Tag: history

Focus on Chile and Argentina [Encore Publication]: Rugged mountain landscapes and distinctive cultural experiences abound

Our wonderful 3.5-week adventure took us from Santiago, where we visited our older daughter, to fabled Easter Island, sophisticated Buenos Aires, the mystical island of Chiloe, and then through much of Southern Patagonia.  For much of this itinerary we were traveling with a local leader and a small group of fellow travelers on a trip operated by Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT).  The knowledge of our local trip leader coupled with the small group size allowed us to travel to largely untouristed areas and to engage in authentic cultural interactions that would not have been easy to set up on our own and would have been impractical to include on larger group trips.  Such a format offers amazing opportunities for photographers, as it provides access to an array of experiences beyond the “postcard-type” shots.  From home-hosted meals to wildlife encounters to hiking across glaciers and on the slopes of a volcano, this trip packed a lot of memorable moments–and images–into just a few weeks’ time.

Easter Island is a small and extremely remote island, accessible via daily flights from Santiago.  It is, of course, famed for the monolithic human figures carved by the Rapa Nui people centuries ago, called moai, that are scattered across the island.  But there is a lot more to Easter Island than the moai, including a distinctive Polynesian culture and a wealth of natural beauty.

When photographing iconic sites like this grouping of moai on Easter Island, look for a different perspective.  Here, I have framed the image from an unusual vantage point, shooting with a telephoto lens to compress the moai so that they appear closer together and more imposing than they would if framed from directly in front.   Buy this photo on my website

From Easter Island we traveled to Argentina’s capital city of Buenos Aires.  This city has a high-energy feel, offers a huge array of food specialties, and is graced with stately European style avenues and architecture.

 

Buenos Aires’ colorful and historic barrio (neighborhood) of La Boca is the birthplace of the tango.  To give a sense of the dance’s motion, I shot with a slightly slower shutter speed.  The rich colors of La Boca can be brought out in post-processing with subtle adjustments to the vibrance and/or saturation tools in image editing software such as Lightroom.  Buy this photo on my website

A stay in the Alpine style village of San Carlos de Bariloche included fascinating interactions with Hans, who as a German boy growing up in Bariloche uncovered his father’s Nazi past and wrote several scholarly books about Nazis living in Argentina; and with Christina, a Mapuche Indian grandmother, civil rights activist, and jewelry maker.  We then crossed overland toward the border with Chile, stopping en route for a home-hosted lunch of grilled lamb and for some horseback ridingon a family estancia (ranch).

Chango, the family patriarch, saddles up the horses for a ranch ride.  An environmental portrait includes not only the person who is the subject of the portrait, but also enough of the surroundings to give a deeper sense of who the person is.  A classic portrait lens would also work nicely for a shot like this one, but to emphasize the relationship between man and horse, and to give some separation between the subject and the background, I chose a longer telephoto lens.  Buy this photo on my website


An otherworldly sight: a lenticular cloud forms on the summit of Osorno Volcano as we were hiking on the slopes.  To capture high-contrast scenes like this one, it often helps to underexpose by about one stop to preserve the detail in the highlights.  Then the shadow detail can be brought back later during post-processing. Buy this photo on my website

The same Osorno Volcano viewed from Vicente Perez Rosales National Park.  To blur the water, I placed the camera on a steady tripod and used a longer shutter speed.  Attaching a neutral density filter to the lens can help by reducing the amount of light reaching the camera’s sensor, thus allowing a longer shutter speed even in bright daylight. Buy this photo on my website

A ferry crossing from mainland Chile brought us to the island of Chiloe for an overnight stay.  Chiloe exudes a strong sense of its mystical past and is characterized by colorful houses rising on stilts out of the water.

Characteristic brightly colored Chilote houses built on stilts.  Choose a vantage point from which the houses can be framed in a pleasing manner, shoot with a wide angle lens to include more of the houses, and add a bit of vibrance in post-processing to bring out the saturated colors. Buy this photo on my website

The island of Chiloe includes a fascinating bird preserve reachable by small boat.  Here is a penguin couple out strolling in their formal wear.  To stabilize the camera and long telephoto lens while shooting from a heavily rocking small boat, use a fast shutter speed (choosing a higher ISO can help), turn on vibration reduction if your lens or camera offers it, and release the shutter at the instant when the boat reaches the top of its cycle of rocking.  It’s helpful to use a monopod if you have one (I didn’t) and to shoot a continuous burst of images so that you are more likely to get a good sharp one. Buy this photo on my website

After traveling south all the way to the Strait of Magellan (the farthest south I have ever stood, with Antarctica the only land mass below it), we continued northwest until we reached Torres del Paine National Park, any photographer’s dream destination.  The photographic possibilities here are endless, with rugged mountains meeting brilliant blue glaciers and clear lakes.  We had the opportunity to view this breathtaking beauty from various hikes and by boat.

Blue ice on Lago Grey’s glacier imitates the mountain peaks soaring behind.  I used a polarizing filter on the lens to bring out the intense blues in the glacier and sky, but had to be careful not to remove too much of the reflection in the water of the lake. Buy this photo on my website

Alpenglow lights the peaks behind Lago Grey and its glacier.  To make this image, I had to forego much of a really good dinner by shooting through the mealtime out on the deck of our lodge.  With the camera on a steady tripod, I shot a series of images using different exposures, a process known as bracketing.  Later, these shots can be blended together using the high dynamic range (HDR) tools in software such as Lightroom or Photoshop. Buy this photo on my website

Heading out of Torres del Paine through the heart of Patagonia, our adventure was not yet over.  We still had another national park (Los Glacieres) to visit on the Argentinian side before returning to Buenos Aires for our farewell dinner and our flights back home.

Patagonian Paradise.  Don’t forget to include yourself and your traveling companions in some of your images.  This one, made as we headed out of Torres del Paine National Park, made a great holiday card. Buy this photo on my website

Have you visited Patagonia, the capital cities of Argentina and Chile, Easter Island, or Chiloe Island?  What did you find most memorable?  Please add your suggestions for places to visit or subjects to shoot.  Just enter your thoughts in the comment box.

Want to read more posts about travel photography destinations?  Find them all here: Posts on Destinations.

 

Focus on New Orleans [Encore Publication]: This iconic US city pulsates with jazz, creole, and historic beauty

Some places are magnets that draw us back again and again.  I’ve made at least a dozen visits to New Orleans and each time, I find something new.  It’s an iconic US city that also defies easy categorization.  Home to unique and cutting-edge forms of music, cuisine, and culture, it is also steeped in a grand historic past that evokes France, Spain, Africa, and the Deep South of the US.  Quite simply, there is no other place like New Orleans, and nowhere else do travel photographers find more charismatic subjects.  Here are a few of my favorite images from a recent visit to NOLA, along with a few words about what they depict and how they were made.

Aside from Paris, I can’t think of any other city that has influenced the cocktail more than New Orleans.  Here I captured my older daughter enjoying a classic NOLA libation during dinner on our first night in the Big Easy.  I used only natural light and selected a large aperture to soften the background.  Laissez les bons temps rouler!  Buy this photo

It’s boozy, vomit-filled, sophomoric, touristy, overpriced, and downright awful, but Bourbon Street is a part of the landscape and is worth a quick walk-by.  At night, its neon assault can almost seem romantic.  This shot was handheld using a high ISO setting and a small aperture for greater depth of field.  Buy this photo

The lovely Spanish colonial architecture of the French Quarter cries out to be photographed.  I made this shot of a wrought iron balcony using a telephoto lens and enhanced the color vibrancy during post-processing.  Buy this photo

It’s the tiny cheap eateries as much as the temples of haute gastronomy that keep New Orleans at the top of the list of cities for dining.  Be sure to grab some po’ boys, beignets, or muffulettas at these humbler places, and bring your camera to catch some of the action.  This image of workers in a po’ boy shop was shot from the hip, street photography style, using a high ISO to allow for a quick shutter speed.  Buy this photo

New Orleans is rightly famous for its jazz, which seems to seep through every crack in the pavement of the city and can be heard in places humble or elevated.  None is better than the iconic Preservation Hall.  As with many performance venues, this hall allows photography without flash, but it is always better to ask permission first and to be discrete during shows.  Use a fast lens and high ISO setting to allow a fast shutter speed.  Buy this photo

A short trip outside of the city quickly reminds you that New Orleans is a part of the American Deep South.  This image was shot from an airboat plying the bayous of Jean Lafitte National Historic Preserve.  I metered the exposure on the lush vegetation lining the waterway so as to avoid overexposure from the bright reflections.  Buy this photo

I captured this image of an alligator seeking the sun on an overcast winter’s day by framing tightly around the gator and its reflection.  In post-processing, I cropped to emphasize the symmetry of reptile and reflection and converted the image to black-and-white, while increasing its contrast a bit.  Buy this photo

I’m a big fan of food photography, especially when the plate is as strikingly beautiful as this one served at Brigtsen’s Restaurant.  I framed the shot tightly with a fast prime lens and a wide aperture to reduce the depth of field.  Buy this photo

Wherever we travel, we should make images that bring out a sense of place.  This image of my daughters strolling in the Garden District works because it captures the iconic symbols of this neighborhood–the stately mansions and live oak trees–while being a bit playful and framed in an unexpected way.  And as I’ve said many times, remember to capture your travel companions in some of your shots.  Buy this photo

Have you visited New Orleans with a camera in hand?  Please share your experiences.  Where do you like to visit and what do you like to shoot?

Want to read more posts about travel photography destinations?  Find them all here: Posts on Destinations.

Focus on Lisbon, Berlin, and Barcelona [Encore Publication]: History, architecture, and cultures yield boundless photographic opportunities

My wife and I recently returned from two weeks of travel in Europe to fulfill several of my photography assignments. I’ll publish separate posts in the coming weeks covering some of those professional assignments. In today’s post we’ll explore the vibrant capital cities of Lisbon, Berlin, and Barcelona. While each of these three cities has a personality very much its own, I’m hoping my images will demonstrate that photographing cities, like photographing people, is all about looking for what we have in common even as we celebrate our differences. Urban photography is special to me because cities are the places where history, architecture, and culture often align most dramatically to paint a full picture of how we live today. Note that all of these images and many more are available to view and, if desired, to purchase; just click on any image to view the gallery. Enjoy!

On arrival in Lisbon, we are treated to an early morning view of the old Moorish quarter of Alfama. I like to underexpose by 1-2 stops when shooting sunrises and sunsets to bring out more intensity in the colors. If in doubt, bracket your exposures and choose the one that best captures the scene as you experienced it, or combine the different exposures into a composite high dynamic range (HDR) image.
I loved the look and feel of the old streetcars plying the streets of Lisbon, so I found this picturesque spot and waited until the next tram came into view.
If you had told me one of the most amazing experiences in Lisbon is visiting a tile museum, I’d have answered it’s more exciting to watch the grass grow. But it turns out the National Azulejo (Tile) Museum is absolutely incredible from start to finish. This ornate chapel, decorated in azulejo tiles, is entirely contained within a part of the museum. When shooting interiors it is often advantageous to use a wide-angle lens, but it’s important to keep the camera level to the plane of the ground and avoid shooting upward or downward in order to avoid the severe proportional distortion that can occur in these situations. While it is possible to correct for this sort of distortion in post-processing software like Lightroom, it is preferable to get it right in-camera.
A nighttime street scene in Lisbon’s old Moorish neighborhood of Alfama. When handholding the camera in a low-light situation, especially when a small aperture is required for depth-of-field, it’s a good idea to boost the camera’s ISO sensitivity setting in order to achieve a relatively fast shutter speed.
We spent a full day exploring the Sintra region about an hour west of Lisbon, at the very far western edge of the European continent. Quinta da Regaleira is a wonderfully eccentric estate including a palace, a chapel, and several strange features adorned with symbols of alchemy, Masonry, the Knights Templar, and the Rosicrucians. Our favorite feature was this stone tower. I’m always on the lookout for repeating geometric patterns that often make for compelling images. It’s important to compose such shots carefully to enhance the power of the recurring pattern. I converted this image to black-and-white during postprocessing to give it a high-contrast graphic arts style look.

The Alfama neighborhood is famous as the birthplace of fado, a form of music typically performed by a solo singer accompanied by two Portuguese guitars. Fado is essentially a Portuguese version of the blues, with lyrics and melodies emphasizing the melancholy side of the culture. Most fado clubs feature extremely dim lighting to set the mood, and flash photography is strictly prohibited. This results in a technical challenge trying to capture good images. Here I used a very fast (f/1.4) prime lens almost all the way open and also boosted my camera’s ISO sensitivity setting to 6400 (as high as I like to go in order to avoid excessive digital noise), but still the required shutter speed was a rather slow 1/15 second. Instead of trying to capture the moving singer in tack-sharp fashion, I leaned into the mood of the place and allowed some motion blur to occur.
On our final day in Lisbon we explored Belem, an historic Medieval parish most well known for its medieval tower. Again, when shooting architecture with a wide-angle lens, try to shoot with the camera parallel to the ground to avoid distortion of the vertical lines. I also underexposed this image a bit to make for a more dramatic sky, recovering some of the shadow detail in post-processing.
Enjoying the Lisbon obsession, the sublime custard pastry known as Pastel de Belém, at the cafe that invented them (well, the recipe was probably borrowed from the Jerónimos Monastery next door). Food is a key part of any people’s culture, so I like to capture food scenes as part of every urban shoot. Insofar as possible, I try to arrange the various elements on the table so they tell a story in the frame of the image. Here I removed some of the items that cluttered the background, including just the pastries and the local coffee drinks. I try not to shoot straight down onto the food, as that usually results in unappealing shots. With food photography, some work is usually required in post-processing to adjust color temperatures and remove distractions like dirt and shadows.
After our stay in Lisbon, we enjoyed an unforgettable two days on assignment shooting the annual Mardi Gras Carnival festivities on the Poruguese owned island of Madeira. Those images will be featured in a separate post. Then, onward to Berlin. Our hotel was right next to the infamous Checkpoint Charlie section of the old Berlin Wall, shown here.
No visit to Berlin would be complete without passing through the stately neoclassical Brandenburg Gate. It can be very challenging to get a clean shot of very crowded iconic urban sites. Here I fitted a wide-angle lens, composed the shot looking straight toward the gate without pointing the camera up or down, and waited until nearly all of the tourists had left the frame. Some straightening of the vertical and horizontal lines still had to be done in post-processing to avoid the perspective distortion introduced by the very wide focal length.
Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial takes up a large city block and requires some time to take in and explore. To capture this large, powerful, and rather imposing monument, I composed using a moderately wide lens stopped down to a small aperture for maximum depth-of-field and keeping the horizon line with the background buildings completely straight. I converted to black-and-white in post-processing to achieve a stately, somber feel.
On our way home from Berlin, we had an overnight layover in Barcelona. With time in town for only one dinner and a bit of nighttime and morning sightseeing, we enjoyed Catalonian tapas for an authentic local dining experience. I arranged the stuffed pasta and wine glass in a pleasing pattern against the simple background of the wooden table and cropped the image to emphasize the food and wine without distractions. The color temperature usually needs to be adjusted during post-processing to give the food and beverage a realistic color.
Exploring Gaudí’s masterpiece, the cathedral known as La Sagrada Familia, at night. When shooting really iconic sites, I like to seek out unusual perspectives to avoid the dreaded “postcard shot”. Here I composed looking up from near the base of one of the towers, allowing the background to be filled by the dark night sky. This composition cleaned up most of the busy urban scene’s clutter and made for a dramatic capture of the basilica bathed in several types of light.
We had only 90 minutes to visit the interior of La Sagrada Familia before heading to Barcelona’s airport to fly home to San Francisco. I shot this self-portrait (Mary is also included) using a mirror positioned so visitors could view the soaring interior space of La Sagrada Familia.

