Portugal
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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
A place to marvel - (Madeira, Portugal)
Not far from where I was staying in Madeira, through a little village, there is this spot (can't recall the name). Compared to the other photos I took this one has very unceremonious story: there is no adventurous hikes that span hours, no climbing mountains, no waking up 2 hours before to beat hordes of tourists. Parked the car, passed a high bush and that's it. Sometimes things are right there in front of you right? The weather was perfect with the right amounts of clouds and, while the sea was a bit rough (and my wife as always is the wisest of both of us telling me not to go closer), we managed to get out of there with multiple shots. This is what it is all about. For those who are interested in this sort of thing: -Smooth Reflection App for clouds and water -Bracketing for the rocks (-1, 0, +1). Easy peasy. :)
Jazzy swell of clouds (Madeira, Portugal)
This spot is by far my favourite from Madeira. After a rather sinuous drive to the top of the rock a 5 minute small walk reveals outstanding views to almost the entire North Eastern part of the island. This was welcome news since I was quite sick, with fever and my arm was killing me because of an allergy I had from a tetanus shot. At this spot this was also the best day of the entire stay. A breathtaking cloud formation and cloud inverse happened which meant that when the sun went below the carpet of clouds that covered the valley, the colours exploded from both up and down in the horizon. I have visited this place for almost all other nights but none was this stunning. It is almost cheating photographing from here because of the sheer beauty of this place.
