inspired photography with just enough perspective
Each time I’m in Barcelona, I roam the gothic section late into the night.
Around the main cathedral, there are rich opportunities for taking people photos set against ancient architecture. Once I get going, the hours fly by, and before you know, it’s time to get back to the hotel and crash. Anyway, the lady sitting on the steps is just one example of the Barcelona vibe at night.
Crews recently finished working on the bridge. Only afterward did I realize what they were up to.
I photographed this from the adjacent south fishing pier. I was here early on a Sunday morning hanging out with some fishermen while I took a bunch of photos.
The colors are always changing, so I’ll probably post another one with a different color. I used Skylum’s Luminar 4 to process this. As part of that, I used the new AI sky replacement tool to add stars. Typically there’s too much light pollution to see the sky in all it’s glory. But in the days of AI, that’s no longer a problem, at least concerning post-processing.
It goes without saying, Big Hunting Creek is big with hunters. However, the only thing I was hunting for was a waterfall.
In fact, I was looking for Cunningham Falls State Park. As it turned out, it’s just up the creek, which I eventually got to, without a paddle.
visit the gallery and order a print for your home
This is a long exposure that I made using a tripod and an aperture of F-22. It’s a good thing it wasn’t windy; otherwise, the leaves would have come out blurry. Scenes like this are gratifying for me, and exactly why I love photography in the first place.
I took this a couple of weeks ago on a walk through the forest. Autumn came late this year, and only about half the trees had changed colors.
It’s pretty cool how the forest floor is carpeted with leaves while the afternoon sun shines through the trees. It was an amazing walk, and I was so happy to be in Maryland, which has all kinds of forest trails like this.
To get this photo, I held the camera close to the forest floor and used a small aperture; that way, both the foreground and the background are in focus. That same aperture setting is what causes the sun to give off the starburst-like rays.
On the day I drove up to Tibidabo, it was raining and foggy and cloudy and, generally, a great day for photography.
Even though I had a GPS, I passed it several times; the fog was so thick you couldn’t see more than a hundred feet.
Anyway, when I got here, I walked around, literally in the clouds. Tibidabo is a popular attraction on top of a mountain, but there were only a handful of people here; I think there were more employees than visitors.
I could see some of the attractions but not altogether. It was hard to get s sense of the place, I had to piece it together in my mind. I would walk up upon each attraction and have more of the puzzle. As I walked around, I felt like a ghost.
It made for a fun excursion, but it mirrored the oddity of the park itself. It felt like being in some strange dreamlike universe where things were not as they are in the waking world.
If the weather isn’t right, it usually means there could be some interesting photos, and that’s why I went. I’m glad I did; had I gone when it was sunny, it would have been a lot of people, and I think it would have been a much more mundane experience.
Here’s a random beach scene from Lloret de Mar. Everybody seemed to be having way too much fun for a weekday.
However, people here are on some kind of vacation, so the day of the week is unimportant. I had just arrived on a redeye from the states; it was Thursday, I think. And, I was just getting warmed up to the whole vacation thing.
What better way to do that than take photos of others who are already warmed up. Eventually, I got into the rhythm of things, maybe even a little too much. By the time we left this town, I had managed to lose my passport, but that’s another story for another day.
Walking along the streets of European coastal towns is an exercise in leisure. And if that’s not an oxymoron, I don’t know what is.
Actually, that goes for a lot I do on vacation – leisure and moron. Relaxation when traveling is a state of mind, sometimes easier said than gained. I do what I can.
more images from the Mediterranean in the gallery
In this case, I was in the town of Sitges, walking around on a Sunday. I was next to the main church that sits along the sea. Sunday notwithstanding, nobody was going in or out, just tourists, like me, walking around it, taking pictures, and practicing leisure.
The colors are here in the Northeast, so a few days ago, I drove to this random park called Cunningham Falls; it turns out it’s not so random.
I don’t know the area, so; I picked a random place to visit on Google Maps. Little did I know this is a popular spot because there were a lot of other photographers that showed up as well. I took all kinds of shots from different angles, including this, which is a twelve-shot panorama.
more from the landscape gallery
The scene consists of twelve shots, four groups of three that I processed in AuroraHDR, and stitched in Lightroom. The result is a very high-resolution landscape of a not so random Maryland park.
This guy was sitting in a three-piece suit on a hot day, seemingly oblivious to everything around him. I don’t know if he was posing or just practicing the art of Zen pipe smoking.
Nevertheless, he seemed content to ignore anyone who stopped to look. It was his clothing more than the pipe that struck me. It was hot and humid, he appeared way over-dressed.
more from the monochrome gallery
There are loads of street performers up and down La Rambla, which made me think he was posing, yet he wasn’t collecting money. Now that I think of it, he probably works at one of the boutique hotels and was just taking a smoke break. Mystery solved.
These boats are in Collioure in Southern France. It’s a Catalonian village known for sardines, among other things.
After I took the photo, I saw a couple of street artists selling paintings of these same boats. They seem almost picture-perfect, almost as though they were placed here for effect. But that could just be my jaded view of things, and it’s not something the French are prone to do.
One of the primary industries here is sardines. The last time we came through, I ordered a plate of them at a seaside cafe. For all I know, these may be sardine boats that returned in the morning. The rest of the day, they are click-bait for photographers like me. That was a lame joke.