I hope you enjoyed these favorite images from three great European cities, along with my descriptions of how the images were made. To view more images, or perhaps to purchase a few, just click on any of the photos to go to the gallery.

What are your favorite techniques or images from your urban photography? Do you have urban themes you like to document wherever you travel? Please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Want to read more posts about travel photography destinations? Find them all here: http://www.to-travel-hopefully.com/category/destinations/.

Focus on Turkey [Encore Publication]: Spectacular photographic opportunities abound in this troubled nation

In the fall of 2015, my wife and I traveled throughout Turkey on a 2.5-week journey that included adventures in Istanbul, Cappadocia, the Turquoise Coast, and Ephesus.  We traveled with Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT) in the company of a local Turkish trip leader, and we had a wonderful, safe experience.  In today’s post I share our experiences and some of my favorite images from this spectacular but troubled nation.

First, a few words about safety.   Even when we traveled in September and October of 2015, there were concerns about the safety of travel in Turkey.  We did not visit the far southeastern regions of Turkey due to the ongoing violence between various factions from ISIS, Kurdish separatist groups, and the Turkish government.  There was a bombing with many casualties in Ankara while we were visiting a different part of Turkey.  Since our trip, the situation has deteriorated as a result of an escalating crisis in and around the border with Syria, terrorist actions throughout the country, and the broad government crackdown in the wake of the attempted coup earlier this year.  OAT, the company we traveled with, has since suspended all of their trips to Turkey.  Tourism in Turkey is being devastated by the concerns of safety on the ground.

So why would anyone want to go to Turkey?  The cultural, historic, and natural appeals of this destination are undeniable.  It is a travel photographer’s paradise.  And safety is a relative term.  I’ve traveled in over 100 countries and many of them were considered “unsafe” when I visited, but my only two close encounters with real terrorism were in supposedly “safe” cities: a bombing in Tokyo and a mass shooting in Los Angeles.  I felt safer in Turkey late last year than I do in many other parts of the world.  That said, the situation on the ground has deteriorated since I visited, tours to Turkey are becoming hard to find, and only you can decide on your tolerance for risk.  So perhaps wait for more order to return to Turkey before traveling there to make your own images, but in any case you can enjoy my images from this fascinating and gloriously beautiful part of the world.

Our adventure began in Istanbul, an ancient city situated at the border between Europe and Asia.  Its place as a crossroads of history from Roman times through the Byzantine Era, the Ottoman Empire, and the modern Turkish republic is apparent as you stroll its winding streets and ply its crowded waterways.  The are opportunities to make great images everywhere in the city.

Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia, the foremost Byzantine church, is nearly 1500 years old.  When shooting grand architectural sites from up-close, it’s a challenge to try to avoid distortion due to perspective and the necessity of using a wide-angle lens.  Here I kept the horizon level with the ground to avoid excessive distortion.  Buy this photo

The best baklava in Istanbul?  Perhaps.  I certainly didn’t taste any better baklava in the city, and believe me, I tried a lot of baklava.  To make this portrait, I asked our trip leader to introduce me to the baker, who was happy to pose with his wares.  This was shot with natural light and just a touch of fill flash.  Buy this photo

View of the Galata Tower from across the Bosphorous.  Buy this photo

After Istanbul, we traveled to the central region of Cappadocia, famous for its “fairy chimneys,” natural spires formed by the erosion of soft tufa rock.  This region is a veritable dream for travel photographers!

Upon arriving in Cappadocia, we were thrilled to learn our hotel room was inside an ancient cave dwelling.  (Not to worry, it had been recently remodeled.)  When shooting interiors, it’s usually best to use a fast wide-angle lens and to compose the image carefully so as to gain the viewing perspective you want.  Buy this photo

The Goreme Open Air Museum comprises dozens of ancient Byzantine churches carved out of the tufa rock.  Remember to capture some images that include yourself and your travel companions.  Refer to this post for more practical tips about making great self-portraits while traveling: Post on Self Portraits.  To make this image, I set up the camera on a lightweight travel tripod, composed it by having my wife stand in front of the “fairy chimney” church, then joined her in the frame and triggered the camera using a remote release.  Buy this photo

The soft tufa stone formations look almost like sand dunes in the late afternoon glow.  I shot in RAW mode (as always!) and underexposed slightly to allow for a higher-contrast image during post-processing.  Careful cropping also helps a striking landscape really pop.  Buy this photo

We awoke at 5:30 AM to the sight out our cave-hotel’s window of hundreds of hot air balloons launching about the fairy chimneys.  I jumped out of bed, barely remembering to throw some clothes on, before running out the our balcony to set up a tripod and capture this amazing scene.  I exposed for the rock formations and allowed the balloons to be partially silhouetted.  Buy this photo

We visited a school in the region, always a favorite activity during our travels.  While I also made quite a few images in the classrooms with the kids and teachers, I like the unusual perspective in this image.  It was shot from outside the school building as the kids came to the windows to wave goodbye.  Buy this photo

We took a very memorable hot air balloon ride at dawn over Cappadocia’s otherworldly landscape.  I made this image looking down from our gondola at three other balloons in various stages of preparing to launch.  The amphitheaters of soft tufa rock can be seen in the middle-ground and the rising sun in the far background.  Buy this photo

At a rug-weaving cooperative, this woman enjoys a cup of Turkish coffee during her break.  I was drawn by her colorful clothes and enigmatic smile.  I asked our trip leader to introduce us and inquire if it was okay for me to make a portrait.  Shooting quickly with natural light only, no time to set up a tripod, and a too-slow lens mounted on the camera, I had to boost the ISO setting quite high.  Fortunately, I was able to reduce much of the noise in the image during post-processing.  Buy this photo

Hiking up to the top of Uchisar Castle, the highest elevation in Cappadocia.  Buy this photo

We had the chance to watch a whirling dervish ceremony.  The Samazens, followers of Mevlana Rumi, are a mystical Sufi order who practice the ritual we witnessed.  To capture the sense of motion, I used a slower shutter speed to blur the participants.  Buy this photo

The Mevlana Museum houses the monastery and tomb of Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi, the mystic who founded the “Whirling Dervish” sect.  This image captures the incredible workmanship on the interior of the monastery, especially around Rumi’s tomb.  Flashes and tripods are not allowed inside the tomb, so I had to use a fast lens and high ISO setting to handhold the camera.  Buy this photo

We departed Cappadocia and drove to Antalya, the gateway to the southern Mediterranean region known as the Turquoise Coast.  Antalya boasts an ancient Roman harbor and a fascinating archaeological museum.

We happened upon an interesting scene when several archaeologists and their students attempted to match a recently excavated statuary head to a body already in the museum.  Always be on the lookout for serendipitous scenes, which often make the most memorable images from a trip.  Buy this photo

These Lycian house-tombs were carved into the cliffs centuries before the Romans arrived at Myra.  Buy this photo

We boarded our gulet, a traditional Turkish wooden sailing yacht, for a four-day cruise along the Turquoise Coast.  Each day offered a wonderful photographic tapestry of great images, as we sailed, hiked, swam, and dined.

Kayakoy is a ghost town, a Greek village abandoned when the Turks expelled Greeks after their war for independence in the early 20th century.  Turks living in Greece were also expelled the same year.  Buy this photo

My wife Mary spotted this rare wildcat, which looked to us a bit like our local Californian bobcat, along one of our daily hikes.  I changed lenses very quickly while slowly approaching the cat, then captured this portrait using a medium telephoto just moments before he slipped into the brush.  Buy this photo

A riverboat took us from our gulet yacht to the ancient Lycian site of Caunos.  This image of a beautiful kingfisher along the side of the river was captured using a long telephoto lens and a fast shutter speed to allow for handholding the camera on a rocking boat.  Buy this photo

On our last full day in Turkey, we finally got to visit the splendid ruins of Ephesus, a major Roman city in the region.

The ruins at Ephesus include the incomparable Library of Celsus, pictured here in a self-portrait of my wife and me.  To achieve the broad depth-of-field required to ensure both the people and the buildings were in sharp focus, I used a small aperture (large F-stop number).  Major archaeological sites are often packed with other visitors, so try to find vantage points that allow the crowds to appear small in comparison to your main subjects.  Buy this photo

Throughout Turkey, the food was vibrant, simple, and delicious.  Our final day’s lunch, in a beautiful village in the mountains, consisted of course after course of delightful meze (appetizers).  Buy this photo

Turkey is a remarkable destination for travel photography.  Let us hope its current troubles will soon be a thing of the past and that safe and affordable travel will again be available there.

Have you visited Turkey?  What were your most memorable experiences there?  Please share your thoughts here.

Want to read more posts about travel photography destinations?  Find them all here: Posts on Destinations.

A Panama Panorama!: My professionally published 2020 Panama wall calendar is available now

Dear Readers,

A professionally published 2020 wall calendar featuring 13 of my images from Panama is now available for sale online and in select bookstores. If you or a friend love Panama or just enjoy inspiring travel photography, this calendar will be a big hit. I’ve included images from all over Panama that represent many elements of the country’s natural beauty, history, and cultural diversity. Panama Canal fans will find a couple of photos documenting the operations of this marvel of engineering.

Please order soon to ensure timely delivery. The calendar should be available soon on Amazon, but for now it can immediately be ordered at a discounted price and with free US delivery from reliable British bookseller Book Depository: https://www.bookdepository.com/search/9781325514359. Thanks for supporting my work!

Kyle

Focus on Lisbon, Berlin, and Barcelona [Encore Publication]: History, architecture, and cultures yield boundless photographic opportunities

My wife and I recently returned from two weeks of travel in Europe to fulfill several of my photography assignments. I’ll publish separate posts in the coming weeks covering some of those professional assignments. In today’s post we’ll explore the vibrant capital cities of Lisbon, Berlin, and Barcelona. While each of these three cities has a personality very much its own, I’m hoping my images will demonstrate that photographing cities, like photographing people, is all about looking for what we have in common even as we celebrate our differences. Urban photography is special to me because cities are the places where history, architecture, and culture often align most dramatically to paint a full picture of how we live today. Note that all of these images and many more are available to view and, if desired, to purchase; just click on any image to view the gallery. Enjoy!

On arrival in Lisbon, we are treated to an early morning view of the old Moorish quarter of Alfama. I like to underexpose by 1-2 stops when shooting sunrises and sunsets to bring out more intensity in the colors. If in doubt, bracket your exposures and choose the one that best captures the scene as you experienced it, or combine the different exposures into a composite high dynamic range (HDR) image.
I loved the look and feel of the old streetcars plying the streets of Lisbon, so I found this picturesque spot and waited until the next tram came into view.
If you had told me one of the most amazing experiences in Lisbon is visiting a tile museum, I’d have answered it’s more exciting to watch the grass grow. But it turns out the National Azulejo (Tile) Museum is absolutely incredible from start to finish. This ornate chapel, decorated in azulejo tiles, is entirely contained within a part of the museum. When shooting interiors it is often advantageous to use a wide-angle lens, but it’s important to keep the camera level to the plane of the ground and avoid shooting upward or downward in order to avoid the severe proportional distortion that can occur in these situations. While it is possible to correct for this sort of distortion in post-processing software like Lightroom, it is preferable to get it right in-camera.
A nighttime street scene in Lisbon’s old Moorish neighborhood of Alfama. When handholding the camera in a low-light situation, especially when a small aperture is required for depth-of-field, it’s a good idea to boost the camera’s ISO sensitivity setting in order to achieve a relatively fast shutter speed.
We spent a full day exploring the Sintra region about an hour west of Lisbon, at the very far western edge of the European continent. Quinta da Regaleira is a wonderfully eccentric estate including a palace, a chapel, and several strange features adorned with symbols of alchemy, Masonry, the Knights Templar, and the Rosicrucians. Our favorite feature was this stone tower. I’m always on the lookout for repeating geometric patterns that often make for compelling images. It’s important to compose such shots carefully to enhance the power of the recurring pattern. I converted this image to black-and-white during postprocessing to give it a high-contrast graphic arts style look.

The Alfama neighborhood is famous as the birthplace of fado, a form of music typically performed by a solo singer accompanied by two Portuguese guitars. Fado is essentially a Portuguese version of the blues, with lyrics and melodies emphasizing the melancholy side of the culture. Most fado clubs feature extremely dim lighting to set the mood, and flash photography is strictly prohibited. This results in a technical challenge trying to capture good images. Here I used a very fast (f/1.4) prime lens almost all the way open and also boosted my camera’s ISO sensitivity setting to 6400 (as high as I like to go in order to avoid excessive digital noise), but still the required shutter speed was a rather slow 1/15 second. Instead of trying to capture the moving singer in tack-sharp fashion, I leaned into the mood of the place and allowed some motion blur to occur.
On our final day in Lisbon we explored Belem, an historic Medieval parish most well known for its medieval tower. Again, when shooting architecture with a wide-angle lens, try to shoot with the camera parallel to the ground to avoid distortion of the vertical lines. I also underexposed this image a bit to make for a more dramatic sky, recovering some of the shadow detail in post-processing.
Enjoying the Lisbon obsession, the sublime custard pastry known as Pastel de Belém, at the cafe that invented them (well, the recipe was probably borrowed from the Jerónimos Monastery next door). Food is a key part of any people’s culture, so I like to capture food scenes as part of every urban shoot. Insofar as possible, I try to arrange the various elements on the table so they tell a story in the frame of the image. Here I removed some of the items that cluttered the background, including just the pastries and the local coffee drinks. I try not to shoot straight down onto the food, as that usually results in unappealing shots. With food photography, some work is usually required in post-processing to adjust color temperatures and remove distractions like dirt and shadows.
After our stay in Lisbon, we enjoyed an unforgettable two days on assignment shooting the annual Mardi Gras Carnival festivities on the Poruguese owned island of Madeira. Those images will be featured in a separate post. Then, onward to Berlin. Our hotel was right next to the infamous Checkpoint Charlie section of the old Berlin Wall, shown here.
No visit to Berlin would be complete without passing through the stately neoclassical Brandenburg Gate. It can be very challenging to get a clean shot of very crowded iconic urban sites. Here I fitted a wide-angle lens, composed the shot looking straight toward the gate without pointing the camera up or down, and waited until nearly all of the tourists had left the frame. Some straightening of the vertical and horizontal lines still had to be done in post-processing to avoid the perspective distortion introduced by the very wide focal length.
Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial takes up a large city block and requires some time to take in and explore. To capture this large, powerful, and rather imposing monument, I composed using a moderately wide lens stopped down to a small aperture for maximum depth-of-field and keeping the horizon line with the background buildings completely straight. I converted to black-and-white in post-processing to achieve a stately, somber feel.
On our way home from Berlin, we had an overnight layover in Barcelona. With time in town for only one dinner and a bit of nighttime and morning sightseeing, we enjoyed Catalonian tapas for an authentic local dining experience. I arranged the stuffed pasta and wine glass in a pleasing pattern against the simple background of the wooden table and cropped the image to emphasize the food and wine without distractions. The color temperature usually needs to be adjusted during post-processing to give the food and beverage a realistic color.
Exploring Gaudí’s masterpiece, the cathedral known as La Sagrada Familia, at night. When shooting really iconic sites, I like to seek out unusual perspectives to avoid the dreaded “postcard shot”. Here I composed looking up from near the base of one of the towers, allowing the background to be filled by the dark night sky. This composition cleaned up most of the busy urban scene’s clutter and made for a dramatic capture of the basilica bathed in several types of light.
We had only 90 minutes to visit the interior of La Sagrada Familia before heading to Barcelona’s airport to fly home to San Francisco. I shot this self-portrait (Mary is also included) using a mirror positioned so visitors could view the soaring interior space of La Sagrada Familia.

I hope you enjoyed these favorite images from three great European cities, along with my descriptions of how the images were made. To view more images, or perhaps to purchase a few, just click on any of the photos to go to the gallery.

