Life and Landscape Photography - What Happened in October
It's that time again. A look back over the last month and what happened.
What's been going on?
October has seen things get a bit quieter. The tourist season is over and the beaches have been a lot emptier. Having said that, October is also the month of one of the biggest fiestas in El Campello, The Moros y Cristianos or Moors and Christians.
This year we didn't really do anything around this fiesta. In previous years we've watched the opening battle on the beach, attended the parade and also watched the big closing fireworks display. But this year we decided to sit it out. I think once every couple of years is enough.
Events, Exploration and Non-Landscape Photography
As I've already mentioned the Moors and Christians I don't really have anything much to report here. There has been some exploring going on but that is really part of the landscape photography section.
Vlogging
The two per week schedule continues but I have had some challenges. I had been intending to produce a video all about filters. It sounds easy but, to properly demonstrate them, I need to right conditions and I had been waiting for that to come around. When it did I went out and spent a whole afternoon shooting video.
When I got home I realised that disaster had struck. My audio recorder had failed and I had to throw almost all of the video away. As this was a repeat failure it seemed it was time to look at changing up the gear and so I bought a new vlogging set up. A Canon M50 and A Rode video mic. Not only will this get rid of my problem audio, it also improves the quality and creative possibilities in my video production and, as a bonus, means I no longer have to spend ages on the computer lining up separate audio and video tracks.
Anyway, I did an apology video, with an update on my new vlogging gear and showed the little bit of video that I managed to salvage that happened to be when I managed to capture an image that I really liked.
This was the image
and this was the video
Landscape Photography
Before the audio failure I had been out for an excursion along the Villajoyosa coastal path. I set out for a nice afternoon walk after being a little under the weather for a few days. I actually ended up at one of the old watchtowers between Villajoyosa and Benidorm before heading back and managing a shot of some last minute front lighting on part of the coastline.
Here's there last minute image:
and here's the video
My next trip out was to an old favourite location, Amadorio Reservoir, although I was looking for a different viewpoint to the ones I had used before.
It was an afternoon with a lot of dramatic cloud and I managed to find my way down near to the water with a very different angle of view on the scene to the ones I had shot before.
I managed a few images on this one mixing up telephoto and wide angle and even black and white and colour.
Here's a telephoto black and white from that afternoon:
and here's a wide angle colour
Check out the video below for the full story and the rest of the images:
I headed out a bit later in the month on a day that was forecast to be the final day before storms hit us. It was pretty cloudy at times and the wind was quite strong. It actually proved a good test for my new video gear and how well it would pick up my voice in windy conditions.
I was down at a nearby coastal location called Cap de l'Horta, which is just to the north of the city of Alicante.
The main feature here is the lighthouse and I was lucky to get some really interesting conditions and several images (including a rainbow)
Here's the final image from that shoot:
and here's the video
The image above had some problems when I first took it. The use of a wide angle lens combined with angling the camera up to get in loads of that gorgeous sky, created a leaning and distorted lighthouse.
I knew that was going to be the case and so I planned to correct those issues in Lightroom and Photoshop.
I then decided that might be interesting for people to see so I did a video about that as well:
An early morning, a brisk walk through the town to a bit of isolated and rocky coastline, some lovely colours, I was all set to photograph waves breaking as the sun came up.
This was a really nice morning and I was really pleased with the two images I achieved, especially this one:
and here's the video:
My next trip out took me to a location a little north of home, a rocky or pebble beach called Cala Charco (or Cala Xarco in Valencia). This site also has a 16th century watchtower perched on a cliff and this makes for a interesting subject.
I had decided to shoot this from further away than I had in the past, still have it as a focal point, but a small one.
I ended up calling the shoot off early as it started to rain really heavily and I was concerned about the exit from the location as I had driven down a steep dirt track to get there and I knew it could get slippery and treacherous with the heavy rain.
When I got home I looked at the images and actually hated them. I almost threw them, and the video I had shot away. I decided, instead, to leave them for a day and come back to them with fresh eyes. When I did I saw what needed to be done and ended up with three images that I actually liked.
So that became the theme of the video. Don't throw images away too quickly.
Here's one of the images that I ended up with:
and here's the video (that almost didn't get published)
The final trip out for the month (at least that's been documented so far) was to a brand new location called Font Roja. This is a natural park near to Alcoy, an hour or so in the car from home.
I only went there for an initial explore, just to see if it would be worth spending a day there exploring properly. I was only there for an hour and a half and still ended up with a few images that I really like. The nature of the place is very different to what we have locally and this opened up some great opportunities for "intimate" landscape images, like this one:
and this one:
Check out the video below
So... that's it for October.
My final trip for the month won't actually be out on video until later today (Saturday) so I will cover that in detail in my next roundup. I will say that it was a bit further afield and I actually ended up making two videos at two very different locations.
Here's a couple of sneak peaks
Sneak Peak La Manga
Sneak Peak Minas de Mazarron
I hope you've enjoyed this look back at October. I will be publishing my monthly tip in a couple of weeks.
In the meantime, I hope you check out my videos, and maybe subscribe to my video channel, if you haven't already.
