always cheaper to buy minutes from other people. Notice the string attached to her cellphone? that's because that's not her cellphone, she's buying minutes and the string is to protect the phone from being stolen.
Man being shaved.
Street performers.
Woman asking for money.
The graffiti reads "Public education is a right" another graffiti off the frame read "Not charity"
Videogames being sold on the street.
Magnifying glasses being sold on the street.
It seemed like an awkward way to sleep.
This man read your future from a cigar for $1000 pesos or about $.50
Man getting off an armored car.
A poster for "Casa de Citas" an exibition in the Antioquia Museum about cross referencing, appropriation, and that sort of thing in contemporary art. All Colombian artists, EXCELLENT. Go see it if you get a chance.
The view from the rooftop of my hostel. People could come up here and bring a beer and have a chat. Really, a great place to be. After this night I flew back to the US.
I discovered smugmug not long ago and after this trip I decided to get an account and put my photos from my most recent trip to Colombia in here! I know this forum is for comments on the trip itself, but if it is not against the rules please do critique the photos themselves and my gallery http://www.pablogaviria.com. If it's against the rules to do it in public feel free to send me private messages, I feel like I can use all the advice I can get right now. This is sort of a hobby right now because I am not getting paid to do it, but I take it very seriously and would love to do it for a living one day!You should know before I see these photos and hear my travel story that I was born in Colombia and lived there until I was 17. Then I moved to the states and really had little contact with Colombia except for the 3 times I've been back since. I am now 26.
On with the story. My parents sponsored a trip for me to go to Colombia to get some dental work done because insurance companies refused to cover me here in the states. That's another story, but the point is that it was cheaper to do in Colombia so they sent me to Bucaramanga, Colombia and I took an extra week to travel by bus to Barranquilla, Colombia (where I was born) and Medellin, Colombia (a city I had never been to before)
The image above is of a woman that sells "cellphone minutes" on the street. This didn't happen when I lived there, but I guess since you only pay for calls you MAKE and not for calls you RECEIVE, a lot of people get prepaid phones and just use "cellphone minutes" that can be found anywhere in the street whenever they need to contact someone.
Homeless people are sad and hard reality in Colombia. A lot of them are mentally ill or drug addicts too. They become sort of characters in a neighborhood and everyone knows them. It's very normal in Colombia.
I snapped this photo from a distance. I think I like the photo because it reminds me of Colombia the way it was when I left it. I was about their age when I left and meeting with someone after school was the only thing that kids that age were concerned with. Sure, school too but the good memories were at least for me outside of school.
This is what Bucaramanga looks like from an upper class type of mall.
This is from the same mall but from a different spot and at night. I really wanted to go take some urban photos from other places but pretty much everyone I knew suggested against it. They claimed that my Canon t1i might be too flashy and attract criminals in places where I would usually not be at risk. Some said I might be able to do it with caution, which was very tricky for me. I kept asking what they meant by caution. They said for example, don't make your camera very visible, yada yada. I decided not to risk it at this point as this is my first ever DSLR camera and I worked very hard to get it and it's not insured or anything...
After I was done with my doctors appointments, and with 3 wisdom teeth less in my mouth and a lot of pain I took a bus to Barranquilla to meet my family that still lives there. I took this photo from inside the bus. I hated taking photos from inside the bus because my lenses are not that awesome to begin with and the extra dirty, often tinted glass didn't help, nor taking photos from a moving vehicle. But there were some great landscapes that you could see from the bus. I particularly liked this one, I think because I don't remember ever seeing trains in Colombia before! I am certain they were there, I just never personally see them. However I did see them while going to school in St. Louis and Chicago and as a photography student you can imagine I took so many pictures of trains and train tracks it's not even funny.
An abandoned gas station shot from the bus. Colombia actually has a lot of oil. It is right there next to Venezuela, however gas prices were even more expensive than in the US! I pay about $2.50 a gallon here. Prices were around $3.50+ there if I remember correctly. A lot of people have started getting they cars modified to run on natural gas as well as gasoline, which means they have to install a huge tank in the trunk and when you fill up the gas tank everyone has to get out of the car.
I also snapped this picture from the bus, I think in or around the town of Cienaga, Magdalena. I thought it was so pointless to sweep the outside of your house if, well, the outside of your house is all dirt. But I suppose if you lived there you'd develop a different sense of what dirt is. Maybe a dirty front yard means other types of trash like, plastic bags, glass bottles, dry leaves. Who knows?
Another picture snapped from the bus. Also in Cienaga. If I remember correctly, this lady is gathering salt. That white stuff you see is places where sea water settled and evaporated leaving just the salt. People then come and pick up the salt.
Finally I got to Barranquilla. I gotta tell you, I feel a little guilty about the photos I took in Barranquilla. The reason why is because I shot mostly the ugly stuff in Barranquilla. In general I know I shot a lot of stuff that doesn't promote Colombia as a place where foreigners should be going for vacation, but particularly in Barranquilla I shot all bad stuff and Barranquilla has a lot of really nice neighborhoods and is actually in my opinion the most American-like city in Colombia, if you were to only look at the wealthy neighborhoods. This picture and the next pictures coming up were taken downtown, near a main street called Paseo Bolivar. The area is dirty and has a lot of street vendors that have invaded the side walks.
This particular stand sold fruit juices.
The outside of an abandoned house.
Homeless man sleeping on the street. This was... too common in downtown Barranquilla. I could have taken a lot more of these but at this point I knew I was not in the safest of places and tried to move as fast as I could, taking pictures without being noticed. The last thing I needed was some crazy or drugged out person coming to beat me up for taking his picture.
