A Little Bit Of Reworking
It´s my daughter´s first communion this Sunday so it´s fallen to me to man the shop while my wife rushes around hectically trying to keep on top of all the arrangements that have to be made and all the while looking after the in-laws that have just arrived from Germany (my mother-in-law took a tumble last night-so doctor´s surgery this morning-nothing too serious luckily). As the only non-Catholic member of our family my only involvement in all these shennanagens is attending the event and taking pictures of the event-hence the shop assistant role i have for this week! There´s not too much happening here to day so some rework of something i took about a year ago seemed like a less boring option than mopping the floor or cleaning Silver. This image was of a red dawn which i added a blue adjustment layer to in Elements.
El Verger-Kitesurfers Revisited
Had a lovely Sunday in Vergel-and a chance to get more kite and Windsurf action photography. The great thing about photographing sportsmen (like rock concerts)is they usually come up to you afterwards to find out how the shot´s came out. I had photographed this guy on an earlier ocassion but this time round we got chatting-i found out his name was Toni. This guy (as were several others) are real experts at this sport-they make it look so effortless-effortless control of quite a new watersport, almost like an ariel ballet, doing their 10 meter wave jumps –parascending meets surfing! (i think the guy was a surfer originally).
On this stretch of beach were about 20-30 Kite surfers and a few lonely looking windsurfers.
I really like this Sport/Action photography. My only regret was a friend of mine did a charity parascending jump in the mountains-i was supposed to cover it but hey, can´t be in two places at the same time-anyway i sponsored her and paid upfront for it but i´ll have some serious explaining to do when i see her next!
Daughter and her dog take priority anyway- they were much happier splashing about than climbing mountains, anyway!
Returning To The Fold
Well, it´s been ages since i last posted here- Google+ photographic communities can be quite seductive but i musn´t forget where it all started for me- i´m so glad to be back blogging @wordpress.
I awoke last Thursday to the sound of an excavator in the next street and the sound of crashing debris,so imagine my surprise when i got to the roof terrace to see that an old house that was there the night before had all but disappeared. The same evening ,when all work had stopped, i snuck into what was left of the building to get this shot-on reflection quite a dumb move, as the building was being demolished as it was in imminent danger of self-collapse, with that in mind i snapped of a few frames and got out of there-i would have preferred to move some of the stuff in shot around to make it more aesthetically pleasing but i think it would´ve been tempting fate too much (the rest of the building collapsed the following morning, saving the excavator driver about an hours work).
This photo being my Epitaph was not generally what i had planned at all!
Canon 5D MKII|f/4.5|1/200 sec|ISO-125|Tamron 10-24@18mm|handheld|
Getting In Close……Cropping For Effect
It´s been awhile since i did any flower macro, but hey, spring is here, so i´d better make the most of it.
I´ve never been a great fan of full frontal,full size, whole flower fills the frame, no petal out of shape or place and a twee little water droplet strategically placed on the lower left-hand corner of the petal type of flower photography- it´s just not real to me, so….brutal crop, no natural symmetry and no perfect flower petal. I like the twirly one, obviously a non-conformist, stand out from the crowd sort of petal. It´s beginning to influence it´s next door neighbour too- a dangerous subversive, some would say- if it´s not nipped in the bud where will it all end?
On a more serious and contraversial note, a certain so-called statesperson has died-thank you for all you´re work MT, without you i´d never have moved to spain, RIP-preferably in small pieces-anywhere but near me!
If this upsets you dear reader- i´m sorry, but she was´nt universally loved, and there does´nt seem to be much differance today than thirty years ago-soviet bloc: read North Korea, Iran, and other Nuclear wannabee states, only the names have changed-we´re stuck with the same mindset! She never changed history, just postponed it for a future generation to deal with.
I find it ironic that she has died when there is more heightened tension than ever before in the last 30 years- and it`s a communist country! Looks to me like history repeating itself!
I´m going to keep taking photos of pretty things – they`re real, not like the falseness we have to live with everyday. So in times of austerity, spend millions on a dead person- well done, that´s money well spent then!
Pasqueta
Those of you that know the Spanish well, will know that they will do almost anything to prolong any public holidays-while the rest of the world has gone back to work the day after Easter Monday, the Spanish have a half-day extra- at least here in Pais Valencia they do.
