Fallas!

This year I have many trips planned abroad. My Instagram account went into crazy overdrive as I tried to keep up to date and in control of posting the many things I was seeing/photographing. On most holidays this can be a challenge especially with digital photography making capturing every last detail so easy. It means you don't think about the pictures you're taking you just shoot continuously. This trip, however, was unique and even more difficult to control the use of the camera.

I went for the Fallas festival in Valencia, Spain. The festival is held in commemoration of Saint Joseph. It's history seems to be linked to the spring equinox when artisans disposed of the broken artifacts and pieces of wood they saved during the winter by burning them to celebrate a new beginning. It has come a long way from this very traditional beginning, in a nutshell the city has groups of people who pay to make a Falla monument made of papier-mache on a wooden carcass. On the last day of the festival these vast monuments are burnt on the spot! The festival gives you just three days to run around Valencia seeing as many monuments as possible before they meet their inevitable fate.

There were so many pictures from this trip the only way to fit them into this post was by creating a issuu flip book to fit them all in. But I have posted pictures of a burning and a video for you to see it in action too. If you can, go and see it for yourself next year.