What are your favorite techniques or images from your urban photography? Do you have urban themes you like to document wherever you travel? Please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Want to read more posts about travel photography destinations? Find them all here: http://www.to-travel-hopefully.com/category/destinations/.

Focus on Cuba [Encore Publication]: Go to Cuba now while you still can

Cuba is a remarkable destination for travel photographers!  This small island has all the iconic images we expect–beautiful but crumbling art deco buildings, American cars from the late 1950s, unspoiled Caribbean beaches–but there are so many more opportunities to connect with and photograph a culture and a nation that is undergoing very rapid change.

Lovers embrace on Havana’s Malecon at sunset.  Buy this photo

European and Latin American travelers already know about Cuba’s charms and have been coming here for decades.  But to many Americans, Cuba has felt off-limits, a destination forbidden by our government.  I’m going to steer clear of the political issues in this post, but it must be noted that President Trump’s recent orders to tighten Cuba travel restrictions previously relaxed under the Obama administration will make it more difficult once again to visit.  The recent changes do not outlaw all travel to Cuba, but most Americans will need to visit under an official “People-to-People Cultural Exchange” program.  The operators of these programs may have to revise their itineraries due to new prohibitions against travel to any facilities owned by the Cuban military, and the prices of these programs may rise as regularly scheduled commercial flights to the island could revert to more expensive charter flights.  But it is still quite straightforward, and 100% legal, for US residents to visit Cuba under one of these People-to-People programs.

I do not recommend trying to circumvent the licensing requirements.  This can lead to lots of trouble for the unlicensed American traveler later down the road: hefty fines, lots of questions to be answered, and restrictions on one’s future travel possibilities.  Instead, go with one of the many travel companies who operate People-to-People Cultural Exchanges.  These are legal trips licensed by the US government for the purposes of the people from the US and Cuba getting to know each other.  These trips do require that most of the traveler’s time be spent interacting with Cuban people of all walks of life, but isn’t that what we travel photographers seek, anyway?

We spent a delightful 1.5 weeks on one of these cultural exchange programs run by Grand Circle Foundation.  They offer a variety of different Cuban itineraries, and we would have preferred one of the longer ones, but schedule limitations required us to take the shorter trip.  This itinerary brought us to the capital Havana and to the rural Viñales Valley, the center of tobacco production and ecotourism on the island.  Here are some highlights from this travel photographer’s perspective.


Our small group was invited to attend a rehearsal by Opera de la Calle.  Held in a decrepit art deco building in downtown Havana, the spirited performance combined song, dance, and performance art.  Buy this photo


Getting to know some of the locals while visiting the exuberant art installation by Jose Fuster known as Fusterlandia.  Buy this photo

We left Havana’s vibrant urban vibe for a three-day excursion to the rural Viñales Valley.  Exploring this famed tobacco-producing region from our base at an eco-tourism village within a sustainable agricultural collective, we enjoyed hiking through terrain unlike any we’d seen elsewhere, taking in views of local wildlife and flowers along the way.

The picturesque Viñales Valley is noted for its mogotes, dramatic hilly outcroppings.  Buy this photo

 

Tobacco farmer Benito enjoying the fruit of his labor.  Buy this photo

Cuba’s national bird, the brightly colored Tocororo.  Buy this photo

The warm and engaging proprietor of Maria’s Cafe surveys her domain.  Buy this photo

During a Viñales Valley elementary school visit, we met the staff and great  kids in the classrooms!  Three classes for different ages shared one old church building.  Buy this photo

We got to know a friendly and enterprising rural family during a home-hosted dinner.  This is their typical family transportation.  Buy this photo

Back in Havana, we strolled through the city’s Old Town.  Buy this photo

A special performance of Santeria singing and dance.  Santeria combines Roman Catholicism with African religions to form a uniquely Cuban hybrid.  Buy this photo

This selection of photos barely scratches the surface of all the wonderful, unique photographic opportunities awaiting you in Cuba now.  Go soon, though, because for better or for worse, this nation is transitioning quickly into a very different future.

A few years ago, the first commercial flight from the US to Cuba in over 50 years had just taken off from Florida: NY Times on US flights to Cuba.  For many Cubans, this seemed like the dawn of a new era that would mean a partial easing of a great deal of economic hardship suffered under the US embargo.  Instead, we are seeing a regression of US/Cuban relations to a situation more like the Cold War era policy.  It’s anybody’s guess as to how this situation will evolve over the coming years.  On the one hand, it’s possible a new US or Cuban administration could open up relations considerably, leading to huge continuing changes in Cuban society.  On the other hand, we could see further tightening on travel to Cuba, making it very difficult for Americans to visit at all.  I’m eager to visit again in a few years to meet more Cuban people and observe how their lives have changed in the interim.  But if you prefer to visit–and photograph–tiny colorful sidewalk cafes rather than Starbucks, authentic cultural interactions rather than slickly produced touristic shows, and wide open vistas rather than lavish resort developments, then now is the time to book your trip to Cuba!  Depending on the political environment, now could even be your last chance to visit for some years.

Have you been to Cuba?  What surprised you there?  What were some of your favorite photographic subjects?  If you haven’t been yet, what images do you associate with this island nation?  Please share your thoughts in the comment box at the end of this post.

A Panama Panorama!: My professionally published 2020 Panama wall calendar is available now

Dear Readers,

A professionally published 2020 wall calendar featuring 13 of my images from Panama is now available for sale online and in select bookstores. If you or a friend love Panama or just enjoy inspiring travel photography, this calendar will be a big hit. I’ve included images from all over Panama that represent many elements of the country’s natural beauty, history, and cultural diversity. Panama Canal fans will find a couple of photos documenting the operations of this marvel of engineering.

Please order soon to ensure timely delivery. The calendar should be available soon on Amazon, but for now it can immediately be ordered at a discounted price and with free US delivery from reliable British bookseller Book Depository: https://www.bookdepository.com/search/9781325514359. Thanks for supporting my work!

Kyle

Focus on Iceland [Encore Publication]: A world-class landscape photography destination

Iconic Icelandic scene: The lovely Gullfoss Waterfall can be viewed from three different levels to obtain different perspectives on these dramatic falls.  To capture this image, I climbed to the top level, secured the camera and wide-angle lens on a sturdy tripod, and attached a neutral-density filter to allow a long exposure even in the harsh midday lighting.  I shot a series of seven exposures, each one stop apart, and then combined them into a single image using image-processing software.  This technique, called High Dynamic Range (or HDR), allows a single image to show a wide range of tonal values from extremely dark to extremely bright. 

My two daughters, my wife, and I recently returned from an inspiring two-week adventure traveling through Iceland.  Our itinerary took us from the main city of Reykjavik to the scenic Snaefellsness Peninsula’s volcanic landscape, then up to Iceland’s far north just below the Arctic Circle, down to the southern coast dotted with geothermal fields and spectacular waterfalls, and ending with a visit to Iceland’s premier attraction, the Blue Lagoon.  Throughout this adventure we had the opportunity to meet and learn about Iceland’s Nordic culture and Viking roots from Icelanders of all backgrounds and trades.  Iceland is a photographer’s dream, filled with glorious landscapes, otherworldly natural features, and friendly people.

Our Icelandic adventure began in the largest city, Reykjavik.  While small relative to other major world capitals, Reykjavik is modern, well-functioning, and ambitious in its development.  Its harbor-side location lends the city a strong measure of natural beauty.

Reykjavik’s new Harpa Concert Hall is Iceland’s premier home for the arts.  The brightly colored glass façade of the building was inspired by Iceland’s volcanic landscape.  While it’s tempting in architectural photography to use a wide-angle lens in order to include the entire building, I find it’s often more interesting to use a moderate telephoto lens in order to emphasize just a part of the whole.  This abstract image takes the viewer’s eye along the multicolored façade with its varied patterns of texture and reflections.

A big part of the joy of travel photography is using our camera as a tool to get to know the people we meet.  While we shared a city bus ride with a group of schoolkids out on a field trip to visit the National Museum, this little boy and I were playing a game of virtual peekaboo, resulting in this unorthodox portrait.

Stunning view over Reykjavik and its harbor from the top of the tower at Hallgrimskirkja Church.  A polarizing filter can help darken skies and enhance the sense of drama in clouds and water. 

Departing Reykjavik for the Snaefellsnes Peninsula, we traversed a fabled landscape first discovered by the early Viking settlers.

A short hike took us to the summit of Mount Helgafell, a sacred hill about 250 feet high.  When composing landscape photos, keep in mind two useful tools, the Rule of Thirds, and the principle of Leading Lines.  Both are used in this image.  The Rule of Thirds suggests placing key elements of the image along the lines that cut 1/3 and 2/3 of the way through the frame in both the horizontal and vertical dimensions.  And Leading Lines draw the viewer’s eye across the frame to rest on the most important spots.

The coastal town of Stykkisholmur sits on the coast along the scenic Snaefellsnes Peninsula.  There we came across this curious house with windows at street level and a doorway at the second story level.  Often the most memorable photos are made of the strange places we happen upon during our wanderings.

During a visit to a horse farm, we saw a demonstration of all five gaits (one more than other breeds) that Icelandic horses are capable of.  So smooth is the Icelandic horse’s cantor that you could, if you like, enjoy a mug of beer while riding.

Even a dreadful rain storm couldn’t spoil images of Godafoss Waterfall.  Meaning “waterfall of the pagan gods,” the falls received their name when the leader of Iceland’s parliament decided that the country should adopt Christianity as the official religion in AD 1000.  Informally, Icelanders were still allowed to practice pagan rites in private, but the head of parliament made a symbolic gesture of throwing most of his pagan statues into the falls.  Waterfalls are wonderful subjects for landscape photography, but they should be treated with care and patience.  A sturdy tripod is essential for holding the camera steady during the long exposures required to lend a dramatic blur to the turbulent water.  Here I fitted the camera with a wide-angle lens and a neutral-density filter, which blocks out most of the light and allows a slow shutter speed even in broad daylight.  The camera was mounted on a tripod and I used a cable release to trigger the shutter in order to avoid shaking the camera.  During post-processing I decided to convert this image to black-and-white in order to remove the distraction of the color and really emphasize the dramatic effect of the roiling water.

Sometimes we get the best photos by turning our lens on small and easily overlooked features.  The volcanic soil at Lake Myvatn makes a fertile habitat for colorful lichens.  There were hundreds of other visitors present during our visit to Lake Myvatn, but nobody else noticed the vibrant natural display just below our feet.  The amazing palette of colors in this image is entirely natural. 

This abstract image shows the facade of the Lutheran church at the Laufas turf houses.  I was struck by the textures and patterns of the architecture, so I used a telephoto lens to crop the composition so as to show only a part of the building, then converted to black-and-white during post-processing to simplify the presentation.

The Laufas turf houses were built over a period of several hundred years for wealthy families, and included all the comforts of contemporary living.  When photographing architecture with a wide-angle lens, it’s important to keep the camera level so as to avoid excessive distortion of the vertical lines. 

Leaving behind the lovely Snaefellsnes Peninsula, we headed north to reach Akureyri, Iceland’s second-largest city located just a few miles below the Arctic Circle.

In Akureyri, just a few miles below the Arctic Circle, we enjoyed the warmth of a wonderful home-hosted dinner.  Our hosts were both professional musicians, and they performed an impromptu concert for us after dinner.

Suited up for the cold and wind, our group boarded a vessel for a whale watching excursion in Dalvik.  I made this portrait of our on-board naturalist, a true native Icelander, using a moderate telephoto lens.

There are so many wonderful subjects to capture during our travels that it’s important to remember to shoot a few of ourselves.  Because our daughters, in their early 20s, don’t get to travel with us very often, we cherish the few photos we have featuring all of us together as a family.  To grab this fun shot of our human family interacting with a family of trolls, I configured all of the camera’s settings before handing the camera to a fellow traveler in our group who triggered the shutter.

A short flight from Iceland’s far north back down to Reykjavik positions us to explore the famed Golden Circle, a road connecting Thingvellir National Park, Geysir geothermal region, and Gullfoss Waterfall.

At Thingvellir National Park, we hiked along the rift zone where two tectonic plates (the Eurasian and the North American) are drifting apart.  It’s hard to capture the majesty of dramatic and varied geological features, so I like to combine several layers of landforms in the image.  From top to bottom, this composition captures the sky, the rocky rift zone, and the ropey lava in the foreground.

Visiting the Geysir geothermal area, from which all geysers derive their name.  Along with Yellowstone’s Old Faithful and Calistoga’s geyser, Iceland’s Strokkur is one of just a few regularly erupting geysers in the world.  A hard truth in travel photography is that we can’t control the weather and often we can’t control the time of day when we visit certain locations, so we have to make do with what we’re given.  To make the best photo possible given the poor contrast between the geyser’s eruption and the cloudy sky, I stepped back several hundred yards to include the observers, the dramatic clouds, and the mountainous background in the composition.

An excursion via super truck (a large four-wheel drive vehicle with the tires partly deflated) afforded us the opportunity to explore the otherwise inaccessible glacial terrain, including hiking into this otherworldly ice cave.

My daughters, who only recently attained legal drinking age, enjoy a shot of local Icelandic vodka chilled with glacial ice during our hike into an ice cave.  In the dim lighting inside the cave, use of a flash is required to light a portrait, but to avoid firing the flash too close to the axis of the lens, I attached a flash unit to my camera via a remote flash cord.  This simple and inexpensive accessory makes a huge difference when using flash lighting.

Our ATV tour took us off-road across the volcanic landscape of the Reykjanes Peninsula.

On our last full day in Iceland before flying back home, we visited the legendary Blue Lagoon spa near Reykjavik.  Crowded, expensive, and touristy, it is nonetheless supremely relaxing and lots of fun.  This spa is also a very social place where it’s easy to meet—and photograph—visitors from all over the world.

The one site that nobody sets foot in Iceland without visiting is the Blue Lagoon.  During our time there, I made portraits of several visitors from different parts of the world.  It’s important to spend some time chatting with and getting to know your subject before making their portrait.  This practice is partly due to courtesy (it’s rude to shoot photos of people without their permission), but it also yields better images because your subject will relax and show you their true self after they get to know you.

All of the images appearing in this post and many more are available for viewing and purchase on my website here: Iceland photo gallery.

Have you traveled in Iceland?  Please share the most memorable aspects of your photographic journey in the comments box.

Want to read more posts about world-class travel photography destinations?  Find them all here: Posts about destinations.

 

Focus on Lisbon, Berlin, and Barcelona [Encore Publication]: History, architecture, and cultures yield boundless photographic opportunities

My wife and I recently returned from two weeks of travel in Europe to fulfill several of my photography assignments. I’ll publish separate posts in the coming weeks covering some of those professional assignments. In today’s post we’ll explore the vibrant capital cities of Lisbon, Berlin, and Barcelona. While each of these three cities has a personality very much its own, I’m hoping my images will demonstrate that photographing cities, like photographing people, is all about looking for what we have in common even as we celebrate our differences. Urban photography is special to me because cities are the places where history, architecture, and culture often align most dramatically to paint a full picture of how we live today. Note that all of these images and many more are available to view and, if desired, to purchase; just click on any image to view the gallery. Enjoy!

