Great news! While cleaning out my spare room (I’m turning it into a studio of sorts for my pictures) I discovered a laptop that I thought was long gone! On it were some of my most cherished pictures that I thought were lost. I had uploaded them to Facebook way back when, but it was nice having the original files back.
As I’ve gotten better with editing photos it’s been so much fun going back through trips I took 10+ years ago and re-editing my pictures. And that’s what leads us to this week’s picture of the week.
During the summer of 2004 I studied abroad in Salamanca, Spain. It was a great experience and I’m a firm believer that every student should do it at some point in their study. There’s something incredible about not just traveling to a new culture but living there and becoming part of it. I went back in 2011 and it was so much fun visiting all my old haunts.
Anyway, while I was there I had some friends living in the extreme south of Spain, just across the border from Gibraltar, which is a British exclave on the southern tip of the Iberian peninsula. I went to visit them and we went up to the top of the Rock of Gibraltar (for those of you in the States: yes, the one from the Prudential logo). Atop the Rock are amazing views and: monkeys. Lots and lots of monkeys. I know what you’re thinking, “Aw, cute” and they are pretty cute. When you’re up there interacting with them, though, it’s more like “Aw, how cuHEY GET BACK HERE WITH MY STUFF” since the monkeys are actually thieves. If you have any food or loose clothing they’ll just run up, grab it, and scamper off to MonkeyLand to trade it for bananas or whatever it is the monkeys value.
Anyway, I managed to get a picture of this monkey looking all majestic and whatnot before he jumped on my buddy Jerry’s shoulder and tried to steal his hat. I named him Walt. So here’s your picture of the week: Walt the philosophical-looking monkey.
Walt
For the photographers: I shot this with a long-gone Olympus 3.2 megapixel digital camera. Not quite as impressive as my 24 megapixel Sony I have now, but it took great pictures back then!
