New Year Lights, #38, Barcelona, 2026
“Cheers to a new year and another chance to make it right.”
–Oprah Winfrey
“Sometimes too much drink is barely enough.”
–Mark Twain
“A year from now, your gunna weigh more or less what you weigh right now.”
–Phil McGraw (Doctor Phil)
The best of intentions
Well, I had intended to just tack on a few more Christmas light photos to my previous blog post of Dec 25, 2025… But, tonight I ended up with what I thought was yet another pretty good stand-alone photo essay of lighting abstracts, so I will post them separately here.
All were made in the port area of Barcelona, whilst strolling from the Museu d’Història de Catalunya, near La Barceloneta, to the Via Laietana, then along the Passeig de Colom, to the Plaça de les Drassanes.
There were boatloads of folks out and about on this New Years Day evening: families, cyclists, tourists, retired couples, youngsters, folks dining at the cafes… all enjoying the lights, the circus and amusement park (with giant, illuminated Ferris wheel), the churros and chocolate, and so on…
The Method
Lots of experimenting with shutter speeds and movement. Not too slow, not too fast, on both counts. Making lots of images, and then discarding the vast majority when the effect was not to my liking. Keeping the ones that made me feel all giddy inside.
In post, a bit of cropping on some photos, maybe cloning out a distracting object or light, darkening the blacks, slight reduction of the highlights here and there when too overexposed. I did not make use of any plugins. Typically, the image was already pretty decent in camera, so these tweaks only took a couple of minutes on each picture.
As you will see below, I could have probably done an entire photo essay on the Ferris Wheel or the Shooting Star alone.
This was a fun exercise and WAY different than my typical monochrome landscapes and cityscapes.
The Images
In chronological order of my walking tour…
New Year Lights, #2 (Tree and Star), Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #4 (Christmas Globes), Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #5 (Circle of Light), Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #6 (Star Bright), Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #7 (Circ Històric Raluy), Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #9 (Via Laietana), Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #12 (Passeig de Colom), Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #16 (Circus Ride), Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #19 (Ferris Wheel, or “La Noria”), Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #20 (Ferris Wheel, or “La Noria”), Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #21 (Ferris Wheel, or “La Noria”), Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #25 (Ferris Wheel, or “La Noria”), Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #34 (The Shooting Star Goes Left), Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #35 (Star Light Bright), Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #48 (The Shooting Star Goes Right), Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #50 (The Shooting Star Goes Hunchback), Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #27 (Torre – Telefèric del Port) , Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #29 (Llums de Nadal), Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #31 (Hotel W), Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #33 (Maremàgnum), Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #36 (Ferris Wheel, etc.), Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #37 (Ferris Wheel, etc.), Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #38 (High Energy Ride), Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #39 (Flower of Adrenaline), Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #40 (The Hammer Ride), Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #42 (Arbre de Nadal al Port), Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #43 (Curly Qs), Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #45 (Minimalist Ferris Wheel), Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #46 (Ferris Wheel and Aduana), Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #47 (Ferris Wheel and Aduana), Barcelona, 2026
New Year Lights, #49 (Ferris Wheel and Nadal al Port), Barcelona, 2026
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