On arrival in Lisbon, we are treated to an early morning view of the old Moorish quarter of Alfama. I like to underexpose by 1-2 stops when shooting sunrises and sunsets to bring out more intensity in the colors. If in doubt, bracket your exposures and choose the one that best captures the scene as you experienced it, or combine the different exposures into a composite high dynamic range (HDR) image.
I loved the look and feel of the old streetcars plying the streets of Lisbon, so I found this picturesque spot and waited until the next tram came into view.
If you had told me one of the most amazing experiences in Lisbon is visiting a tile museum, I’d have answered it’s more exciting to watch the grass grow. But it turns out the National Azulejo (Tile) Museum is absolutely incredible from start to finish. This ornate chapel, decorated in azulejo tiles, is entirely contained within a part of the museum. When shooting interiors it is often advantageous to use a wide-angle lens, but it’s important to keep the camera level to the plane of the ground and avoid shooting upward or downward in order to avoid the severe proportional distortion that can occur in these situations. While it is possible to correct for this sort of distortion in post-processing software like Lightroom, it is preferable to get it right in-camera.
A nighttime street scene in Lisbon’s old Moorish neighborhood of Alfama. When handholding the camera in a low-light situation, especially when a small aperture is required for depth-of-field, it’s a good idea to boost the camera’s ISO sensitivity setting in order to achieve a relatively fast shutter speed.
We spent a full day exploring the Sintra region about an hour west of Lisbon, at the very far western edge of the European continent. Quinta da Regaleira is a wonderfully eccentric estate including a palace, a chapel, and several strange features adorned with symbols of alchemy, Masonry, the Knights Templar, and the Rosicrucians. Our favorite feature was this stone tower. I’m always on the lookout for repeating geometric patterns that often make for compelling images. It’s important to compose such shots carefully to enhance the power of the recurring pattern. I converted this image to black-and-white during postprocessing to give it a high-contrast graphic arts style look.

The Alfama neighborhood is famous as the birthplace of fado, a form of music typically performed by a solo singer accompanied by two Portuguese guitars. Fado is essentially a Portuguese version of the blues, with lyrics and melodies emphasizing the melancholy side of the culture. Most fado clubs feature extremely dim lighting to set the mood, and flash photography is strictly prohibited. This results in a technical challenge trying to capture good images. Here I used a very fast (f/1.4) prime lens almost all the way open and also boosted my camera’s ISO sensitivity setting to 6400 (as high as I like to go in order to avoid excessive digital noise), but still the required shutter speed was a rather slow 1/15 second. Instead of trying to capture the moving singer in tack-sharp fashion, I leaned into the mood of the place and allowed some motion blur to occur.
On our final day in Lisbon we explored Belem, an historic Medieval parish most well known for its medieval tower. Again, when shooting architecture with a wide-angle lens, try to shoot with the camera parallel to the ground to avoid distortion of the vertical lines. I also underexposed this image a bit to make for a more dramatic sky, recovering some of the shadow detail in post-processing.
Enjoying the Lisbon obsession, the sublime custard pastry known as Pastel de Belém, at the cafe that invented them (well, the recipe was probably borrowed from the Jerónimos Monastery next door). Food is a key part of any people’s culture, so I like to capture food scenes as part of every urban shoot. Insofar as possible, I try to arrange the various elements on the table so they tell a story in the frame of the image. Here I removed some of the items that cluttered the background, including just the pastries and the local coffee drinks. I try not to shoot straight down onto the food, as that usually results in unappealing shots. With food photography, some work is usually required in post-processing to adjust color temperatures and remove distractions like dirt and shadows.
After our stay in Lisbon, we enjoyed an unforgettable two days on assignment shooting the annual Mardi Gras Carnival festivities on the Poruguese owned island of Madeira. Those images will be featured in a separate post. Then, onward to Berlin. Our hotel was right next to the infamous Checkpoint Charlie section of the old Berlin Wall, shown here.
No visit to Berlin would be complete without passing through the stately neoclassical Brandenburg Gate. It can be very challenging to get a clean shot of very crowded iconic urban sites. Here I fitted a wide-angle lens, composed the shot looking straight toward the gate without pointing the camera up or down, and waited until nearly all of the tourists had left the frame. Some straightening of the vertical and horizontal lines still had to be done in post-processing to avoid the perspective distortion introduced by the very wide focal length.
Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial takes up a large city block and requires some time to take in and explore. To capture this large, powerful, and rather imposing monument, I composed using a moderately wide lens stopped down to a small aperture for maximum depth-of-field and keeping the horizon line with the background buildings completely straight. I converted to black-and-white in post-processing to achieve a stately, somber feel.
On our way home from Berlin, we had an overnight layover in Barcelona. With time in town for only one dinner and a bit of nighttime and morning sightseeing, we enjoyed Catalonian tapas for an authentic local dining experience. I arranged the stuffed pasta and wine glass in a pleasing pattern against the simple background of the wooden table and cropped the image to emphasize the food and wine without distractions. The color temperature usually needs to be adjusted during post-processing to give the food and beverage a realistic color.
Exploring Gaudí’s masterpiece, the cathedral known as La Sagrada Familia, at night. When shooting really iconic sites, I like to seek out unusual perspectives to avoid the dreaded “postcard shot”. Here I composed looking up from near the base of one of the towers, allowing the background to be filled by the dark night sky. This composition cleaned up most of the busy urban scene’s clutter and made for a dramatic capture of the basilica bathed in several types of light.
We had only 90 minutes to visit the interior of La Sagrada Familia before heading to Barcelona’s airport to fly home to San Francisco. I shot this self-portrait (Mary is also included) using a mirror positioned so visitors could view the soaring interior space of La Sagrada Familia.

I hope you enjoyed these favorite images from three great European cities, along with my descriptions of how the images were made. To view more images, or perhaps to purchase a few, just click on any of the photos to go to the gallery.

What are your favorite techniques or images from your urban photography? Do you have urban themes you like to document wherever you travel? Please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Want to read more posts about travel photography destinations? Find them all here: http://www.to-travel-hopefully.com/category/destinations/.

Focus on Chile and Argentina [Encore Publication]: Rugged mountain landscapes and distinctive cultural experiences abound

Our wonderful 3.5-week adventure took us from Santiago, where we visited our older daughter, to fabled Easter Island, sophisticated Buenos Aires, the mystical island of Chiloe, and then through much of Southern Patagonia.  For much of this itinerary we were traveling with a local leader and a small group of fellow travelers on a trip operated by Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT).  The knowledge of our local trip leader coupled with the small group size allowed us to travel to largely untouristed areas and to engage in authentic cultural interactions that would not have been easy to set up on our own and would have been impractical to include on larger group trips.  Such a format offers amazing opportunities for photographers, as it provides access to an array of experiences beyond the “postcard-type” shots.  From home-hosted meals to wildlife encounters to hiking across glaciers and on the slopes of a volcano, this trip packed a lot of memorable moments–and images–into just a few weeks’ time.

Easter Island is a small and extremely remote island, accessible via daily flights from Santiago.  It is, of course, famed for the monolithic human figures carved by the Rapa Nui people centuries ago, called moai, that are scattered across the island.  But there is a lot more to Easter Island than the moai, including a distinctive Polynesian culture and a wealth of natural beauty.

When photographing iconic sites like this grouping of moai on Easter Island, look for a different perspective.  Here, I have framed the image from an unusual vantage point, shooting with a telephoto lens to compress the moai so that they appear closer together and more imposing than they would if framed from directly in front.   Buy this photo on my website

From Easter Island we traveled to Argentina’s capital city of Buenos Aires.  This city has a high-energy feel, offers a huge array of food specialties, and is graced with stately European style avenues and architecture.

 

Buenos Aires’ colorful and historic barrio (neighborhood) of La Boca is the birthplace of the tango.  To give a sense of the dance’s motion, I shot with a slightly slower shutter speed.  The rich colors of La Boca can be brought out in post-processing with subtle adjustments to the vibrance and/or saturation tools in image editing software such as Lightroom.  Buy this photo on my website

A stay in the Alpine style village of San Carlos de Bariloche included fascinating interactions with Hans, who as a German boy growing up in Bariloche uncovered his father’s Nazi past and wrote several scholarly books about Nazis living in Argentina; and with Christina, a Mapuche Indian grandmother, civil rights activist, and jewelry maker.  We then crossed overland toward the border with Chile, stopping en route for a home-hosted lunch of grilled lamb and for some horseback ridingon a family estancia (ranch).

Chango, the family patriarch, saddles up the horses for a ranch ride.  An environmental portrait includes not only the person who is the subject of the portrait, but also enough of the surroundings to give a deeper sense of who the person is.  A classic portrait lens would also work nicely for a shot like this one, but to emphasize the relationship between man and horse, and to give some separation between the subject and the background, I chose a longer telephoto lens.  Buy this photo on my website


An otherworldly sight: a lenticular cloud forms on the summit of Osorno Volcano as we were hiking on the slopes.  To capture high-contrast scenes like this one, it often helps to underexpose by about one stop to preserve the detail in the highlights.  Then the shadow detail can be brought back later during post-processing. Buy this photo on my website

The same Osorno Volcano viewed from Vicente Perez Rosales National Park.  To blur the water, I placed the camera on a steady tripod and used a longer shutter speed.  Attaching a neutral density filter to the lens can help by reducing the amount of light reaching the camera’s sensor, thus allowing a longer shutter speed even in bright daylight. Buy this photo on my website

A ferry crossing from mainland Chile brought us to the island of Chiloe for an overnight stay.  Chiloe exudes a strong sense of its mystical past and is characterized by colorful houses rising on stilts out of the water.

Characteristic brightly colored Chilote houses built on stilts.  Choose a vantage point from which the houses can be framed in a pleasing manner, shoot with a wide angle lens to include more of the houses, and add a bit of vibrance in post-processing to bring out the saturated colors. Buy this photo on my website

The island of Chiloe includes a fascinating bird preserve reachable by small boat.  Here is a penguin couple out strolling in their formal wear.  To stabilize the camera and long telephoto lens while shooting from a heavily rocking small boat, use a fast shutter speed (choosing a higher ISO can help), turn on vibration reduction if your lens or camera offers it, and release the shutter at the instant when the boat reaches the top of its cycle of rocking.  It’s helpful to use a monopod if you have one (I didn’t) and to shoot a continuous burst of images so that you are more likely to get a good sharp one. Buy this photo on my website

After traveling south all the way to the Strait of Magellan (the farthest south I have ever stood, with Antarctica the only land mass below it), we continued northwest until we reached Torres del Paine National Park, any photographer’s dream destination.  The photographic possibilities here are endless, with rugged mountains meeting brilliant blue glaciers and clear lakes.  We had the opportunity to view this breathtaking beauty from various hikes and by boat.

Blue ice on Lago Grey’s glacier imitates the mountain peaks soaring behind.  I used a polarizing filter on the lens to bring out the intense blues in the glacier and sky, but had to be careful not to remove too much of the reflection in the water of the lake. Buy this photo on my website

Alpenglow lights the peaks behind Lago Grey and its glacier.  To make this image, I had to forego much of a really good dinner by shooting through the mealtime out on the deck of our lodge.  With the camera on a steady tripod, I shot a series of images using different exposures, a process known as bracketing.  Later, these shots can be blended together using the high dynamic range (HDR) tools in software such as Lightroom or Photoshop. Buy this photo on my website

Heading out of Torres del Paine through the heart of Patagonia, our adventure was not yet over.  We still had another national park (Los Glacieres) to visit on the Argentinian side before returning to Buenos Aires for our farewell dinner and our flights back home.

Patagonian Paradise.  Don’t forget to include yourself and your traveling companions in some of your images.  This one, made as we headed out of Torres del Paine National Park, made a great holiday card. Buy this photo on my website

Have you visited Patagonia, the capital cities of Argentina and Chile, Easter Island, or Chiloe Island?  What did you find most memorable?  Please add your suggestions for places to visit or subjects to shoot.  Just enter your thoughts in the comment box.

Want to read more posts about travel photography destinations?  Find them all here: Posts on Destinations.

 

Focus on Ireland [Encore Publication]: The Emerald Isle offers unique landscapes and culture

We’re recently returned from a two-week adventure in Ireland and Scotland.  Our itinerary sandwiched a week of hiking in the glorious southwestern regions of Ireland (Counties Kerry and Cork) in between brief stays in the major cities of Dublin and Edinburgh.  The photographic opportunities in these regions are remarkable, with lovely landscapes, historic architecture, and a generous friendly culture evident everywhere.  I provide an overview in the form of a photo essay in today’s post, and upcoming posts will feature more details on specific places or types of subjects from the trip.

The Irish pub remains a central focus of life on the Emerald Isle.  In cities and tiny rural villages, the pubs are places for people to come together and catch up with old friends, make new friends, listen to live traditional music, and of course drink a pint or two.  This image was made in Dublin’s famed O’Donoghue’s Pub, where in the 1960s bands such as the Dubliners sparked the Irish folk music revival.
To make portraits in pubs, where the lighting is dim and the use of flash is out of the question, use a fast lens and a high ISO setting.  You need a shutter speed of at least 1/80 of a second to get a reasonably sharp image of musicians at work.  Buy this photo

It may come as a surprise (or not) to learn that Ireland’s most popular attraction is the Guinness Storehouse tour in Dublin.  Here my wife pulls a perfect pint of the “black stuff,” which we then enjoyed in the Gravity Bar atop the storehouse with views overlooking all of Dublin.

Another low-light shot, this image was made with ambient light only, using a fast lens and relatively high ISO.  Remember to capture some shots of your traveling companions.  Buy this photo

I highly recommend a visit to the very remote Gougane Barra peninsula.  There’s only one hotel, which offers outstanding food and views over a tiny island with a picturesque church and the ruins of a Sixth Century monastery.  A photographer’s paradise!

St. Finbarr’s Church stands on a tiny island on the Gougane Barra Peninsula.  To make this image, I shot in the early morning when the quality of light was compelling, got down low to include the rushes in the lake, and used a polarizing filter to bring out the textures in the water and sky.  Buy this photo

Don’t put away your gear when the sun sets!  On a rare clear night in rural Ireland, the photography is stunning.  Here’s an image of the Milky Way sprawling above the ruins of St. Finbarr’s Abbey, a Sixth Century monastery.

To capture the Milky Way, use a sturdy tripod and a relatively fast lens with a high ISO setting.  In most cases, a shutter speed of 20-25 seconds is best, but here I used a somewhat shorter exposure to avoid having the cross appear washed out in the site’s artificial light.  Buy this photo

We then hiked a portion of the long-distance Sheep’s Head Way.  You’ll rarely encounter completely clear skies while walking in Ireland, but the changeable conditions can create opportunities for glorious landscapes.  This lovely image was made just as the rain let up and the sun poked out, generating a vivid rainbow that spanned over the green fields and ancient walls.

Here I used my go-to landscape lens, the Nikon 16-35mm f/4 lens, fitted with a good circular polarizing filter.  I adjusted the angle of the polarizer carefully to enhance the sky without weakening the refraction of the rainbow.  I got down low to the ground to include the leading line from the old wall.  Other compositional elements include the sheep in the field and the dramatic clouds in the sky.  Buy this photo

At the end of the Sheep’s Head Way sits the lovely Bantry House, owned by the family since 1750.  Climb the hill behind the house to capture the house and its gardens with the harbor behind.  Buy this photo

On our way to the start of our next day’s hike in Killarney National Park, we stopped at a viewpoint called Priest’s Leap for this lovely view.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: remember to include yourself and your travel companions in some of your images.  Set up the camera and either mount it on a tripod or show another person how to release the shutter.  For more on how to make images including yourself, read this post: Post on Including Yourself

This image at Priest’s Leap was made using a normal lens with polarizing filter, stopped down to maximize depth-of-field.  Buy this photo

Ireland is filled with forests that exude a sense of mystery and magic.  Look for the little things as you walk: a flower or shamrock, a moss-covered tree, a tiny stream.  All that rain has the happy side-effect of making Ireland the greenest place I’ve ever seen.

Slow down and seek out the little natural details around you, like this moss-covered tree in Killarney National Park.  Buy this photo

The legendary Gap of Dunloe outside of Killarney stretches for eight miles through mountains and valleys, along streams and by ancient farmhouses.  It can be traversed by horse-drawn carriages called “jaunting cars,” but the intrepid photographer will want to hike it instead.