This is the Rex theater. It was one of the first movie theaters in Barranquilla. It showed normal Hollywood movies, as well as some Italian movies in the wee days and then it turned into a porno theater. It still functions as a porno theater. It's in a bad part of town too, so it's not like one of those hip gay get-togethers say in Boystown, Chicago. I can't imagine the stuff that happens in there. I asked my uncle about it and he said only gay people go there. It's probably true. I don't mean to imply that most gay people are degenerates or anything like that. Not at all. However because of the intolerance in Colombia towards gay people, a lot of them are confined to expressing their sexuality in these types of ways. They are put in the same category as criminals and perverts.
During this incursion downtown, we got to a point where my uncle, who was escorting me said: Ok, we can't go past this street. And me being the stubburn person I am started asking, why, why can't we go there?? He said it was a lot more dangerous by the next street but I insisted that we went and took a picture and he was too nice to say no. Within one block I found this corner. The plaque on the wall says that it was in this corner that Barranquilla started being populated in the early 1600's. Wow. This is the place where my city was born. I really wish I had wider angle lens with me to have taken this pic in one shot, instead I had to take several handheld shots and stitch them later, so excuse my poor stitching.
A couple of days later I got on the road again to Medellin. This is a shot snapped before getting in my bus. It was a bit of a long trip. I left Barranquilla at about 9pm and arrived to Medellin at around 2pm the next day. It was raining most of the way and the roads are full of curves, though. The trip to Medellin is even more scenic! I traveled at night to avoid making it a longer trip. I was told during the day the buses stop everywhere to pick up and drop passengers. Also during the day they have military check points and they make you get off the bus, show papers and blah blah. I got stopped once and showed my passport and the soldier asked what I was doing there, if I had family in Colombia then gave me a thumbs up and it was all very pleasant. When I lived in Colombia it was actually dangerous to travel by land, you could get kidnapped. This has changed ever since the new President Uribe was elected. He made a statement a few years ago saying it was now safe to travel by land and it certainly looks that way!
Two American girls traveling in the same bus to Medellin with some cows in the background.
More cows on the way to Medellin.
This is near Medellin. The clouds always touch the mountains like that, it's very photogenic.
More of the landscape near Medellin.
Medellin near the bus terminal.
House in El Poblado, Medellin. One of the nicer parts of town. Filled with foreigners, I was actually surprised about that. I stayed in hostel that was packed and I think I might have been the only Colombian, or south american one for that matter.
This was a building that belonged to Pablo Escobar or the Medellin cartel and was bombed during the cartel wars. It seems abandoned now and it's filled with some cool graffiti.
There was actually a lot of awesome graffiti in Medellin!
I took this pic because of the irony in the spelling of the message. If you know Spanish, you might notice it. Otherwise it's a cool graffiti.
Strawberry sale on the street, near the metro station in El Poblado.
The view from a bridge to the Metro station at El Poblado.
The train station at El Poblado. It was not a bad train, really! I had to compare it to the Chicago CTA because I took it everyday for years and I gotta say, while the CTA has a much larger route, the Medellin Metro is more quiet by far.
People waiting for the train.
Girl looking out the window from the train.
The train's route.
Some of the people in the train.
There is a park in downtown Medellin, in front of the Antioquia Museum with a lot of Botero sculptures. I felt really safe pulling out my camera and taking lots of pictures here, as opposed to downtown Barranquilla or Bucaramanga. I don't know if that was naive of me but nothing happened.
Man sleeping in the park. I hope he didn't get sunburned.
People and the butt of a Botero.
Another Botero.
Two street sellers. They are VERY common. They sell anything from coffee and candy to cigarettes.
Another street seller.
Girl playing in a fountain, bum in the background.
Homeless people looking for probably food or stuff to recycle and get some money from or just a quiet place to sleep.
Man hanging out in the park.
More homeless people.
As I said before, payphones are completely useless in Colombia now. It wasn't like that when I lived there. I guess they sort of are in the US now as well, but at least they are still used once in a while in the US if your phone breaks, or I dunno, something. In Colombia is always cheaper to buy minutes from other people. Notice the string attached to her cellphone? that's because that's not her cellphone, she's buying minutes and the string is to protect the phone from being stolen.
Man being shaved.
Street performers.
Woman asking for money.
The graffiti reads "Public education is a right" another graffiti off the frame read "Not charity"
Videogames being sold on the street.
Magnifying glasses being sold on the street.
It seemed like an awkward way to sleep.
This man read your future from a cigar for $1000 pesos or about $.50
Man getting off an armored car.
A poster for "Casa de Citas" an exibition in the Antioquia Museum about cross referencing, appropriation, and that sort of thing in contemporary art. All Colombian artists, EXCELLENT. Go see it if you get a chance.
The view from the rooftop of my hostel. People could come up here and bring a beer and have a chat. Really, a great place to be. After this night I flew back to the US.
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Comments
I really enjoyed your 1st post, lots of characters and colors.
Keep posting
My Gallery
Thanks Awais! It's good to be here.
The colors look very nice, Rebel T1i right?
Thanks! You are right, I used a t1i with the stock lens and in some cases a 75-300mm USM.
A top class travel/documentary style series. Execllent street images. Some of the best stuff I've seen in ages!
Saludos,
Andrew.
Thanks for sharing.
Link to my Smugmug site
www.morffed.com
---Bruce---
My Content Home Base:... McCallum Racing Enterprises
When I saw a thread about Colombia, I immediately felt the need to open it. Actually, I went several times to other south america country (Brazil) and always enjoyed to see the "real life" from there. Furthermore, these kind of countries are full of photographic opportunities. Your Colombia images are a real tribute to your country and an asset to this forum. Thanks for sharing it!
D300, D200 coupled with some fine Nikon glass
My Smugmug galleries: http://ruilopes.smugmug.com/