Life and Landscape Photography - What Happened in July?

Hello and welcome to my monthly blog post about what happened in July (2018)

As always this will be focused a lot on landscape photography but I will cover off some other aspects of life here as well.

What's been going on?

Well, it's been a busy month with lots of visitors so that's made it a bit more difficult to get out and about as much as I would like. Plus it's been really hot and humid and there's been a big fiesta here in El Campello (the fiesta Virgin del Carmen). I've still managed to get out a few times but not as much as I would have liked.

Events, Exploration and Non Landscape Photography

There are two big fiestas here in El Campello. In October there is the Moors and Christians and in July the Virgin del Carmen, who is the patron saint of fisherman and therefore very important in a  fishing town.

The fiesta goes on for about a week and, ordinarily, I would have tried to get some video and images from a variety of different events. However, having visitors made it difficult to do so and I was only really able to get any footage from one of the events, The Muixerangas. These are a traditional teams of all ages who create human towers and they even have a competition.

I managed to get a few hours free to watch the parade and then try to get some images when they were performing on the beach and in the sea. It was quite hard as there was a a lot of people about but I managed to get something worth sharing.

Here's one of the shots:

and here's the video

Vlogging

I've managed to maintain my two per week schedule despite challenging conditions (heat, humidity and blue skies) and restricted time due to visitors and even managed to do a couple of more tutorial based videos.

The first of these was about focusing and where I focus in my images to get them sharp back to front.

Check out the video for that one:

The second one was about the Histogram. I chose to shoot this video near sunset in the hills to the north of Orxeta and, although I didn't really expect to get an image, the scene I had chosen for the video had such nice light on it that I chose to share the image as well.

Here's the image:

and here's the video about the Histogram

Landscape Photography

Spain is a country that gets a lot of sunshine, especially in the summer. That means a lot of blue skies which, as most landscape photographers will tell you, is not great for landscape photography.

Nevertheless I've been out trying to make the most of it and seeing what kind of images I could get.

I did a trip up into the 'local' mountains to try out a couple of compositions that I thought might work with blue skies, and they both came out OK but, in between the two shots I found an unplanned composition with the low sun coming through a nicely shaped tree. I think that turned out to be the best image of the shoot.

Here's the image

and here's the video where you can see the other shots and what I was planning.

My next trip was to the Los Algezares natural park. I had been h=there a couple of times in June but I felt there was a good chance of finding something interesting on a blue sky day. It also gave me the opportunity to do some reasonable walking on easy terrain as I had been suffering with some leg / back problems for a few days.

I actually found a couple of interesting compositions but the best one was just where I spotted the way the light was playing on some rocks as the sun was dipping behind the valley wall. Here's the image:

and here's the video

I decided to revisit a location I hadn't been to for a while, the outskirts of the small town called Novelda. The main landmark here is an unusual church that sits up on a hill but my intentions to head down into the valley and see what shots I could get along the river.

What I hadn't planned on was how low the water level was in the river compared to the last time I was there. I spent a bit of time exploring and then ended up going back up to the church to wait for it to get dark (or at least the blue hour) and to hope the floodlights would come on. I ended up getting a few shots of the church. Here's one of them

and here's the video of the exploration and the shoot

It's been a while since I've done a dawn shoot, mostly because, at this time of year, the sunrise position in this area isn't ideal. I also haven't done much in the town I live recently. I decided to rectify that with a blue hour shoot of the symbol of El Campello, the watchtower. 

I wanted to do a close shot of the tower, illuminated by the lights and reflected in the water of the marina. I then decided to carry the video on to show hoe I processed the image.

Here's what the image looked like

and here's the video that shows the shoot and the processing

For my final shoot of the month I decided to revisit the tree that I had found and shot earlier in the month, only this time I wanted to get close in to the tree and really pick out the shapes of the branches as the setting sun painted them with light from one side.

I took a couple of images and, following some feedback that I asked for, I think this one was the people choice:

and here's the video

So that's it for July. In August it's going to be just as hot, maybe even hotter, and I'm expecting more blue skies to make life challenging for me. I have a couple of new locations I want to go and scout and hopefully they will open up some new opportunities.

I'll be back in the middle of August with my monthly Landscape Photography tip and, of course, I'll be releasing videos every Wednesday and Saturday so, if you haven't already, head over to my Youtube channel now and subscribe so you don't miss them