The Gap of Dunloe offers compelling photographic subjects like this stream flowing in a valley surrounded by mountains.  A good wide-angle lens with a polarizing filter brings out the color and texture in such a landscape, even on a “soft day” like this one.  Buy this photo

We spent every evening in Ireland visiting a pub or two.  These pubs differ in character, but all reflect the generous and friendly local culture, and many offer live music.

At a pub in Killarney, I was chatting with this fiddler during a break between sets, and made this portrait using natural light with a fast portrait lens, a wide aperture, and a high ISO.  Buy this photo

My essential portrait lens:

We were fortunate to stay two nights in Killarney at the wonderful Lake Hotel.  The hotel grounds include the ruins of an ancient castle situated on a lake with mountains behind.  During breakfast on our second morning, I noticed the cloud cover had lifted but there was still mist hanging on the side of the hills around the lake.  I ran up to our room, grabbed my thirty pounds of camera gear, and rushed outside to capture the ruins with the mist enshrouding the lake and mountains.

There was no time to set up a tripod as the warming sun was burning away the magical mist on the lake, so I shot this image handheld.  Buy this photo

Our final day’s hike was the beautiful Wild Atlantic Way from Ventry to Dunquin.  The lovely views of the Atlantic are punctuated with green fields dotted with odd “beehive huts,” some dating back to the Neolithic Period.
To make this landscape incorporating ancient stone beehive huts and walls, I shot down across the fields to the sea, being sure to keep the horizon level.  Buy this photo

The picturesque Blasket Islands were home to a community of Irish-speaking farmer-fishermen until they were forced to evacuate in 1953.  This is one of Ireland’s most gorgeous stretches of coastline, captured here using a wide-angle lens with polarizer.  Rotate the filter until the sky is dark and dramatic.  Buy this photo

After Ireland, we spent a few days in Edinburgh, Scotland.  This image was shot along the Royal Mile.

Be on the lookout for unusual perspectives.  This image juxtaposes the different colors and textures of  the statue in the foreground with the cathedral in the background.  Buy this photo

Dining is an essential part of any trip, and Edinburgh offers many opportunities to savor the new Scottish cuisine.  This lovely smoked salmon plate (with accompanying wee dram of whisky) was captured at the Tower Restaurant atop the Scottish National Museum.

For more about how to shoot food images, read this post: Post on Food Photography.      Buy this photo

I hope this post inspires you to visit Ireland and Scotland.  Look for posts over the next few days with more details about the trip and images.

If you’d like to read more posts about photographic destinations, you can find them all here: http://www.to-travel-hopefully.com/category/destinations/

Have you visited Ireland?  What did you find most memorable?  Any tips on photographing this enchanted place?  Please share your thoughts in the comment box after this post.

Focus on Lisbon, Berlin, and Barcelona [Encore Publication]: History, architecture, and cultures yield boundless photographic opportunities

My wife and I recently returned from two weeks of travel in Europe to fulfill several of my photography assignments. I’ll publish separate posts in the coming weeks covering some of those professional assignments. In today’s post we’ll explore the vibrant capital cities of Lisbon, Berlin, and Barcelona. While each of these three cities has a personality very much its own, I’m hoping my images will demonstrate that photographing cities, like photographing people, is all about looking for what we have in common even as we celebrate our differences. Urban photography is special to me because cities are the places where history, architecture, and culture often align most dramatically to paint a full picture of how we live today. Note that all of these images and many more are available to view and, if desired, to purchase; just click on any image to view the gallery. Enjoy!

On arrival in Lisbon, we are treated to an early morning view of the old Moorish quarter of Alfama. I like to underexpose by 1-2 stops when shooting sunrises and sunsets to bring out more intensity in the colors. If in doubt, bracket your exposures and choose the one that best captures the scene as you experienced it, or combine the different exposures into a composite high dynamic range (HDR) image.
I loved the look and feel of the old streetcars plying the streets of Lisbon, so I found this picturesque spot and waited until the next tram came into view.
If you had told me one of the most amazing experiences in Lisbon is visiting a tile museum, I’d have answered it’s more exciting to watch the grass grow. But it turns out the National Azulejo (Tile) Museum is absolutely incredible from start to finish. This ornate chapel, decorated in azulejo tiles, is entirely contained within a part of the museum. When shooting interiors it is often advantageous to use a wide-angle lens, but it’s important to keep the camera level to the plane of the ground and avoid shooting upward or downward in order to avoid the severe proportional distortion that can occur in these situations. While it is possible to correct for this sort of distortion in post-processing software like Lightroom, it is preferable to get it right in-camera.
A nighttime street scene in Lisbon’s old Moorish neighborhood of Alfama. When handholding the camera in a low-light situation, especially when a small aperture is required for depth-of-field, it’s a good idea to boost the camera’s ISO sensitivity setting in order to achieve a relatively fast shutter speed.
We spent a full day exploring the Sintra region about an hour west of Lisbon, at the very far western edge of the European continent. Quinta da Regaleira is a wonderfully eccentric estate including a palace, a chapel, and several strange features adorned with symbols of alchemy, Masonry, the Knights Templar, and the Rosicrucians. Our favorite feature was this stone tower. I’m always on the lookout for repeating geometric patterns that often make for compelling images. It’s important to compose such shots carefully to enhance the power of the recurring pattern. I converted this image to black-and-white during postprocessing to give it a high-contrast graphic arts style look.

The Alfama neighborhood is famous as the birthplace of fado, a form of music typically performed by a solo singer accompanied by two Portuguese guitars. Fado is essentially a Portuguese version of the blues, with lyrics and melodies emphasizing the melancholy side of the culture. Most fado clubs feature extremely dim lighting to set the mood, and flash photography is strictly prohibited. This results in a technical challenge trying to capture good images. Here I used a very fast (f/1.4) prime lens almost all the way open and also boosted my camera’s ISO sensitivity setting to 6400 (as high as I like to go in order to avoid excessive digital noise), but still the required shutter speed was a rather slow 1/15 second. Instead of trying to capture the moving singer in tack-sharp fashion, I leaned into the mood of the place and allowed some motion blur to occur.
On our final day in Lisbon we explored Belem, an historic Medieval parish most well known for its medieval tower. Again, when shooting architecture with a wide-angle lens, try to shoot with the camera parallel to the ground to avoid distortion of the vertical lines. I also underexposed this image a bit to make for a more dramatic sky, recovering some of the shadow detail in post-processing.
Enjoying the Lisbon obsession, the sublime custard pastry known as Pastel de Belém, at the cafe that invented them (well, the recipe was probably borrowed from the Jerónimos Monastery next door). Food is a key part of any people’s culture, so I like to capture food scenes as part of every urban shoot. Insofar as possible, I try to arrange the various elements on the table so they tell a story in the frame of the image. Here I removed some of the items that cluttered the background, including just the pastries and the local coffee drinks. I try not to shoot straight down onto the food, as that usually results in unappealing shots. With food photography, some work is usually required in post-processing to adjust color temperatures and remove distractions like dirt and shadows.
After our stay in Lisbon, we enjoyed an unforgettable two days on assignment shooting the annual Mardi Gras Carnival festivities on the Poruguese owned island of Madeira. Those images will be featured in a separate post. Then, onward to Berlin. Our hotel was right next to the infamous Checkpoint Charlie section of the old Berlin Wall, shown here.
No visit to Berlin would be complete without passing through the stately neoclassical Brandenburg Gate. It can be very challenging to get a clean shot of very crowded iconic urban sites. Here I fitted a wide-angle lens, composed the shot looking straight toward the gate without pointing the camera up or down, and waited until nearly all of the tourists had left the frame. Some straightening of the vertical and horizontal lines still had to be done in post-processing to avoid the perspective distortion introduced by the very wide focal length.
Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial takes up a large city block and requires some time to take in and explore. To capture this large, powerful, and rather imposing monument, I composed using a moderately wide lens stopped down to a small aperture for maximum depth-of-field and keeping the horizon line with the background buildings completely straight. I converted to black-and-white in post-processing to achieve a stately, somber feel.
On our way home from Berlin, we had an overnight layover in Barcelona. With time in town for only one dinner and a bit of nighttime and morning sightseeing, we enjoyed Catalonian tapas for an authentic local dining experience. I arranged the stuffed pasta and wine glass in a pleasing pattern against the simple background of the wooden table and cropped the image to emphasize the food and wine without distractions. The color temperature usually needs to be adjusted during post-processing to give the food and beverage a realistic color.
Exploring Gaudí’s masterpiece, the cathedral known as La Sagrada Familia, at night. When shooting really iconic sites, I like to seek out unusual perspectives to avoid the dreaded “postcard shot”. Here I composed looking up from near the base of one of the towers, allowing the background to be filled by the dark night sky. This composition cleaned up most of the busy urban scene’s clutter and made for a dramatic capture of the basilica bathed in several types of light.
We had only 90 minutes to visit the interior of La Sagrada Familia before heading to Barcelona’s airport to fly home to San Francisco. I shot this self-portrait (Mary is also included) using a mirror positioned so visitors could view the soaring interior space of La Sagrada Familia.

I hope you enjoyed these favorite images from three great European cities, along with my descriptions of how the images were made. To view more images, or perhaps to purchase a few, just click on any of the photos to go to the gallery.

What are your favorite techniques or images from your urban photography? Do you have urban themes you like to document wherever you travel? Please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Want to read more posts about travel photography destinations? Find them all here: http://www.to-travel-hopefully.com/category/destinations/.

Focus on Cuba [Rewritten for new policies]: Go to Cuba now while you still can

Cuba is a remarkable destination for travel photographers!  This small island has all the iconic images we expect–beautiful but crumbling art deco buildings, American cars from the late 1950s, unspoiled Caribbean beaches–but there are so many more opportunities to connect with and photograph a culture and a nation that is undergoing very rapid change.

Lovers embrace on Havana’s Malecon at sunset.  Buy this photo

European and Latin American travelers already know about Cuba’s charms and have been coming here for decades.  But to many Americans, Cuba has felt off-limits, a destination forbidden by our government.  I’m going to steer clear of the political issues in this post, but it must be noted that President Trump’s recent orders to tighten Cuba travel restrictions previously relaxed under the Obama administration will make it more difficult once again to visit.  The recent changes do not outlaw all travel to Cuba, but most Americans will need to visit under an official “People-to-People Cultural Exchange” program.  The operators of these programs may have to revise their itineraries due to new prohibitions against travel to any facilities owned by the Cuban military, and the prices of these programs may rise as regularly scheduled commercial flights to the island could revert to more expensive charter flights.  But it is still quite straightforward, and 100% legal, for US residents to visit Cuba under one of these People-to-People programs.

I do not recommend trying to circumvent the licensing requirements.  This can lead to lots of trouble for the unlicensed American traveler later down the road: hefty fines, lots of questions to be answered, and restrictions on one’s future travel possibilities.  Instead, go with one of the many travel companies who operate People-to-People Cultural Exchanges.  These are legal trips licensed by the US government for the purposes of the people from the US and Cuba getting to know each other.  These trips do require that most of the traveler’s time be spent interacting with Cuban people of all walks of life, but isn’t that what we travel photographers seek, anyway?

We spent a delightful 1.5 weeks on one of these cultural exchange programs run by Grand Circle Foundation.  They offer a variety of different Cuban itineraries, and we would have preferred one of the longer ones, but schedule limitations required us to take the shorter trip.  This itinerary brought us to the capital Havana and to the rural Viñales Valley, the center of tobacco production and ecotourism on the island.  Here are some highlights from this travel photographer’s perspective.


Our small group was invited to attend a rehearsal by Opera de la Calle.  Held in a decrepit art deco building in downtown Havana, the spirited performance combined song, dance, and performance art.  Buy this photo


Getting to know some of the locals while visiting the exuberant art installation by Jose Fuster known as Fusterlandia.  Buy this photo

We left Havana’s vibrant urban vibe for a three-day excursion to the rural Viñales Valley.  Exploring this famed tobacco-producing region from our base at an eco-tourism village within a sustainable agricultural collective, we enjoyed hiking through terrain unlike any we’d seen elsewhere, taking in views of local wildlife and flowers along the way.

The picturesque Viñales Valley is noted for its mogotes, dramatic hilly outcroppings.  Buy this photo

 

Tobacco farmer Benito enjoying the fruit of his labor.  Buy this photo

Cuba’s national bird, the brightly colored Tocororo.  Buy this photo

The warm and engaging proprietor of Maria’s Cafe surveys her domain.  Buy this photo

During a Viñales Valley elementary school visit, we met the staff and great  kids in the classrooms!  Three classes for different ages shared one old church building.  Buy this photo

We got to know a friendly and enterprising rural family during a home-hosted dinner.  This is their typical family transportation.  Buy this photo

Back in Havana, we strolled through the city’s Old Town.  Buy this photo

A special performance of Santeria singing and dance.  Santeria combines Roman Catholicism with African religions to form a uniquely Cuban hybrid.  Buy this photo

This selection of photos barely scratches the surface of all the wonderful, unique photographic opportunities awaiting you in Cuba now.  Go soon, though, because for better or for worse, this nation is transitioning quickly into a very different future.

A few years ago, the first commercial flight from the US to Cuba in over 50 years had just taken off from Florida: NY Times on US flights to Cuba.  For many Cubans, this seemed like the dawn of a new era that would mean a partial easing of a great deal of economic hardship suffered under the US embargo.  Instead, we are seeing a regression of US/Cuban relations to a situation more like the Cold War era policy.  It’s anybody’s guess as to how this situation will evolve over the coming years.  On the one hand, it’s possible a new US or Cuban administration could open up relations considerably, leading to huge continuing changes in Cuban society.  On the other hand, we could see further tightening on travel to Cuba, making it very difficult for Americans to visit at all.  I’m eager to visit again in a few years to meet more Cuban people and observe how their lives have changed in the interim.  But if you prefer to visit–and photograph–tiny colorful sidewalk cafes rather than Starbucks, authentic cultural interactions rather than slickly produced touristic shows, and wide open vistas rather than lavish resort developments, then now is the time to book your trip to Cuba!  Depending on the political environment, now could even be your last chance to visit for some years.

Have you been to Cuba?  What surprised you there?  What were some of your favorite photographic subjects?  If you haven’t been yet, what images do you associate with this island nation?  Please share your thoughts in the comment box at the end of this post.

Focus on New Orleans [Encore Publication]: This iconic US city pulsates with jazz, creole, and historic beauty

Some places are magnets that draw us back again and again.  I’ve made at least a dozen visits to New Orleans and each time, I find something new.  It’s an iconic US city that also defies easy categorization.  Home to unique and cutting-edge forms of music, cuisine, and culture, it is also steeped in a grand historic past that evokes France, Spain, Africa, and the Deep South of the US.  Quite simply, there is no other place like New Orleans, and nowhere else do travel photographers find more charismatic subjects.  Here are a few of my favorite images from a recent visit to NOLA, along with a few words about what they depict and how they were made.

