In recent years, the Town Hall of Marchena, together with Radio Televisión Marchena, has been organizing a pre-campanadas party held a few days before New Year’s Eve. This event simulates the traditional New Year’s Eve “campanadas” (chimes). It is also a charitable event, as the proceeds from the sale of grapes are donated to an organization that supports Alzheimer’s victims. Lasting over five hours, it began at 5:30 PM and included performances for kids, artificial snow, a DJ, and at 10 PM, the “campanadas,” complete with fireworks. This year, the event was held in Plaza de la Constitución, in front of the child’s fountain. It is a fantastic initiative that brings joy and life to the town.
2024-12-27_21-20-23 – Fiesta pre-campanadas
2024-12-27_21-20-30 – Fiesta pre-campanadas
2024-12-27_21-45-41 – Fiesta pre-campanadas
2024-12-27_22-03-34 – Fiesta pre-campanadas
For those visiting from other countries who may not be familiar with Spain’s New Year’s Eve campanadas tradition, it is one of the most iconic rituals that unites Spaniards. As the clock strikes twelve midnight on December 31st in the famous Puerta del Sol square in Madrid, people eat one grape for each chime. This ritual symbolizes wishes for good luck in the coming year and brings families and friends together in a shared moment of celebration, joy, and hope. It ends with a hearty “Happy New Year!” and a toast with champagne, cava, or whatever each family prefers.
If the plan doesn’t work, change the plan, but never the goal
Now that the second video of the Marchena 2023 fair is almost ready to publish, I would like to clarify some things.
The first thing is that I am not going to publish the photos here on the website until I have published the third video on YouTube, so as not to “spoil” any surprises ahead of time.
The second thing is that I do all of this by myself. I don’t have any team of people by my side, no assistants or anything. And I do everything with a very small budget. My camera is a Canon DSLR, yes, but a very cheap, beginner’s model. If it looks so good and so professional it is because I know how to get the most out of it due to my many years of experience taking photos. However, I only started making videos a year ago, during Easter 2022. Many problems with my videos are due to my lack of experience and others are due to using a cheap camera. Problems with focus, with sometimes everything looking TOO close, and above all, problems with STABILIZATION, or rather, the lack of it. Because my camera does not have a stabilizer, and I have to use an option in the video editor on the computer to stabilize by software, but it is super slow and makes a lot of mistakes, it makes strange movements, as you can see in the videos. To avoid having this problem I need a 4,000 euro camera (Canon R5), which would also solve the problems of blurring and everything being seen too close.
Another thing is that the videos take me forever to make. Apart from the fact that it is a laborious job in itself, the computer takes a long time processing. And between the analysis of the stabilization, the export, the reconversion to 4K, and the upload to YouTube, hours and hours are spent. I have a 2011 Mac Mini that is already asking for retirement.
Since I have to add a photo to the publication, I’m posting a preview of one of the photos from the fair. The one on the right is my cousin Teresa.
Mail Art consists of the exchange of postcards or works of art on paper or cardboard or any other object through postal services. Organized by the Isidro de Arcenegui and López de Arenas secondary education institutes, with the collaboration of ACUPAMAR, a cultural association for the Marchena heritage, and with the collaboration of artists from 21 different countries, it is shown on San Pedro street during this week.
