Winter in the Algarve / Pentax K1000 // 50mm f1.7 /// Kodak Gold 200

I figured the best thing to do to kick-start this website is to talk about our very brief stint in the Algarve, where we spent almost a year there.

I got accepted into a program at one of the universities there and we moved in late summer of 2024 with our two cats and 11 bags. We flew into Lisbon and still have not found a place to rent yet in the Algarve until about five days in when we got a hit on one of the rental websites. I took the evening bus there, got in at midnight and met the homeowners the next morning.

It wasn’t our first choice for a rental as it was quite a ways from the centre but the homeowners, Maria and Manuel were very kind so we decided to go for it. We moved to a little cul de sac in a small Portuguese city. Funny enough, the town felt very much like Malaysia. I still am not certain as to why that is, but it did.

Sunset on the Ria / Pentax K1000// 50mm f1.7 /// Kodak Gold 200

I stayed pretty busy with school and Tonya focused on her knitting in between having friends and family visiting us from the States. It was a big change for us, moving to a city in another country, me going back to academia, learning about a whole other language and culture. It was a very welcomed change but it was a challenging one.

We did enjoy having our first winter not being in the gloominess of the Pacific Northwest though. We were able to be in the outdoors much more that winter, though I do miss having fires in the drizzly rain in our backyard in Washington. There are always trade-offs I suppose.

Monchique / Pentax K1000 / 50mm f1.7 /// Kodak Gold 200

Tonya and I picked up film photography when an old friend of Tonya’s, a photographer herself, came to visit us in January. Of course, with many other things in my life, I obsessed over it. And now we’re here, with me writing the first post on our very own photography and art website.

I hope other people enjoy these photographs as much as we do.

Algarve

Siegmund Photography & Art