We took this opportunity to visit Las Marinas, in Denia.
Sophie decided to show our newest member of the family-a delightful little 14 month old puppy (part golden retriever and part something else with short legs) how to dig a hole- she duly took up the challenge-she´s a natural digger, which is probably not good for the odd beach jogger that comes along. (Memo to self: Train dog to backfill said hole when finished digging)!
I decided to leave my digging family there and take some photo´s- first up was the lonely lifeguard tower, it looked really sad and moody, all alone without a lifeguard to give it some sense of being, oh well that´s life i guess-it´ll be busy enough when the summer season starts!
This beach is popular with light-skinned Northern Europeans in the summer but it´s brutal-no shade, relentless Sun, relentless heat and windy all year round. It´s a bit like the film Lawrence of Arabia but without the camels and sand dunes, and a bit of sea!
Talk about windy, the only place ´round here as windy as this that i know of is Tarifa- In Andalucia, This place, here like Tarifa (but on a smaller scale) is a magnet for mad kite and windsurfers, they love it-fearless folk that take their art to the extreme.
A quick mention for my camera bag, the Lowepro 202 slingshot- what a great bit of kit that is. Sand and sea spray being really bad for a camera, the Lowepro has a neat little water and dust cover tucked away at the bottom of the bag-it covers everything, and keeps that nasty crap out of your camera bag- and your camera!
The 5D does a good job of keeping everything out too-just done a sensor and lens clean, after these shots, just in case-zilch, zero, nada- nothing got in, not the camera or lens even though i could feel the seaspray and sand on my face for these shots.
Much as i love My Sigma 70mm-300mm (reality is 200mm) a Canon 70 -200mm 2.8 would do a better job- it´s on my wishlist, but it´s also on my wife´s “ wish it wasn´t on his wishlist, wishlist-if you know what i mean! Hey,wives and homemakers like furniture and stuff, kids want the latest Android tablet and i want to win the lottery!
Spring!!!
The Easter weekend has been busy for us, so not much in the way of photography to offer the blog. Here is a wild flower for Spring. I don´t know the name but they´re very common. But i love the colours.
5D MKII|f/8|1/400 sec|ISO-640|Sigma @ 300mm|
Change inThe Seasons-And There´s A Full Moon Coming
Those that have seen my last post will recognise this-what has changed however, is the sky-bigtime! These type of Sunsets only come once or twice a year here- and only at this time of the year. You just can´t put a date or day on it, it comes when it comes and won´t come again ´til next year-it really is the anouncement of a new season. When i go to the roof terrace, first light of the morning, i can watch the swallows and sparrows, vying for supremacy to pick the best mate, i can smell the Orange blossom and have to duck my head from the Bees whizzing by,heading out to the blossom in the “campo” to start their days work. The country flowers have´nt quite come in full bloom yet, but there´s a full moon in two days, so i´m sure they´ll get going from then on!
I went up on the terrace just now- and the night lark is singing her song-just like last year, she´ll be gone soon, until next year!
The village,the house,the family, everything blissfully silent and asleep-except me, a beautiful time for quiet reflection of the day past and the day to come, and of ´course updating the blog!
But there is a ferrocious wind that comes for a few minutes and then dies out completely for a ½ hour or so- is this a storm front? They say in Spain-rain that comes with the full Moon, rains for 40 days-maybe i´ll have to plan for a photographic rain project for the next month!
As my wife and Daughter, dog ,Etc, entered the house, everywhere was bathed in this weird orange light- the missus said “get up there with the camera Adrian,the sunset is amazing”( i was Post-Processing some of yesterday´s photo´s- what´s that Joni Mitchell lyric: “Don´t know what you´ve got ´til it´s gone”) . So rushed up to the roof and luckily all the cam settings were pretty much there-nothing really to do but shoot. I like the sky colours, they seem to compliment the buildings –same kind of colours!
In case anyone´s interested settings were: Neutral,Spot metered( thanks to Adrian@Fatman Photos for your input-it´s noted).