Aside from Paris, I can’t think of any other city that has influenced the cocktail more than New Orleans.  Here I captured my older daughter enjoying a classic NOLA libation during dinner on our first night in the Big Easy.  I used only natural light and selected a large aperture to soften the background.  Laissez les bons temps rouler!  Buy this photo

It’s boozy, vomit-filled, sophomoric, touristy, overpriced, and downright awful, but Bourbon Street is a part of the landscape and is worth a quick walk-by.  At night, its neon assault can almost seem romantic.  This shot was handheld using a high ISO setting and a small aperture for greater depth of field.  Buy this photo

The lovely Spanish colonial architecture of the French Quarter cries out to be photographed.  I made this shot of a wrought iron balcony using a telephoto lens and enhanced the color vibrancy during post-processing.  Buy this photo

It’s the tiny cheap eateries as much as the temples of haute gastronomy that keep New Orleans at the top of the list of cities for dining.  Be sure to grab some po’ boys, beignets, or muffulettas at these humbler places, and bring your camera to catch some of the action.  This image of workers in a po’ boy shop was shot from the hip, street photography style, using a high ISO to allow for a quick shutter speed.  Buy this photo

New Orleans is rightly famous for its jazz, which seems to seep through every crack in the pavement of the city and can be heard in places humble or elevated.  None is better than the iconic Preservation Hall.  As with many performance venues, this hall allows photography without flash, but it is always better to ask permission first and to be discrete during shows.  Use a fast lens and high ISO setting to allow a fast shutter speed.  Buy this photo

A short trip outside of the city quickly reminds you that New Orleans is a part of the American Deep South.  This image was shot from an airboat plying the bayous of Jean Lafitte National Historic Preserve.  I metered the exposure on the lush vegetation lining the waterway so as to avoid overexposure from the bright reflections.  Buy this photo

I captured this image of an alligator seeking the sun on an overcast winter’s day by framing tightly around the gator and its reflection.  In post-processing, I cropped to emphasize the symmetry of reptile and reflection and converted the image to black-and-white, while increasing its contrast a bit.  Buy this photo

I’m a big fan of food photography, especially when the plate is as strikingly beautiful as this one served at Brigtsen’s Restaurant.  I framed the shot tightly with a fast prime lens and a wide aperture to reduce the depth of field.  Buy this photo

Wherever we travel, we should make images that bring out a sense of place.  This image of my daughters strolling in the Garden District works because it captures the iconic symbols of this neighborhood–the stately mansions and live oak trees–while being a bit playful and framed in an unexpected way.  And as I’ve said many times, remember to capture your travel companions in some of your shots.  Buy this photo

Have you visited New Orleans with a camera in hand?  Please share your experiences.  Where do you like to visit and what do you like to shoot?

Want to read more posts about travel photography destinations?  Find them all here: Posts on Destinations.

Focus on Iceland [Encore Publication]: A world-class landscape photography destination

Iconic Icelandic scene: The lovely Gullfoss Waterfall can be viewed from three different levels to obtain different perspectives on these dramatic falls.  To capture this image, I climbed to the top level, secured the camera and wide-angle lens on a sturdy tripod, and attached a neutral-density filter to allow a long exposure even in the harsh midday lighting.  I shot a series of seven exposures, each one stop apart, and then combined them into a single image using image-processing software.  This technique, called High Dynamic Range (or HDR), allows a single image to show a wide range of tonal values from extremely dark to extremely bright. 

My two daughters, my wife, and I recently returned from an inspiring two-week adventure traveling through Iceland.  Our itinerary took us from the main city of Reykjavik to the scenic Snaefellsness Peninsula’s volcanic landscape, then up to Iceland’s far north just below the Arctic Circle, down to the southern coast dotted with geothermal fields and spectacular waterfalls, and ending with a visit to Iceland’s premier attraction, the Blue Lagoon.  Throughout this adventure we had the opportunity to meet and learn about Iceland’s Nordic culture and Viking roots from Icelanders of all backgrounds and trades.  Iceland is a photographer’s dream, filled with glorious landscapes, otherworldly natural features, and friendly people.

Our Icelandic adventure began in the largest city, Reykjavik.  While small relative to other major world capitals, Reykjavik is modern, well-functioning, and ambitious in its development.  Its harbor-side location lends the city a strong measure of natural beauty.

Reykjavik’s new Harpa Concert Hall is Iceland’s premier home for the arts.  The brightly colored glass façade of the building was inspired by Iceland’s volcanic landscape.  While it’s tempting in architectural photography to use a wide-angle lens in order to include the entire building, I find it’s often more interesting to use a moderate telephoto lens in order to emphasize just a part of the whole.  This abstract image takes the viewer’s eye along the multicolored façade with its varied patterns of texture and reflections.

A big part of the joy of travel photography is using our camera as a tool to get to know the people we meet.  While we shared a city bus ride with a group of schoolkids out on a field trip to visit the National Museum, this little boy and I were playing a game of virtual peekaboo, resulting in this unorthodox portrait.

Stunning view over Reykjavik and its harbor from the top of the tower at Hallgrimskirkja Church.  A polarizing filter can help darken skies and enhance the sense of drama in clouds and water. 

Departing Reykjavik for the Snaefellsnes Peninsula, we traversed a fabled landscape first discovered by the early Viking settlers.

A short hike took us to the summit of Mount Helgafell, a sacred hill about 250 feet high.  When composing landscape photos, keep in mind two useful tools, the Rule of Thirds, and the principle of Leading Lines.  Both are used in this image.  The Rule of Thirds suggests placing key elements of the image along the lines that cut 1/3 and 2/3 of the way through the frame in both the horizontal and vertical dimensions.  And Leading Lines draw the viewer’s eye across the frame to rest on the most important spots.

The coastal town of Stykkisholmur sits on the coast along the scenic Snaefellsnes Peninsula.  There we came across this curious house with windows at street level and a doorway at the second story level.  Often the most memorable photos are made of the strange places we happen upon during our wanderings.

During a visit to a horse farm, we saw a demonstration of all five gaits (one more than other breeds) that Icelandic horses are capable of.  So smooth is the Icelandic horse’s cantor that you could, if you like, enjoy a mug of beer while riding.

Even a dreadful rain storm couldn’t spoil images of Godafoss Waterfall.  Meaning “waterfall of the pagan gods,” the falls received their name when the leader of Iceland’s parliament decided that the country should adopt Christianity as the official religion in AD 1000.  Informally, Icelanders were still allowed to practice pagan rites in private, but the head of parliament made a symbolic gesture of throwing most of his pagan statues into the falls.  Waterfalls are wonderful subjects for landscape photography, but they should be treated with care and patience.  A sturdy tripod is essential for holding the camera steady during the long exposures required to lend a dramatic blur to the turbulent water.  Here I fitted the camera with a wide-angle lens and a neutral-density filter, which blocks out most of the light and allows a slow shutter speed even in broad daylight.  The camera was mounted on a tripod and I used a cable release to trigger the shutter in order to avoid shaking the camera.  During post-processing I decided to convert this image to black-and-white in order to remove the distraction of the color and really emphasize the dramatic effect of the roiling water.

Sometimes we get the best photos by turning our lens on small and easily overlooked features.  The volcanic soil at Lake Myvatn makes a fertile habitat for colorful lichens.  There were hundreds of other visitors present during our visit to Lake Myvatn, but nobody else noticed the vibrant natural display just below our feet.  The amazing palette of colors in this image is entirely natural. 

This abstract image shows the facade of the Lutheran church at the Laufas turf houses.  I was struck by the textures and patterns of the architecture, so I used a telephoto lens to crop the composition so as to show only a part of the building, then converted to black-and-white during post-processing to simplify the presentation.

The Laufas turf houses were built over a period of several hundred years for wealthy families, and included all the comforts of contemporary living.  When photographing architecture with a wide-angle lens, it’s important to keep the camera level so as to avoid excessive distortion of the vertical lines. 

Leaving behind the lovely Snaefellsnes Peninsula, we headed north to reach Akureyri, Iceland’s second-largest city located just a few miles below the Arctic Circle.

In Akureyri, just a few miles below the Arctic Circle, we enjoyed the warmth of a wonderful home-hosted dinner.  Our hosts were both professional musicians, and they performed an impromptu concert for us after dinner.

Suited up for the cold and wind, our group boarded a vessel for a whale watching excursion in Dalvik.  I made this portrait of our on-board naturalist, a true native Icelander, using a moderate telephoto lens.

There are so many wonderful subjects to capture during our travels that it’s important to remember to shoot a few of ourselves.  Because our daughters, in their early 20s, don’t get to travel with us very often, we cherish the few photos we have featuring all of us together as a family.  To grab this fun shot of our human family interacting with a family of trolls, I configured all of the camera’s settings before handing the camera to a fellow traveler in our group who triggered the shutter.

A short flight from Iceland’s far north back down to Reykjavik positions us to explore the famed Golden Circle, a road connecting Thingvellir National Park, Geysir geothermal region, and Gullfoss Waterfall.

At Thingvellir National Park, we hiked along the rift zone where two tectonic plates (the Eurasian and the North American) are drifting apart.  It’s hard to capture the majesty of dramatic and varied geological features, so I like to combine several layers of landforms in the image.  From top to bottom, this composition captures the sky, the rocky rift zone, and the ropey lava in the foreground.

Visiting the Geysir geothermal area, from which all geysers derive their name.  Along with Yellowstone’s Old Faithful and Calistoga’s geyser, Iceland’s Strokkur is one of just a few regularly erupting geysers in the world.  A hard truth in travel photography is that we can’t control the weather and often we can’t control the time of day when we visit certain locations, so we have to make do with what we’re given.  To make the best photo possible given the poor contrast between the geyser’s eruption and the cloudy sky, I stepped back several hundred yards to include the observers, the dramatic clouds, and the mountainous background in the composition.

An excursion via super truck (a large four-wheel drive vehicle with the tires partly deflated) afforded us the opportunity to explore the otherwise inaccessible glacial terrain, including hiking into this otherworldly ice cave.

My daughters, who only recently attained legal drinking age, enjoy a shot of local Icelandic vodka chilled with glacial ice during our hike into an ice cave.  In the dim lighting inside the cave, use of a flash is required to light a portrait, but to avoid firing the flash too close to the axis of the lens, I attached a flash unit to my camera via a remote flash cord.  This simple and inexpensive accessory makes a huge difference when using flash lighting.

Our ATV tour took us off-road across the volcanic landscape of the Reykjanes Peninsula.

On our last full day in Iceland before flying back home, we visited the legendary Blue Lagoon spa near Reykjavik.  Crowded, expensive, and touristy, it is nonetheless supremely relaxing and lots of fun.  This spa is also a very social place where it’s easy to meet—and photograph—visitors from all over the world.

The one site that nobody sets foot in Iceland without visiting is the Blue Lagoon.  During our time there, I made portraits of several visitors from different parts of the world.  It’s important to spend some time chatting with and getting to know your subject before making their portrait.  This practice is partly due to courtesy (it’s rude to shoot photos of people without their permission), but it also yields better images because your subject will relax and show you their true self after they get to know you.

All of the images appearing in this post and many more are available for viewing and purchase on my website here: Iceland photo gallery.

Have you traveled in Iceland?  Please share the most memorable aspects of your photographic journey in the comments box.

Want to read more posts about world-class travel photography destinations?  Find them all here: Posts about destinations.

 

Focus on Lisbon, Berlin, and Barcelona [Encore Publication]: History, architecture, and cultures yield boundless photographic opportunities

My wife and I recently returned from two weeks of travel in Europe to fulfill several of my photography assignments. I’ll publish separate posts in the coming weeks covering some of those professional assignments. In today’s post we’ll explore the vibrant capital cities of Lisbon, Berlin, and Barcelona. While each of these three cities has a personality very much its own, I’m hoping my images will demonstrate that photographing cities, like photographing people, is all about looking for what we have in common even as we celebrate our differences. Urban photography is special to me because cities are the places where history, architecture, and culture often align most dramatically to paint a full picture of how we live today. Note that all of these images and many more are available to view and, if desired, to purchase; just click on any image to view the gallery. Enjoy!

On arrival in Lisbon, we are treated to an early morning view of the old Moorish quarter of Alfama. I like to underexpose by 1-2 stops when shooting sunrises and sunsets to bring out more intensity in the colors. If in doubt, bracket your exposures and choose the one that best captures the scene as you experienced it, or combine the different exposures into a composite high dynamic range (HDR) image.
I loved the look and feel of the old streetcars plying the streets of Lisbon, so I found this picturesque spot and waited until the next tram came into view.
If you had told me one of the most amazing experiences in Lisbon is visiting a tile museum, I’d have answered it’s more exciting to watch the grass grow. But it turns out the National Azulejo (Tile) Museum is absolutely incredible from start to finish. This ornate chapel, decorated in azulejo tiles, is entirely contained within a part of the museum. When shooting interiors it is often advantageous to use a wide-angle lens, but it’s important to keep the camera level to the plane of the ground and avoid shooting upward or downward in order to avoid the severe proportional distortion that can occur in these situations. While it is possible to correct for this sort of distortion in post-processing software like Lightroom, it is preferable to get it right in-camera.
A nighttime street scene in Lisbon’s old Moorish neighborhood of Alfama. When handholding the camera in a low-light situation, especially when a small aperture is required for depth-of-field, it’s a good idea to boost the camera’s ISO sensitivity setting in order to achieve a relatively fast shutter speed.
We spent a full day exploring the Sintra region about an hour west of Lisbon, at the very far western edge of the European continent. Quinta da Regaleira is a wonderfully eccentric estate including a palace, a chapel, and several strange features adorned with symbols of alchemy, Masonry, the Knights Templar, and the Rosicrucians. Our favorite feature was this stone tower. I’m always on the lookout for repeating geometric patterns that often make for compelling images. It’s important to compose such shots carefully to enhance the power of the recurring pattern. I converted this image to black-and-white during postprocessing to give it a high-contrast graphic arts style look.

The Alfama neighborhood is famous as the birthplace of fado, a form of music typically performed by a solo singer accompanied by two Portuguese guitars. Fado is essentially a Portuguese version of the blues, with lyrics and melodies emphasizing the melancholy side of the culture. Most fado clubs feature extremely dim lighting to set the mood, and flash photography is strictly prohibited. This results in a technical challenge trying to capture good images. Here I used a very fast (f/1.4) prime lens almost all the way open and also boosted my camera’s ISO sensitivity setting to 6400 (as high as I like to go in order to avoid excessive digital noise), but still the required shutter speed was a rather slow 1/15 second. Instead of trying to capture the moving singer in tack-sharp fashion, I leaned into the mood of the place and allowed some motion blur to occur.
On our final day in Lisbon we explored Belem, an historic Medieval parish most well known for its medieval tower. Again, when shooting architecture with a wide-angle lens, try to shoot with the camera parallel to the ground to avoid distortion of the vertical lines. I also underexposed this image a bit to make for a more dramatic sky, recovering some of the shadow detail in post-processing.
Enjoying the Lisbon obsession, the sublime custard pastry known as Pastel de Belém, at the cafe that invented them (well, the recipe was probably borrowed from the Jerónimos Monastery next door). Food is a key part of any people’s culture, so I like to capture food scenes as part of every urban shoot. Insofar as possible, I try to arrange the various elements on the table so they tell a story in the frame of the image. Here I removed some of the items that cluttered the background, including just the pastries and the local coffee drinks. I try not to shoot straight down onto the food, as that usually results in unappealing shots. With food photography, some work is usually required in post-processing to adjust color temperatures and remove distractions like dirt and shadows.
After our stay in Lisbon, we enjoyed an unforgettable two days on assignment shooting the annual Mardi Gras Carnival festivities on the Poruguese owned island of Madeira. Those images will be featured in a separate post. Then, onward to Berlin. Our hotel was right next to the infamous Checkpoint Charlie section of the old Berlin Wall, shown here.
No visit to Berlin would be complete without passing through the stately neoclassical Brandenburg Gate. It can be very challenging to get a clean shot of very crowded iconic urban sites. Here I fitted a wide-angle lens, composed the shot looking straight toward the gate without pointing the camera up or down, and waited until nearly all of the tourists had left the frame. Some straightening of the vertical and horizontal lines still had to be done in post-processing to avoid the perspective distortion introduced by the very wide focal length.
Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial takes up a large city block and requires some time to take in and explore. To capture this large, powerful, and rather imposing monument, I composed using a moderately wide lens stopped down to a small aperture for maximum depth-of-field and keeping the horizon line with the background buildings completely straight. I converted to black-and-white in post-processing to achieve a stately, somber feel.
On our way home from Berlin, we had an overnight layover in Barcelona. With time in town for only one dinner and a bit of nighttime and morning sightseeing, we enjoyed Catalonian tapas for an authentic local dining experience. I arranged the stuffed pasta and wine glass in a pleasing pattern against the simple background of the wooden table and cropped the image to emphasize the food and wine without distractions. The color temperature usually needs to be adjusted during post-processing to give the food and beverage a realistic color.
Exploring Gaudí’s masterpiece, the cathedral known as La Sagrada Familia, at night. When shooting really iconic sites, I like to seek out unusual perspectives to avoid the dreaded “postcard shot”. Here I composed looking up from near the base of one of the towers, allowing the background to be filled by the dark night sky. This composition cleaned up most of the busy urban scene’s clutter and made for a dramatic capture of the basilica bathed in several types of light.
We had only 90 minutes to visit the interior of La Sagrada Familia before heading to Barcelona’s airport to fly home to San Francisco. I shot this self-portrait (Mary is also included) using a mirror positioned so visitors could view the soaring interior space of La Sagrada Familia.

