To be honest, I'm a little disappointed with my shots from Riga so far. This is a beautiful city with many different textures, and while I think I've gotten that, I feel like I've missed a lot of the color of the place. The weather hasn't helped; the sky today was almost uniformly grey and then I did a poor job with the sunset. In Oslo, where I've had so much time, I'm much more comfortable with a picture of something mundane, but when I've moving around so quickly, I feel much more pressure to make my blipfoto shots count. That's not to say that I don't like the photos I'm putting up; with this one I really like how the different layers of houses stack up on top of each other and how the vertical patterns of the Christmas fair stands contrast with the horizontal trend of the image, but overall, I've definately been seeking out notable spots and more notable images.

Yesterday for example, I passed up a bunch of photos I took on the derilect Northwestern corner of town to put up the picture of the Freedom Monument. In Vilnius and Copenhagen, my last two planned destinations before I slump back into Oslo, I'll have to think about this approach. Perhaps I'll have some time back home to expand the types of shots I put up on here.

But this photoblog is first and foremost a travelogue for me, so I hope my photos can convey above all a sense of place. So far in Riga, I've neglected to submit my usual Christmas light display shot, but that's because Latvians are godless heathens. Rather, the Christmas fairs and displays are smaller and all over the place. This is the town that invented the Christmas Tree (the burned it down in drunken revelry) and the seasonal spirit and decorations are all over. Rather, the Christmas scene hasn't shown up yet because there are too many of them! So consider this my entry; the funny decoration of this fair in the old town caught my eye on my first day here, and I liked the addition of the red truck.

We'll see how this motif develops in Lithuania; the most religious of the Baltics. Bus trip tomorrow! Hopefully I don't almost miss my transit again!