Remarkably Unremarkable

A Snowy Night In Downtown Denver

B. Littleton — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 18:33:29 +0000

A couple weeks ago I had the pleasure of returning home from Germany for about a week and a half. Like most of my trips home, it was a brief little sojourn, but I did get the chance to do something I’ve been wanting to do for a while now: give Denver, Colorado the treatment I’ve given to Amsterdam, Bergheim, Cologne, the Rocky Mountains, Prague, Paris, Native American ruins in the New Mexico desert, and most recently, Bruges.

In other words, spend several hours drinking beers and taking pictures, and then spending several more hours sifting through the thousands of pictures and making a little movie out of them…

Fortunately enough,there was a steady snow falling on the evening I picked for my little photo shoot, and that turned Denver into a multitude of postcards. So take a few minutes and have a look around my hometown, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed…

So that’s my little Denver video…. I hope you enjoyed it.

A little clerical note. Hardocre followers of my blog know that I generally select a nice header image for each post, and further, that I didn’t do that this time. Well, that’s because my generic header, the beautiful shot you see above, was taken about 2 years ago in downtown Denver. Also, the background sunset you see is Denver. I suppose it’s kind of telling that even after setting foot on 4 continents both permanent images up in here are from Denver, Colorado. The more you know…

Anywho, come back soon for more Denver, Bruges, and witticisms.

Don’t be a stranger.

-B. Littleton

A Night in Bruges

B. Littleton — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 17:15:05 +0000

Alright. It’s time. It’s time for some pretty sweet pictures of Bruges, Belgium. In case you missed it, I recently headed from my little German host-town up to this place to you know, see it. And I was blown away. Now it’s not the most amazing, vibrant city ever, and it’s certainly not a city in Europe that gets a whole lot of attention. But, it was breathtaking. Have a look if you don’t believe me…

And this here’s the tower from the movie In Bruges….

Love this shot. All the little alleys and streets were gorgeous.

Pretty cool. This little stretch of the canal was actually on a lot of the Bruges postcards we saw.

This is it. This is my favorite. Like best picture I’ve ever taken.

I guess this is a decent place to take a picture. A big photography class walked in and set up shop. You can see them in the corner there.

All the canals were unbelievable. Especially on a still night.

I’ll leave you with this. One of my favorites.

This city is like an amateur photographers dream come true. Especially with all the canals and the way they light up the entire old town area of the city. Beautiful place, if you ever find yourself in Northern Europe, do yourself a favor and stop and have a look.

Come back soon for a little walking tour of Bruges, and a few long-overdue posts about my home town, Denver, Colorado.

Don’t be a stranger.

-B. Littleton

Cologne and the Kolner Dom – An Evening Stroll

B. Littleton — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 19:54:37 +0000

Yes, yes, it took a while. In my defense, blogging and globetrotting at the same time isn’t horribly easy. That said, here are the aforementioned pictures from my evening spent strolling around Cologne. Now, this city isn’t all that high up on your average person’s list of shit to see in Europe. Well, at least not on the same tier as Paris or Prague or Amsterdam and the like. But frankly, it ought to be. And if this post doesn’t convince you, well, then, nothing will. Have a look.

Crossing the Rhine

Pretty little sunset.

And trust me, sunsets in Germany are hard to come by. Ze Germans see the sun like once a month….

And now things get stupid pretty.

In the evenings the whole Dom and pretty much everything around it are lit up. It’s an amazing sight.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the Kolner Dom is ridiculous. See it before you die.

The bridge with all the locks on it that we saw in my last post.

Messing around. Long exposure with a train going by. Kinda like it.

I’ll leave you with this. I like the crowd walking by…

That’s all for this stint in Cologne, but it’s a safe bet that you’ll see more of it before my stay in Germany reaches its conclusion. Come back soon for some pictures of Bruges, Belgium.

Don’t be a stranger.

-B. Littleton

Cologne and the Kolner Dom

B. Littleton — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 22:05:28 +0000

In my last post, I mentioned that my bad-ass mother came out to Germany to visit me. Along with our little trip to Bruges, we took the obligatory trip 45 mintues down the road to Cologne, the 4th most populous city in Germany. My mom wanted to have a look around, and see the ridiculously impressive cathedral in town, the Kolner Dom. I was more than happy to oblige, as long as she would tolerate standing around a bit so I could take some obligatory pictures.

