Boxer Briefs & Church
Aracena, Spain

I was lucky enough to go off-the-beaten path with my couchsurfing host from Sevilla, Spain when he took me hiking in Aracena, which is a tiny village located near the western border of Spain northwest of Sevilla. We hiked some trails, ate an amazing lunch with some of the local jamon, and of course, saw the village underwear, some men’s boxer briefs enjoying the breezes of Aracena, Spain.

Disclosure: This post is brought to you by Tours4Fun. Take your own Tour of Spain, and maybe you will find underwear too!

Rodeo Drive
Beverly Hills, California

It’s that time of year again…Oscar time. This weekend marks the 84th Annual Academy Awards from Hollywood.  I have a couple different degrees of separation from this glitzy affair:

1. I once produced a story for ABC on R.S. Owens, the actual company that has been manufacturing the gold statues for the past 30 years in Chicago.
2. I have personally won three Emmy awards that were also manufactured by the same company.
3. In between travels, I spent a few months on my writer and blogger friend’s couch in Los Angeles and was an extra on the show ’24′. We walked around the Kodak Theatre where the Academy Awards have been held since 2001.
4. I’ve interviewed a few actors like Matt Damon, who may or may not be in attendance.

That is all.

Disclosure: This post is brought to you by cheapairportparking.org.  Attending the Oscars by chance or just need cheap airport parking in Los Angeles?

I’ve been somewhat of a photographer my whole life.   My first camera was a cool Polaroid that I was given when I was around 10 years old.  I think I was inspired by my grandfather who was always in that common ‘grandpa-picture-taking-stance:’

• Standing slightly hunched over, with one squinty-eye
• Calling out ‘say cheese!’
• Pressing that magical red button
• Pulling out the magic photo paper, separating it (going back to the old Polaroid days), and, of course, waving it around to somehow ‘quicken’ the developing rate.

The image of our big smiles would magically appear. I loved it.  And I had to have it.

Next came the fun ‘pocket’ cams of the ’70s and ’80s.  I remember my dad’s Kodak Instamatic camera with that crazy flash cube you’d push into the socket on top.  And then remember dropping off the film cartridge at the Fotomat in your local supermarket’s parking lot?  Or even more bizarre by today’s standards: we’d drop the cartridge in one of those Kodak Mailer envelopes (being sure to select ‘doubles’ so I could share with friends and family!) and wait weeks for our prints to arrive.

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Which Way?
Stockholm, Sweden

I came across this snow covered group of signs on Djurgården, an island in central Stockholm that is home to forests, historical buildings, monuments, and museums.  The entire island belongs to the National City Park.

Disclosure:  This post is sponsored by international travel insurance.

Literally translating to ‘household of three’,  Ménage à trois, may happen to be some people’s favorite borrowed phrase from the French language.  I snapped this shot in the St Germaine section of Paris, and it seems to capture the (ironic) essence of the French in one split second.   What would your caption be?

Paris, France

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