LANDSCAPE
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Enchanted Forrest (Madeira, Portugal)
No doubt one of the best hikes you can do in Madeira is a 4km walk through the levadas, water carrying pathways, with some wonderful vistas to the valley where one of the stops is this beautiful waterfall. Me and my wife started quite late in the morning, since this was my first good night of sleep after many days sick, so when we finally got there it was full of tourists but thanks to the magic of Photoshop none can be seen. :) A small curiosity about the spot here: the little lake in the middle holds a legend where a British tourist went for a swim and never came back. I am not British but maybe the lake also holds a grudge against Brazilians. Who knows? Needless to say I did not get close to it. Just some processing info: The whole image has been stitched from multiple images to give the idea that my lens could go this high. 1 image for the top, 9 for the middle and 7 more for the bottom. Which means its a top-bottom panorama with mean averaging to and some cloning to remove tourists. All this gives me a whopping 86 Megapixels which after some cropping gives me still 77 Megapixels. Phew! :D
This was one of the best days photographing in Iceland by far for me. This was my second time in the country, first time me and the wife decided to take a trip around the country through the Golden Circle. Even though it helped us get a good understanding of all of the many different landscapes in the country it was impossible to get the weather to agree with us. From the 11 days we had 6 were with rain and we only experienced 1 sunset. While I was driving. In the middle of nowhere. The second time was different, I was determined to follow the weather wherever it was good. I did not "care" to visit this or that spot, since I had already seen much on the first time. This time the mission was to get good sunrise/sunsets and good weather. And the many kilometers driven back and forth paid off handsomely. I basically spent the entire afternoon outside, shooting in Vestrahorn, even though it was very very windy I was not going to let this opportunity to get away. This is what I came to Iceland for and I was going to milk this landscape as much as I could. :) After taking some shots I knew this was a keeper. Sometimes it happens like this that things just align themselves.
Cloud covered Suomenlinna (Helsinki, Finland)
All elements were there of an unfruitful photographic day: cloud covered skies, too much wind to keep the tripod stable, murky waters. Then at the last moment a sliver of sky opens and lets the sun out in the horizon.