My homie Diana, the owner and proprietor of the Best Bistro in Bergheim, offered to be our little tour guide for the day, so we headed out to meet her for a beer and a stroll about the city. So, without further ado, here’s yet another bunch of pictures from the 2,000-year-old city.

The first thing we saw when we parked in Cologne. Actually kind of crazy. This building was, I think, the old city hall. Major renovations.

The Cologne Opera House and the Kolner Dom

The bridge over the Rhine that leads to the Dom. Completely covered in the engraved locks of lovers. Apparently carving your initials into a picnic table just isn’t good enough for Ze Germans.

I told you the bridge led right to the Dom

Ok, One more.

And the Dom itself. Like the 4th time I’ve published it’s picture, but oh well….

The Dom

Thing really is unbelievable. I can’t overstate it.

Ok, with some people in the foreground, you can actually see how big the damn thing is.

I hope that’s not the Hindenberg.

Some other random cathedral… Or something.

So these little dates on buildings around here usually indicate when they were built, which makes me wonder if the good ol’ allies didn’t bomb the shit out of this guy on a couple of different occasions.

Ze Germans just love their statues of dudes on horses.

Hehehe. Apparently someone is hung like a light switch.

Last one for today. Not to be a tease, but I hung out for another couple of hours and took pictures of the sunset and evening skyline. And I promise, they’re worth seeing.

Come back for next post. For reals, there are some ridiculous pictures coming. This place goes from stupid pretty to downright off the charts when the sun goes down…

Don’t be a stranger.

-B. Littleton

In Bruges

B. Littleton — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 18:18:59 +0000

So a couple of weeks ago my bad-ass of a mother flew from Denver to Frankfurt to come see me in Germany. Further, knowing I could use a little break from Bergheim, she was even more of a bad-ass and looked into some cool shit we could do that wasn’t too far from the boring, sleepy little German town that I now call home.

I’ll admit, partially because I really enjoyed the movie that shares a title with this here post, we settled on Bruges, not quite a 3-hour drive away. She found us a nice little apartment in the heart of the old town, and spent a couple of days strolling around the little Belgian city eating their waffles and drinking their beers and shit.

As said movie aptly describes it, Bruges is right out of a fairy tale. It’s an incredibly scenic, romantic and beautiful little place. After hours and hours of exploring and about 1800 pictures later, I was kind enough to make you this little video. So, you can spend the next 5 minutes seeing just about all there is to see from this little town, and hear a pretty solid Cake song while you’re at it. And you won’t even have to deal with any jet-lag. Seems like a solid deal to me…

That’s all for now. More from Bruges to follow, not mention some damn pretty pictures of Cologne, to toot my own horn just a bit.

Don’t be a stranger.

-B. Littleton

The Best Picture I’ve Ever Taken… Yet

B. Littleton — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 20:18:12 +0000

Yes, it’s been a while. It’s been a rather…. tumultuous few weeks out here… But, last week my mother came out to Germany to visit me. While she was out here, we headed 3 hours up the road to Bruges. The little town in Belgium is a damn pretty place, and the setting of a pretty damn funny movie.

Now, normally I have a policy against posting a single picture and calling it a full-fledged blog post; I think it’s a cop-out. But, for this little guy, I’ll make an exception. This is almost certainly the best picture this here completely amateur photographer has taken.

Welcome to Bruges.

So there it is. A one picture post. Fret not, plenty more from the trip coming before too long.

Don’t be a stranger.

-B. Littleton

One Day in Miami

B. Littleton — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 19:59:21 +0000

Wow… This here is my 200th post… Crazy.

Anywho, the day after our little photo shoot of the Miami skyline, James took some time away from pimping his clients’ twitter feeds to show me around a little park not too far from his apartment… We strolled around for a bit and enjoyed the sunshine and the beach, and like, being in Miami in December and shit. Have a look….