I hope you enjoyed these favorite images from three great European cities, along with my descriptions of how the images were made. To view more images, or perhaps to purchase a few, just click on any of the photos to go to the gallery.

What are your favorite techniques or images from your urban photography? Do you have urban themes you like to document wherever you travel? Please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Want to read more posts about travel photography destinations? Find them all here: http://www.to-travel-hopefully.com/category/destinations/.

Focus on Lisbon, Berlin, and Barcelona [Encore Publication]: History, architecture, and cultures yield boundless photographic opportunities

My wife and I recently returned from two weeks of travel in Europe to fulfill several of my photography assignments. I’ll publish separate posts in the coming weeks covering some of those professional assignments. In today’s post we’ll explore the vibrant capital cities of Lisbon, Berlin, and Barcelona. While each of these three cities has a personality very much its own, I’m hoping my images will demonstrate that photographing cities, like photographing people, is all about looking for what we have in common even as we celebrate our differences. Urban photography is special to me because cities are the places where history, architecture, and culture often align most dramatically to paint a full picture of how we live today. Note that all of these images and many more are available to view and, if desired, to purchase; just click on any image to view the gallery. Enjoy!

On arrival in Lisbon, we are treated to an early morning view of the old Moorish quarter of Alfama. I like to underexpose by 1-2 stops when shooting sunrises and sunsets to bring out more intensity in the colors. If in doubt, bracket your exposures and choose the one that best captures the scene as you experienced it, or combine the different exposures into a composite high dynamic range (HDR) image.
I loved the look and feel of the old streetcars plying the streets of Lisbon, so I found this picturesque spot and waited until the next tram came into view.
If you had told me one of the most amazing experiences in Lisbon is visiting a tile museum, I’d have answered it’s more exciting to watch the grass grow. But it turns out the National Azulejo (Tile) Museum is absolutely incredible from start to finish. This ornate chapel, decorated in azulejo tiles, is entirely contained within a part of the museum. When shooting interiors it is often advantageous to use a wide-angle lens, but it’s important to keep the camera level to the plane of the ground and avoid shooting upward or downward in order to avoid the severe proportional distortion that can occur in these situations. While it is possible to correct for this sort of distortion in post-processing software like Lightroom, it is preferable to get it right in-camera.
A nighttime street scene in Lisbon’s old Moorish neighborhood of Alfama. When handholding the camera in a low-light situation, especially when a small aperture is required for depth-of-field, it’s a good idea to boost the camera’s ISO sensitivity setting in order to achieve a relatively fast shutter speed.
We spent a full day exploring the Sintra region about an hour west of Lisbon, at the very far western edge of the European continent. Quinta da Regaleira is a wonderfully eccentric estate including a palace, a chapel, and several strange features adorned with symbols of alchemy, Masonry, the Knights Templar, and the Rosicrucians. Our favorite feature was this stone tower. I’m always on the lookout for repeating geometric patterns that often make for compelling images. It’s important to compose such shots carefully to enhance the power of the recurring pattern. I converted this image to black-and-white during postprocessing to give it a high-contrast graphic arts style look.

The Alfama neighborhood is famous as the birthplace of fado, a form of music typically performed by a solo singer accompanied by two Portuguese guitars. Fado is essentially a Portuguese version of the blues, with lyrics and melodies emphasizing the melancholy side of the culture. Most fado clubs feature extremely dim lighting to set the mood, and flash photography is strictly prohibited. This results in a technical challenge trying to capture good images. Here I used a very fast (f/1.4) prime lens almost all the way open and also boosted my camera’s ISO sensitivity setting to 6400 (as high as I like to go in order to avoid excessive digital noise), but still the required shutter speed was a rather slow 1/15 second. Instead of trying to capture the moving singer in tack-sharp fashion, I leaned into the mood of the place and allowed some motion blur to occur.
On our final day in Lisbon we explored Belem, an historic Medieval parish most well known for its medieval tower. Again, when shooting architecture with a wide-angle lens, try to shoot with the camera parallel to the ground to avoid distortion of the vertical lines. I also underexposed this image a bit to make for a more dramatic sky, recovering some of the shadow detail in post-processing.
Enjoying the Lisbon obsession, the sublime custard pastry known as Pastel de Belém, at the cafe that invented them (well, the recipe was probably borrowed from the Jerónimos Monastery next door). Food is a key part of any people’s culture, so I like to capture food scenes as part of every urban shoot. Insofar as possible, I try to arrange the various elements on the table so they tell a story in the frame of the image. Here I removed some of the items that cluttered the background, including just the pastries and the local coffee drinks. I try not to shoot straight down onto the food, as that usually results in unappealing shots. With food photography, some work is usually required in post-processing to adjust color temperatures and remove distractions like dirt and shadows.
After our stay in Lisbon, we enjoyed an unforgettable two days on assignment shooting the annual Mardi Gras Carnival festivities on the Poruguese owned island of Madeira. Those images will be featured in a separate post. Then, onward to Berlin. Our hotel was right next to the infamous Checkpoint Charlie section of the old Berlin Wall, shown here.
No visit to Berlin would be complete without passing through the stately neoclassical Brandenburg Gate. It can be very challenging to get a clean shot of very crowded iconic urban sites. Here I fitted a wide-angle lens, composed the shot looking straight toward the gate without pointing the camera up or down, and waited until nearly all of the tourists had left the frame. Some straightening of the vertical and horizontal lines still had to be done in post-processing to avoid the perspective distortion introduced by the very wide focal length.
Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial takes up a large city block and requires some time to take in and explore. To capture this large, powerful, and rather imposing monument, I composed using a moderately wide lens stopped down to a small aperture for maximum depth-of-field and keeping the horizon line with the background buildings completely straight. I converted to black-and-white in post-processing to achieve a stately, somber feel.
On our way home from Berlin, we had an overnight layover in Barcelona. With time in town for only one dinner and a bit of nighttime and morning sightseeing, we enjoyed Catalonian tapas for an authentic local dining experience. I arranged the stuffed pasta and wine glass in a pleasing pattern against the simple background of the wooden table and cropped the image to emphasize the food and wine without distractions. The color temperature usually needs to be adjusted during post-processing to give the food and beverage a realistic color.
Exploring Gaudí’s masterpiece, the cathedral known as La Sagrada Familia, at night. When shooting really iconic sites, I like to seek out unusual perspectives to avoid the dreaded “postcard shot”. Here I composed looking up from near the base of one of the towers, allowing the background to be filled by the dark night sky. This composition cleaned up most of the busy urban scene’s clutter and made for a dramatic capture of the basilica bathed in several types of light.
We had only 90 minutes to visit the interior of La Sagrada Familia before heading to Barcelona’s airport to fly home to San Francisco. I shot this self-portrait (Mary is also included) using a mirror positioned so visitors could view the soaring interior space of La Sagrada Familia.

I hope you enjoyed these favorite images from three great European cities, along with my descriptions of how the images were made. To view more images, or perhaps to purchase a few, just click on any of the photos to go to the gallery.

What are your favorite techniques or images from your urban photography? Do you have urban themes you like to document wherever you travel? Please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Want to read more posts about travel photography destinations? Find them all here: http://www.to-travel-hopefully.com/category/destinations/.

Focus on Turkey [Encore Publication]: Spectacular photographic opportunities abound in this troubled nation

In the fall of 2015, my wife and I traveled throughout Turkey on a 2.5-week journey that included adventures in Istanbul, Cappadocia, the Turquoise Coast, and Ephesus.  We traveled with Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT) in the company of a local Turkish trip leader, and we had a wonderful, safe experience.  In today’s post I share our experiences and some of my favorite images from this spectacular but troubled nation.

First, a few words about safety.   Even when we traveled in September and October of 2015, there were concerns about the safety of travel in Turkey.  We did not visit the far southeastern regions of Turkey due to the ongoing violence between various factions from ISIS, Kurdish separatist groups, and the Turkish government.  There was a bombing with many casualties in Ankara while we were visiting a different part of Turkey.  Since our trip, the situation has deteriorated as a result of an escalating crisis in and around the border with Syria, terrorist actions throughout the country, and the broad government crackdown in the wake of the attempted coup earlier this year.  OAT, the company we traveled with, has since suspended all of their trips to Turkey.  Tourism in Turkey is being devastated by the concerns of safety on the ground.

So why would anyone want to go to Turkey?  The cultural, historic, and natural appeals of this destination are undeniable.  It is a travel photographer’s paradise.  And safety is a relative term.  I’ve traveled in over 100 countries and many of them were considered “unsafe” when I visited, but my only two close encounters with real terrorism were in supposedly “safe” cities: a bombing in Tokyo and a mass shooting in Los Angeles.  I felt safer in Turkey late last year than I do in many other parts of the world.  That said, the situation on the ground has deteriorated since I visited, tours to Turkey are becoming hard to find, and only you can decide on your tolerance for risk.  So perhaps wait for more order to return to Turkey before traveling there to make your own images, but in any case you can enjoy my images from this fascinating and gloriously beautiful part of the world.

Our adventure began in Istanbul, an ancient city situated at the border between Europe and Asia.  Its place as a crossroads of history from Roman times through the Byzantine Era, the Ottoman Empire, and the modern Turkish republic is apparent as you stroll its winding streets and ply its crowded waterways.  The are opportunities to make great images everywhere in the city.

Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia, the foremost Byzantine church, is nearly 1500 years old.  When shooting grand architectural sites from up-close, it’s a challenge to try to avoid distortion due to perspective and the necessity of using a wide-angle lens.  Here I kept the horizon level with the ground to avoid excessive distortion.  Buy this photo

The best baklava in Istanbul?  Perhaps.  I certainly didn’t taste any better baklava in the city, and believe me, I tried a lot of baklava.  To make this portrait, I asked our trip leader to introduce me to the baker, who was happy to pose with his wares.  This was shot with natural light and just a touch of fill flash.  Buy this photo

View of the Galata Tower from across the Bosphorous.  Buy this photo

After Istanbul, we traveled to the central region of Cappadocia, famous for its “fairy chimneys,” natural spires formed by the erosion of soft tufa rock.  This region is a veritable dream for travel photographers!

Upon arriving in Cappadocia, we were thrilled to learn our hotel room was inside an ancient cave dwelling.  (Not to worry, it had been recently remodeled.)  When shooting interiors, it’s usually best to use a fast wide-angle lens and to compose the image carefully so as to gain the viewing perspective you want.  Buy this photo

The Goreme Open Air Museum comprises dozens of ancient Byzantine churches carved out of the tufa rock.  Remember to capture some images that include yourself and your travel companions.  Refer to this post for more practical tips about making great self-portraits while traveling: Post on Self Portraits.  To make this image, I set up the camera on a lightweight travel tripod, composed it by having my wife stand in front of the “fairy chimney” church, then joined her in the frame and triggered the camera using a remote release.  Buy this photo

The soft tufa stone formations look almost like sand dunes in the late afternoon glow.  I shot in RAW mode (as always!) and underexposed slightly to allow for a higher-contrast image during post-processing.  Careful cropping also helps a striking landscape really pop.  Buy this photo

We awoke at 5:30 AM to the sight out our cave-hotel’s window of hundreds of hot air balloons launching about the fairy chimneys.  I jumped out of bed, barely remembering to throw some clothes on, before running out the our balcony to set up a tripod and capture this amazing scene.  I exposed for the rock formations and allowed the balloons to be partially silhouetted.  Buy this photo

We visited a school in the region, always a favorite activity during our travels.  While I also made quite a few images in the classrooms with the kids and teachers, I like the unusual perspective in this image.  It was shot from outside the school building as the kids came to the windows to wave goodbye.  Buy this photo

We took a very memorable hot air balloon ride at dawn over Cappadocia’s otherworldly landscape.  I made this image looking down from our gondola at three other balloons in various stages of preparing to launch.  The amphitheaters of soft tufa rock can be seen in the middle-ground and the rising sun in the far background.  Buy this photo

At a rug-weaving cooperative, this woman enjoys a cup of Turkish coffee during her break.  I was drawn by her colorful clothes and enigmatic smile.  I asked our trip leader to introduce us and inquire if it was okay for me to make a portrait.  Shooting quickly with natural light only, no time to set up a tripod, and a too-slow lens mounted on the camera, I had to boost the ISO setting quite high.  Fortunately, I was able to reduce much of the noise in the image during post-processing.  Buy this photo

Hiking up to the top of Uchisar Castle, the highest elevation in Cappadocia.  Buy this photo

We had the chance to watch a whirling dervish ceremony.  The Samazens, followers of Mevlana Rumi, are a mystical Sufi order who practice the ritual we witnessed.  To capture the sense of motion, I used a slower shutter speed to blur the participants.  Buy this photo

The Mevlana Museum houses the monastery and tomb of Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi, the mystic who founded the “Whirling Dervish” sect.  This image captures the incredible workmanship on the interior of the monastery, especially around Rumi’s tomb.  Flashes and tripods are not allowed inside the tomb, so I had to use a fast lens and high ISO setting to handhold the camera.  Buy this photo

We departed Cappadocia and drove to Antalya, the gateway to the southern Mediterranean region known as the Turquoise Coast.  Antalya boasts an ancient Roman harbor and a fascinating archaeological museum.

We happened upon an interesting scene when several archaeologists and their students attempted to match a recently excavated statuary head to a body already in the museum.  Always be on the lookout for serendipitous scenes, which often make the most memorable images from a trip.  Buy this photo

These Lycian house-tombs were carved into the cliffs centuries before the Romans arrived at Myra.  Buy this photo

We boarded our gulet, a traditional Turkish wooden sailing yacht, for a four-day cruise along the Turquoise Coast.  Each day offered a wonderful photographic tapestry of great images, as we sailed, hiked, swam, and dined.

Kayakoy is a ghost town, a Greek village abandoned when the Turks expelled Greeks after their war for independence in the early 20th century.  Turks living in Greece were also expelled the same year.  Buy this photo

My wife Mary spotted this rare wildcat, which looked to us a bit like our local Californian bobcat, along one of our daily hikes.  I changed lenses very quickly while slowly approaching the cat, then captured this portrait using a medium telephoto just moments before he slipped into the brush.  Buy this photo

A riverboat took us from our gulet yacht to the ancient Lycian site of Caunos.  This image of a beautiful kingfisher along the side of the river was captured using a long telephoto lens and a fast shutter speed to allow for handholding the camera on a rocking boat.  Buy this photo

On our last full day in Turkey, we finally got to visit the splendid ruins of Ephesus, a major Roman city in the region.

The ruins at Ephesus include the incomparable Library of Celsus, pictured here in a self-portrait of my wife and me.  To achieve the broad depth-of-field required to ensure both the people and the buildings were in sharp focus, I used a small aperture (large F-stop number).  Major archaeological sites are often packed with other visitors, so try to find vantage points that allow the crowds to appear small in comparison to your main subjects.  Buy this photo

Throughout Turkey, the food was vibrant, simple, and delicious.  Our final day’s lunch, in a beautiful village in the mountains, consisted of course after course of delightful meze (appetizers).  Buy this photo

Turkey is a remarkable destination for travel photography.  Let us hope its current troubles will soon be a thing of the past and that safe and affordable travel will again be available there.

