Portugal reviews

 Below are a few images I have selected from my trip to Portugal.

This one is nothing particularly special with regards to the formal elements, composition, or anything. I just like the fact that my subconscious decided to take this image, and there is a little model in the image; a feral cat finding shade on a hot day.

I like this image for the juxtaposition of the wrinkles on my uncle's elbow, the wrinkles in his t-shirt and the cracks in the building, which could be construed as a comment on age, and how everybody and everything ages whether they like it or not. The first thing the viewer's eye goes to, though it is not exactly in the golden section, is the wrinkly elbow; the lines this draws off seem to link to the creases in the t-shirt and cracks in the building, as if they are all interconnected.

The image above, and the following two were taken on Fuji Velvia ISO100 on medium format cameras. As they were fully manual cameras, I took the same images on my DSLR, and the ones I liked and could recreate easily were selected to be taken in this fashion. I didn't just take pictures subconsciously as with my DSLR as my settings would most likely have been incorrect (as there is no automatic setting) and they would have been out of focus (again, no auto-focus).

I like the above image purely because of the repetition it provides. Taken on a Mamiya RB67 with a 50mm lens (equivalent to 28mm with a 35mm camera) which is a wide angle, and this provides many lines in the roof tiles. A very low f/ stop accounts for the low depth of field. I wish I could say this was completely natural, but I did have to play around with photoshop slightly; I upped the saturation slightly (only a couple of percent) and sharpened the image using a high pass filter.

This image was taken with the same technique and camera and lens as the previous image, I just liked how sharp the plants are, and believe it is one of the better images that came out of my trip to Portugal. There are many orthogonal lines leading to a vanishing point in the top left hand corner of the image, and there is repetition in the railing supports. The plants are the obvious centre of attention, and a large burst of colour to a mostly bland image.

This final image, while taken on the same film as the previous two images, was taken on a different camera (hence the different ratio, this is in 6x9, whereas the previous two were in 6x7) which had a minimum focusing distance of 3 and a half feet; I believe the blurring is because I was stood slightly too close. There is a Hyundai hubcap in the golden section, so is naturally the first thing your eye sees, but it is also the only manmade (and therefore unnatural) object in the image, further reinforcement for your eye to be drawn to it. I like the vignette in the image, I just wish it was in focus!