This is SOOC- WYSIWYG-no PP in or out of camera, the sky colours are exactly as i saw them.I have´nt even cloned out the TV masts! I have done a B/W version of this that i like, but this version does more for me- so the B/W is for my archives-not the blog.
Canon EOS 5D MKII|f/5|1/30 sec|ISO-400|Sigma@70mm|spot|handheld|
The Length´s People Will Go To, To Get The Lord´s Blessing
Or the caption could be: “ Hey- i see white smoke, we´ve got a new Pope”
Actually, Mr. Roofer here, is just checking the roof of our village church for leaks after the storms we´ve had recently! He´s got good coverage for his iphone up there though, i wonder if he´s got a good App to connect with you know who!
|EOS 5D MKII|f/8|1/6400|ISO-640|300mm|
Alegria And The innocence Of Childhood
It´s always nice when you find by chance,an unintentional common theme with fellow bloggers. My good fellow blogger friend Adrian Lewis posted today “Laughter”. see it here.
Yesterday we took our weekly Sunday walk- and my daughter Sophie looked so happy here, it reminded me of all the happy times i had in my childhood-almost all of them were in the countryside! Let´s face ,it we all remember those times when we were children!
I decided to get quite low among the flora while she was´nt looking and get a “candid” shot- and picked up a tick for my sins- luckily i have a hard scalp and very short hair on my head- so not really conducive of tick world- jumped off my head and landed on the keyboard.
I find insects fascinating, however i don´t actually want to share everything with them-vis-a-vis my flesh!-worlds in collision! I humanely terminated it´s life- it´s a disgusting blood –sucking parasite- i hope y´all forgive me for it and i hope i don´t come back in the second life (if there is one) as a tick!
I have been a little bit worried about putting lots of photo´s of Sophie on the blog for fear of people thinking i´m a little bit too “proud Father”, but i have to say she is so photogenic and such a great model to work with that i can´t resist it.
Alegria in Spanish literally means happiness in one´s being, as opposed to being happy about a given thing: e.g wealth,Success or being at the top of the tree- it´s about enjoying life with friends or loved ones- wherever up the tree you are- it´s about being happy in yourself and enjoying what you´ve got , because what you´ve got is a lot! It´s about watching you´re kids grow up and growing older day,by day and loving it!
And if you have a camera – any camera-capture it!
Canon EOS 5D MKII|f/8|1/160 sec|ISO-640|Tamron 28-75@ 75mm|
Mountain Biker´s Should be More Considerate
This is a lovely mountain walking path, we had a lovely walk last Sunday-a family day, the wife, daughter and our lovely dog that has had her first experience of the great outdoors. A vision of nature and harmony-teaching our daughter about flowers and rocks (this week Sophie has decided she wants to be a minerologist), beauty in nature! At this time of the year you can just sit and look at the view-dawn to dusk and never cease to be amazed-every day is different- no two days are the same!
My Bugbear however, is recently, Mountain bikers have decided that they somehow have a monopoly on every mountain path and walking route that´s here- it´s becoming a real issue.
Last month, on this very path, out of no-where, two Mountain bikers almost knocked me down, the second guy obviously could´nt control his bike and screamed at me to get out of his way,- you know the sort, just bought his bike a week ago ,but does´nt really know how to control it-he almost went off the side of the mountain- did´nt even have the decency to stop and apologise for nearly knocking me over! This path has been a walkers path for the last 20 years, long before mountain bikes were invented!
If you´re a cyclist reading this,have a little thought for everyone else and think about this: 150 cyclists have died in the provence of Valencia this year-mostly by cyclist stupidity-the car driver (or motorcyclist) may face the judge, but you guys might face the coffin!
Walkers deserve as much respect as everyone else that loves and uses the mountains, also you scare all the wildlife away!
When it comes to winners or losers, you´re definately gonna come out as losers- who needs broken bones!
I don´t ride my Harley at full throttle, on a pedestrian pavement, screaming at people to get outa my way- i stick to the road, where i belong, and observe the speed limit- in or out of a town-you should do the same-you´ll live longer! And walkers paths are for walkers, Mountain bike paths are for Mountain bikers- “never the ´twain should meet”. End of rant!
|Canon 5D MKII|f/16|1/100 sec|ISO-640|tamron 28-75mm@30mm|handheld|Flash|
