Looking at Light with a Playful Spirit and a Spanish Accent

Both of these sets of photo's were taken at the Columbia Restaurant on the same afternoon.  It is the oldest Spanish restaurant in the United States and the Largest.  The Columbia seats over 1,700 people with many different dinning rooms.  Much of the decor was shipped to Ybor City in Tampa in 1905 when the Columbia was built.  I have been going there since I was 7 years old.  It is one of my favorite places in the world with many birthdays, graduations and life events in my life that took place there.  This wonderful place has always been like walking into another country, it transported me like a time machine into another era and culture.  It seeded a love of travel and the love of other cultures in me that would last a lifetime.  When I am away from home I do not miss hamburgers or pizza, no I miss cafe con leche, flan, Spanish bean soup(click for recipe), cuban bread, and caldo gallego. When I walk through the doors of the Columbia now, I am home...I breathe deeply and relax, I listen to the staccato of Spanish swirling about the room, sip my cafe con leche, butter a hot piece of cuban bread and melt as surely as the butter does on the warm fresh baked bread!

I thought you would enjoy seeing my experimenting with my camera and light.  I am not a photographer, I am an artist who uses a camera for a journal, for studies, for future art, for play.  The front hallway natural light appeals to me most...it is richer, a bit ghostly speaking of times gone by.  You might prefer the flash.  The bottom two photo's are in the day room.  That is where my Mother took my brother and me to eat Cuban Sandwiches and Spanish bean soup when she was material shopping for Spanish cloth.  I am not completely happy with either photo, though neither is bad.  I think I would like a little more contrast of dark and light.  What do you think, what would you choose. Take out your camera and whether it is a point and shoot or a fancy camera try to approach it with a new view...to play, just to see what you can get...what effects you might see.  Don't think serious photographer and be intimidated just play have a good time and see what happens.  Enjoy!

 Flash                                                                                              Natural light

Flash

Natural Light

Little Vignettes of Memory

The Fountain room decked out for Christmas at the Columbia Restaurant

I have grown up in the tropical city of Tampa. It is a city rich with history, but has now forgotten much of what made it so special. Tampa needs to embrace its past and revitalize an incredible energy that beat with Latin music and culture.  It is a port city that brings many cultures to its doors.  Long before Florida had roads built through the marshes and swamps coastal ports and rivers were the lifeline of travel and goods. 

photo by Elizabeth Gordon

Tile detail exterior of Columbia Restaurant

 When I was a child bananas came straight off the boat from Cuba. My Aunt Josephine bought them by the stalk and we carefully checked them for tarantulas!  Ybor city was still Cuban, filled with wonderful restaurants and fabric stores that carried cloth straight from Spain that my Mother cherished. The cigar factories that brought the Cuban and Italian workers to our city were still busy making the worlds cigars. We spent days walking the streets, hearing the vendors call out Deviled Crabs, Deviled Crabs here.  Wrapped in a thin crisp paper and served with tabasco sauce they were a true specialty. 

Tile Details on the outside of the Columbia Restaurant 

But our true delight was to go to the Columbia Restaurant and have a Cuban sandwich and spanish bean soup.  And even as a child I was allowed sips of Cafe Con Leche.  The restaurant takes up an entire city block and much of the exterior and interior is imported from Spain.  It was like Disney world for me when I walked through those doors.  The delight of foreign smells, the Cuban waiters with their starched red cumber buns singing as only the Spanish men can, the snap of the castinets as the flamenco was gracefully performed-I felt as if I had entered another world. 

Today I sat in the room I went with my Mother and my brother as a child and soaked in the pleasant memories.  A glance here and there, the details so etched in my memory, I felt as thought I was time traveling backwards in time.  Today I sat and sipped a cafe con leche slowly with delightful pleasure and smiled peacefully satisfaction-I am home!

This room was the cafe at the Columbia when I was a child, the cheaper room for sandwiches and soup

As an artist what I would like you to focus on is taking an odd angle or just what the glance out of the corner of your eye might be.  Our eyes see so much, but we forget to really look.

Detail of the Columbia Restaurant    photo by Elizabeth Gordon

TAMPA               YBOR CITY

Sangria pitchers drying at the bar of the Columbia Restaurant      photo by Elizabeth Gordon

CUBA                              ITALY