Today was my first day of official work for Ride Portugal and I spent it editing this video. I’ve have worse days at work. I did not take any photos today, but I think this can count as my bit of creativity for the day. I am especially stoked with the brand spanking new Ride Portugal intro animation. Enjoy…
And with it has come the rain. Go figure. But it does mean that everything is looking greener and starting to flower. Literally, as soon as this first-in-months batch of sky water came down, the next day these flowers were out every where. The rain is always good for the track building, and more importantly - photographs. The colours out in the forest today were so much more vibrant than they are in the dry and dusty condition you get alongside the bright harsh sunlight.
Tonight's last shift at the bar I have been working at for the past 5 months went very much like most of the rest of the shifts I had done there in the past. So by 21:30 with absolutely no customers in the bar I sat at the bar myself and had a celebratory beer with...myself. If I look slightly delirious in this picture it's probably because of too many nights like this.
I had heard that the fisherman around here were pretty mental, and this dude is no exception. How the hell did he get out there? And just so he could catch some fish!? Seems a bit excessive to me. I mean, the water is not nearly as rough as it was yesterday, but it's rough enough and cold enough to cause you a spot of bother if you fell in. Can you find the mad fisherman in the photo? Hint: he's somewhere on a 2/3rds.
I've been here almost a year now and these are definitely the biggest waves I've seen on this coast. I guided a cliff top tour today in howling wind under blackening skies. I think this is one of the best ways to do this trip. It's pretty intense. Where this shot was taken you can walk down into the grottos to sea level. If you dare to.
This dude is German. And so is the tractor. And his home. About 14 years ago it took him 2 and a half years to get here!? Travelling at the modest speed of 15km/h. He's a grumpy old bugger, who told me I was disrespectful to have taken a photo of his home without asking, and so I saw that it was not going to be possible to get the photo I really wanted which would have been a portrait of him with the contraption. You would think that someone who was driving around in a bright red tractor towing a multicoloured graffited up wagon home, around a very popular tourist destination for the last one and a half decades, would have gotten used to people taking photos of him and his house by now. Or maybe it just made him more bitter about it. Or maybe people like this are just weird full stop.
This barber shop is simply a cupboard sized room with a door leading straight out onto the main road in Odiaxere. The first time I noticed it we were stopped in the cue for the traffic lights. Even sitting in the passenger seat of the van you were pretty much in the door way. We were driving along at night, I glanced over to my right and suddenly was in this bazaar little world of an old traditional Portuguese barber shop complete with naked lady posters and a neatly trimmed spectacled man trying to negotiate the undulating jowls of his overweight patron.
This is my first attempt at a night time time lapse. These are starting to get tricky now. Getting the right amount of foreground light/exposure, as well as something interesting is going to be challenging. Light pollution is a big hazard, even in this composition where I did not think there was much light pollution, there turned out to be loads, but then if you want to have foreground detail exposed you are going to get light pollution in the sky from that light source most likely. I am going to need to do some internet searching to find out how to get my camera to take 30 second exposures with 1 second intervals. The movement of the stars is way too jerky as the camera had to process the exposure, which took another 30sec, so the intervals where 30sec. You’ll be surprised how quickly them stars move. I ended up only getting 38 exposures over almost an hour, so this video has been “stretched” to spread the 38 frames over a 3 second video with a frame rate of 24 fps.
No, I have not missed a day, this is yesterday's picture, but I did not have an internet connection at the time to post it up here. This weird house, elaborately decorated in junk, does not appear to be inhabited. Some of the doors are open and you can peer right in. There no signs of life inside. It's pretty weird I thought. If you look closely at this picture you will notice that the various objects are actually arranged and not simply just dumped here. It all seems a bit too symmetrical and some items are specifically hung on the walls. Around the other side it is decorated with various random items such as thick ropes, a boat's steering wheel, a few old sewing machines and an old knitted Pink Panther teddy bear. Did I mention it was a bit strange?
luap photo 365 