Socorro, Barichara, Guane: three special Colombian towns

If you follow me on Facebook or Google+, you probably have already read something about this topic. I spent the last winter-break in Colombia, visiting three amazing towns in the Santander department: Socorro, Barichara y Guane (see the map for location). These towns are great for photographers and almost for any kind of photography. 

Landscape and cityscape: blue skies, moving clouds, and the mountains all around. Architecture: colored houses with an appealing colonial architecture, downhill and uphill roads with colorful, picturesque walls, doors and windows, all among tropical trees and flowers.  

Street photography: the people is great, moving all around with their hats, motorcycles and colored moto-cabs. And don’t disregard tourists: sometimes they are subjects of nice candid pictures. But there is more. Nice commercial signs and craft warehouses add vivacity and color to their streets.

Moreover, the landscape goes on, of course, outside the towns. The department of Santander is a patchwork of steep craggy mountains, green valleys, deep canyons, pleasant farms, and -again- supersaturated blue skies.

1. Socorro, Downtown

In this post, I start with Socorro, the less known, at least from an international tourism point of view. 

Traveling in this area and not going to Socorro it's a big mistake. Of course, this is only my opinion. However, this historic town, with steep streets and single-story colonial houses set among graceful palms, is pleasant and attractive, full of wonderful spots for photographers. All you have to do is look with patience, and the images appear in front of you.

Look at picture #1. There are several great elements in it, but the composition put them together in a pleasant way. The colonial one-store house is the main subject. However, the white wall and the light brown tiles pop up in the blue sky background, meanwhile the cathedral and the mountains (again, in the background) and the motorcycle on the uphill road tell the rest of the story.

2. Socorro. Colonial House and the Cathedral Nuestra Señora del Socorro

Picture #2. Walking down on Calle 14, the cathedral Nuestra Señora del Socorro gets closer. One more motorcycle approaches (you don’t have to wait much to see one), this time a typical cargo tricycle. Here, the focus is on the colonial one-story house: the sky is less important, but the mountains are still there, like a crown that surrounds the city on all sides. The doors and the sidewalk give perspective to this image. 

3. Socorro. Cables in the street.

In picture #3 we find an element I did not mention before: cables. Cables in the sky, cables on the walls and across the streets, cables everywhere. Most times they are a real nightmare for the photographer. But they are very common in Latin America. The problem is how to deal with this intruding factor. You cannot destroy them. It should be impolite and would have severe consequences. At the same time, it's a shame to have to lose a good image just because there are cables. You may try to eliminate them later, in Photoshop (more next), but sometimes this is a hell of a job, and sometimes it is almost impossible. Another option is to try to use them. In a way, they are part of the local folklore. So, instead of trying to avoid them (which here was an impossible task), I used cables to stress the perspective. Maybe it could have been better without them, but if you think it in another way, probably a completely-clean-image might seem unreal, trivial, and too much flyer-style.

4. A Cantina Sign in Socorro

Talking about cables, look at picture #4. There are not cables there, right? But this is only the end of the story. Look at the small picture on the right (no number). This is the original. When the undesired object is on a blue sky, like in this case, or on another color-uniform background, it is easier to get rid of it in Photoshop. And no doubt, this image got better after the surgery.

 

This  image shows another feature of this area: colored commercial signboards. This belongs to a cantina close to Parque de la Independencia (Independence Park). I did not choose this sign randomly. Of course, I like the contrast between its colors and the blue sky, but there is more. This is a bier sign and it is especially important in the Santander region, because here arrived from Germany in 1876 Leo Siegfried and Emil Kopp Koppel, founders of the brewing company Bavaria.

5. Hot sun in Socorro

Let’s go to picture #5. A trait of most region of Colombia is hot sun. It is very common to see this type of image through the streets of the Colombian towns, where people use umbrellas ... well, as its name really indicates, to make shade. In fact, the name umbrella derives from the Latin “umbra” (shade), its diminutive ending making the world mean “a little shadow”. I captured this picture close to the left wall of the Cathedral. From a photographic point of view, I found appealing the strong contrast between the yellow-brown wall and the dark color of the umbrella and the lady’s jeans. I took several pictures to capture different positions and moments, and this was my final choice.

I'm going to close this post with an unusual image (picture #6). I told before that single-story colonial houses are the typical architecture of this region. Well, here we see something different. This two-stories more elaborate house, stands out from the others. I do not have any specific information about it. For sure, it seems richer than the common colonial houses. You can see in picture #3 that small wooden balconies are rather common in Socorro. Still this one is much more elaborated, almost a terrace, with small columns and tiles roof. Here, again, contrasts are the most important thing. The dark wood makes a nice contrast with the white of the walls and the yellow of the tiles, while the whole building stands out against the blue of the sky.

6. Two-stories house in Socorro

That’s all for now. Next post, Barichara, the town designated national monument in 1978. See you soon!

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