And with that it was off to the airport… Wasn’t too long of a trip, but it was an awfully fun way to to spend a day, and it was good to catch up with my friends before I took off, and to grab Elite Platinum Status to boot…

Come back soon. I leave on Sunday for a week in Retford, Engalnd. Probably wont’ be a particularly fun or scenic trip. Probably won’t have much to tell, or much time to tell it, but I’ll be around….

Don’t be a stranger.

-B. Littleton

One Night in Miami

B. Littleton — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 20:19:16 +0000

Well, It’s been a hectic month or so. I spent two weeks packing up as much of my life as would fit in 3 suitcases and relocating it to Bergheim, Germany. The following two weeks were spent unpacking those three suitcases and assembling an ungodly amount of cheap Ikea furniture, not to mention doing my best to get bank accounts, cell phones, the internet, and the like (quite the undertaking for a monolingual ignorant American).

So yes, even though I’m officially an expat these days, I have no new shit from Germany to show you just yet. Rather, I’ll be showing you around Miami, which given the Germans’ fascination with the place, isn’t too inappropriate anyway.

A couple weeks ago, not too long before I headed off to Germany, I started poking around my United frequent flier account and came upon a rather unsettling bit of information. Including my year-end flight to Frankfurt, I was set to end the year with right about 73,000 ‘elite qualifying miles,’ a mere 2,000 miles from the next tier on United’s Ryan Bingham ladder. 75,000 EQM’s would mean Elite Platinum status, along with the free luggage and first class upgrades that come with it, for all of 2013. So, I needed a couple thousand miles…

Talked it over with my boss, and there wasn’t anywhere that needed attention for work, so I was left to my own devices. I looked around and found a pretty cheap flight to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which more than satisfied my mileage requirements, and much more importantly, my homies James and Kristin (the same James and Kristin from the Punta Del Este posts) now live in Miami…

So, I took a day off work and headed out for a 22-hour visit to Florida. The first night we grabbed a beer or two and James and Kristin were kind enough to placate my desire to grab some pictures of the Miami skyline. We headed to a couple of scenic little spots, set up the tripod and the aforementioned intervalometer, and here’s what we saw…..

Coming soon, we poke around the beach and kill some time before my abbreviated little trip comes to its end…

Don’t be a stranger.

-B. Littleton

Fun With An Intervalometer

B. Littleton — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 18:24:24 +0000

A while back I picked up a neat little toy for any amateur photographer and/or nerd with a camera, an Aputure intervalometer.

This little guy set me back about 40 bucks on Amazon…

Might not look like much, hell, it isn’t much, but it does let you do a couple of pretty neat little tricks.

The main reason I got this thing was for time lapse photography. As the name suggests, with an intervalometer you can set up your camera and set the timer to take a picture at whatever delay and interval you choose.

Now, I admittedly don’t know much about photography, I just like to take pictures of shit, so it was a pleasant surprise when I found out that the device will also let you do super long exposure stuff. The limit on my Nikon D90 is 30 seconds; with the intervalometer you can go up to 30 minutes, or just use it as a ‘bulb’ and have the shutter open as long as you depress the button. Pretty cool for taking pictures of stars and shit at night.

Anywho, here’s a few pictures I took over the last couple days…

Set everything up just outside my office window. Shutter was set to auto, had the camera take a picture every 6 seconds. Got lucky a few times and ended up with a couple of pretty cool shots as it got darker and the shutter slowed down…

One more.

Took this one up at my old man’s place in the mountains. This is a 15 minute exposure time to try to get the stars. I still need to practice a bit, but kind of a cool shot.

10 minutes this time, unfortunately, it was starting to get a little cloudy, so not so much on the stars…

And that’s all for today… I’d best get to work. But come back and see me, I have some pictures from this weekend’s 24-hour trip to Miami coming soon….

Don’t be a stranger.

-B. Littleton

Meanwhile, In Doncaster… Part 4

B. Littleton — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 16:47:49 +0000

Time for the last of the pictures from my positively delightful little stint in Doncaster.

Mercifully, that’s all from Doncaster. Easily one of the worst jobs I’ve been on in my 5 years of doing this crap. I’d love to say I’ll never be back there, but I know better.

Don’t be a stranger.

-B. Littleton