Have you visited Turkey?  What were your most memorable experiences there?  Please share your thoughts here.

Want to read more posts about travel photography destinations?  Find them all here: Posts on Destinations.

Focus on Lisbon, Berlin, and Barcelona [Encore Publication]: History, architecture, and cultures yield boundless photographic opportunities

My wife and I recently returned from two weeks of travel in Europe to fulfill several of my photography assignments. I’ll publish separate posts in the coming weeks covering some of those professional assignments. In today’s post we’ll explore the vibrant capital cities of Lisbon, Berlin, and Barcelona. While each of these three cities has a personality very much its own, I’m hoping my images will demonstrate that photographing cities, like photographing people, is all about looking for what we have in common even as we celebrate our differences. Urban photography is special to me because cities are the places where history, architecture, and culture often align most dramatically to paint a full picture of how we live today. Note that all of these images and many more are available to view and, if desired, to purchase; just click on any image to view the gallery. Enjoy!

On arrival in Lisbon, we are treated to an early morning view of the old Moorish quarter of Alfama. I like to underexpose by 1-2 stops when shooting sunrises and sunsets to bring out more intensity in the colors. If in doubt, bracket your exposures and choose the one that best captures the scene as you experienced it, or combine the different exposures into a composite high dynamic range (HDR) image.
I loved the look and feel of the old streetcars plying the streets of Lisbon, so I found this picturesque spot and waited until the next tram came into view.
If you had told me one of the most amazing experiences in Lisbon is visiting a tile museum, I’d have answered it’s more exciting to watch the grass grow. But it turns out the National Azulejo (Tile) Museum is absolutely incredible from start to finish. This ornate chapel, decorated in azulejo tiles, is entirely contained within a part of the museum. When shooting interiors it is often advantageous to use a wide-angle lens, but it’s important to keep the camera level to the plane of the ground and avoid shooting upward or downward in order to avoid the severe proportional distortion that can occur in these situations. While it is possible to correct for this sort of distortion in post-processing software like Lightroom, it is preferable to get it right in-camera.
A nighttime street scene in Lisbon’s old Moorish neighborhood of Alfama. When handholding the camera in a low-light situation, especially when a small aperture is required for depth-of-field, it’s a good idea to boost the camera’s ISO sensitivity setting in order to achieve a relatively fast shutter speed.
We spent a full day exploring the Sintra region about an hour west of Lisbon, at the very far western edge of the European continent. Quinta da Regaleira is a wonderfully eccentric estate including a palace, a chapel, and several strange features adorned with symbols of alchemy, Masonry, the Knights Templar, and the Rosicrucians. Our favorite feature was this stone tower. I’m always on the lookout for repeating geometric patterns that often make for compelling images. It’s important to compose such shots carefully to enhance the power of the recurring pattern. I converted this image to black-and-white during postprocessing to give it a high-contrast graphic arts style look.

The Alfama neighborhood is famous as the birthplace of fado, a form of music typically performed by a solo singer accompanied by two Portuguese guitars. Fado is essentially a Portuguese version of the blues, with lyrics and melodies emphasizing the melancholy side of the culture. Most fado clubs feature extremely dim lighting to set the mood, and flash photography is strictly prohibited. This results in a technical challenge trying to capture good images. Here I used a very fast (f/1.4) prime lens almost all the way open and also boosted my camera’s ISO sensitivity setting to 6400 (as high as I like to go in order to avoid excessive digital noise), but still the required shutter speed was a rather slow 1/15 second. Instead of trying to capture the moving singer in tack-sharp fashion, I leaned into the mood of the place and allowed some motion blur to occur.
On our final day in Lisbon we explored Belem, an historic Medieval parish most well known for its medieval tower. Again, when shooting architecture with a wide-angle lens, try to shoot with the camera parallel to the ground to avoid distortion of the vertical lines. I also underexposed this image a bit to make for a more dramatic sky, recovering some of the shadow detail in post-processing.
Enjoying the Lisbon obsession, the sublime custard pastry known as Pastel de Belém, at the cafe that invented them (well, the recipe was probably borrowed from the Jerónimos Monastery next door). Food is a key part of any people’s culture, so I like to capture food scenes as part of every urban shoot. Insofar as possible, I try to arrange the various elements on the table so they tell a story in the frame of the image. Here I removed some of the items that cluttered the background, including just the pastries and the local coffee drinks. I try not to shoot straight down onto the food, as that usually results in unappealing shots. With food photography, some work is usually required in post-processing to adjust color temperatures and remove distractions like dirt and shadows.
After our stay in Lisbon, we enjoyed an unforgettable two days on assignment shooting the annual Mardi Gras Carnival festivities on the Poruguese owned island of Madeira. Those images will be featured in a separate post. Then, onward to Berlin. Our hotel was right next to the infamous Checkpoint Charlie section of the old Berlin Wall, shown here.
No visit to Berlin would be complete without passing through the stately neoclassical Brandenburg Gate. It can be very challenging to get a clean shot of very crowded iconic urban sites. Here I fitted a wide-angle lens, composed the shot looking straight toward the gate without pointing the camera up or down, and waited until nearly all of the tourists had left the frame. Some straightening of the vertical and horizontal lines still had to be done in post-processing to avoid the perspective distortion introduced by the very wide focal length.
Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial takes up a large city block and requires some time to take in and explore. To capture this large, powerful, and rather imposing monument, I composed using a moderately wide lens stopped down to a small aperture for maximum depth-of-field and keeping the horizon line with the background buildings completely straight. I converted to black-and-white in post-processing to achieve a stately, somber feel.
On our way home from Berlin, we had an overnight layover in Barcelona. With time in town for only one dinner and a bit of nighttime and morning sightseeing, we enjoyed Catalonian tapas for an authentic local dining experience. I arranged the stuffed pasta and wine glass in a pleasing pattern against the simple background of the wooden table and cropped the image to emphasize the food and wine without distractions. The color temperature usually needs to be adjusted during post-processing to give the food and beverage a realistic color.
Exploring Gaudí’s masterpiece, the cathedral known as La Sagrada Familia, at night. When shooting really iconic sites, I like to seek out unusual perspectives to avoid the dreaded “postcard shot”. Here I composed looking up from near the base of one of the towers, allowing the background to be filled by the dark night sky. This composition cleaned up most of the busy urban scene’s clutter and made for a dramatic capture of the basilica bathed in several types of light.
We had only 90 minutes to visit the interior of La Sagrada Familia before heading to Barcelona’s airport to fly home to San Francisco. I shot this self-portrait (Mary is also included) using a mirror positioned so visitors could view the soaring interior space of La Sagrada Familia.

I hope you enjoyed these favorite images from three great European cities, along with my descriptions of how the images were made. To view more images, or perhaps to purchase a few, just click on any of the photos to go to the gallery.

What are your favorite techniques or images from your urban photography? Do you have urban themes you like to document wherever you travel? Please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Want to read more posts about travel photography destinations? Find them all here: http://www.to-travel-hopefully.com/category/destinations/.

Focus on Cuba [Rewritten for new policies]: Go to Cuba now while you still can

Cuba is a remarkable destination for travel photographers!  This small island has all the iconic images we expect–beautiful but crumbling art deco buildings, American cars from the late 1950s, unspoiled Caribbean beaches–but there are so many more opportunities to connect with and photograph a culture and a nation that is undergoing very rapid change.

Lovers embrace on Havana’s Malecon at sunset.  Buy this photo

European and Latin American travelers already know about Cuba’s charms and have been coming here for decades.  But to many Americans, Cuba has felt off-limits, a destination forbidden by our government.  I’m going to steer clear of the political issues in this post, but it must be noted that President Trump’s recent orders to tighten Cuba travel restrictions previously relaxed under the Obama administration will make it more difficult once again to visit.  The recent changes do not outlaw all travel to Cuba, but most Americans will need to visit under an official “People-to-People Cultural Exchange” program.  The operators of these programs may have to revise their itineraries due to new prohibitions against travel to any facilities owned by the Cuban military, and the prices of these programs may rise as regularly scheduled commercial flights to the island could revert to more expensive charter flights.  But it is still quite straightforward, and 100% legal, for US residents to visit Cuba under one of these People-to-People programs.

I do not recommend trying to circumvent the licensing requirements.  This can lead to lots of trouble for the unlicensed American traveler later down the road: hefty fines, lots of questions to be answered, and restrictions on one’s future travel possibilities.  Instead, go with one of the many travel companies who operate People-to-People Cultural Exchanges.  These are legal trips licensed by the US government for the purposes of the people from the US and Cuba getting to know each other.  These trips do require that most of the traveler’s time be spent interacting with Cuban people of all walks of life, but isn’t that what we travel photographers seek, anyway?

We spent a delightful 1.5 weeks on one of these cultural exchange programs run by Grand Circle Foundation.  They offer a variety of different Cuban itineraries, and we would have preferred one of the longer ones, but schedule limitations required us to take the shorter trip.  This itinerary brought us to the capital Havana and to the rural Viñales Valley, the center of tobacco production and ecotourism on the island.  Here are some highlights from this travel photographer’s perspective.


Our small group was invited to attend a rehearsal by Opera de la Calle.  Held in a decrepit art deco building in downtown Havana, the spirited performance combined song, dance, and performance art.  Buy this photo


Getting to know some of the locals while visiting the exuberant art installation by Jose Fuster known as Fusterlandia.  Buy this photo

We left Havana’s vibrant urban vibe for a three-day excursion to the rural Viñales Valley.  Exploring this famed tobacco-producing region from our base at an eco-tourism village within a sustainable agricultural collective, we enjoyed hiking through terrain unlike any we’d seen elsewhere, taking in views of local wildlife and flowers along the way.

The picturesque Viñales Valley is noted for its mogotes, dramatic hilly outcroppings.  Buy this photo

 

Tobacco farmer Benito enjoying the fruit of his labor.  Buy this photo

Cuba’s national bird, the brightly colored Tocororo.  Buy this photo

The warm and engaging proprietor of Maria’s Cafe surveys her domain.  Buy this photo

During a Viñales Valley elementary school visit, we met the staff and great  kids in the classrooms!  Three classes for different ages shared one old church building.  Buy this photo

We got to know a friendly and enterprising rural family during a home-hosted dinner.  This is their typical family transportation.  Buy this photo

Back in Havana, we strolled through the city’s Old Town.  Buy this photo

A special performance of Santeria singing and dance.  Santeria combines Roman Catholicism with African religions to form a uniquely Cuban hybrid.  Buy this photo

This selection of photos barely scratches the surface of all the wonderful, unique photographic opportunities awaiting you in Cuba now.  Go soon, though, because for better or for worse, this nation is transitioning quickly into a very different future.

A few years ago, the first commercial flight from the US to Cuba in over 50 years had just taken off from Florida: NY Times on US flights to Cuba.  For many Cubans, this seemed like the dawn of a new era that would mean a partial easing of a great deal of economic hardship suffered under the US embargo.  Instead, we are seeing a regression of US/Cuban relations to a situation more like the Cold War era policy.  It’s anybody’s guess as to how this situation will evolve over the coming years.  On the one hand, it’s possible a new US or Cuban administration could open up relations considerably, leading to huge continuing changes in Cuban society.  On the other hand, we could see further tightening on travel to Cuba, making it very difficult for Americans to visit at all.  I’m eager to visit again in a few years to meet more Cuban people and observe how their lives have changed in the interim.  But if you prefer to visit–and photograph–tiny colorful sidewalk cafes rather than Starbucks, authentic cultural interactions rather than slickly produced touristic shows, and wide open vistas rather than lavish resort developments, then now is the time to book your trip to Cuba!  Depending on the political environment, now could even be your last chance to visit for some years.

Have you been to Cuba?  What surprised you there?  What were some of your favorite photographic subjects?  If you haven’t been yet, what images do you associate with this island nation?  Please share your thoughts in the comment box at the end of this post.

Focus on Chile and Argentina [Encore Publication]: Rugged mountain landscapes and distinctive cultural experiences abound

Our wonderful 3.5-week adventure took us from Santiago, where we visited our older daughter, to fabled Easter Island, sophisticated Buenos Aires, the mystical island of Chiloe, and then through much of Southern Patagonia.  For much of this itinerary we were traveling with a local leader and a small group of fellow travelers on a trip operated by Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT).  The knowledge of our local trip leader coupled with the small group size allowed us to travel to largely untouristed areas and to engage in authentic cultural interactions that would not have been easy to set up on our own and would have been impractical to include on larger group trips.  Such a format offers amazing opportunities for photographers, as it provides access to an array of experiences beyond the “postcard-type” shots.  From home-hosted meals to wildlife encounters to hiking across glaciers and on the slopes of a volcano, this trip packed a lot of memorable moments–and images–into just a few weeks’ time.

Easter Island is a small and extremely remote island, accessible via daily flights from Santiago.  It is, of course, famed for the monolithic human figures carved by the Rapa Nui people centuries ago, called moai, that are scattered across the island.  But there is a lot more to Easter Island than the moai, including a distinctive Polynesian culture and a wealth of natural beauty.

When photographing iconic sites like this grouping of moai on Easter Island, look for a different perspective.  Here, I have framed the image from an unusual vantage point, shooting with a telephoto lens to compress the moai so that they appear closer together and more imposing than they would if framed from directly in front.   Buy this photo on my website

From Easter Island we traveled to Argentina’s capital city of Buenos Aires.  This city has a high-energy feel, offers a huge array of food specialties, and is graced with stately European style avenues and architecture.

 

Buenos Aires’ colorful and historic barrio (neighborhood) of La Boca is the birthplace of the tango.  To give a sense of the dance’s motion, I shot with a slightly slower shutter speed.  The rich colors of La Boca can be brought out in post-processing with subtle adjustments to the vibrance and/or saturation tools in image editing software such as Lightroom.  Buy this photo on my website

A stay in the Alpine style village of San Carlos de Bariloche included fascinating interactions with Hans, who as a German boy growing up in Bariloche uncovered his father’s Nazi past and wrote several scholarly books about Nazis living in Argentina; and with Christina, a Mapuche Indian grandmother, civil rights activist, and jewelry maker.  We then crossed overland toward the border with Chile, stopping en route for a home-hosted lunch of grilled lamb and for some horseback ridingon a family estancia (ranch).

Chango, the family patriarch, saddles up the horses for a ranch ride.  An environmental portrait includes not only the person who is the subject of the portrait, but also enough of the surroundings to give a deeper sense of who the person is.  A classic portrait lens would also work nicely for a shot like this one, but to emphasize the relationship between man and horse, and to give some separation between the subject and the background, I chose a longer telephoto lens.  Buy this photo on my website


An otherworldly sight: a lenticular cloud forms on the summit of Osorno Volcano as we were hiking on the slopes.  To capture high-contrast scenes like this one, it often helps to underexpose by about one stop to preserve the detail in the highlights.  Then the shadow detail can be brought back later during post-processing. Buy this photo on my website

The same Osorno Volcano viewed from Vicente Perez Rosales National Park.  To blur the water, I placed the camera on a steady tripod and used a longer shutter speed.  Attaching a neutral density filter to the lens can help by reducing the amount of light reaching the camera’s sensor, thus allowing a longer shutter speed even in bright daylight. Buy this photo on my website

A ferry crossing from mainland Chile brought us to the island of Chiloe for an overnight stay.  Chiloe exudes a strong sense of its mystical past and is characterized by colorful houses rising on stilts out of the water.

Characteristic brightly colored Chilote houses built on stilts.  Choose a vantage point from which the houses can be framed in a pleasing manner, shoot with a wide angle lens to include more of the houses, and add a bit of vibrance in post-processing to bring out the saturated colors. Buy this photo on my website

The island of Chiloe includes a fascinating bird preserve reachable by small boat.  Here is a penguin couple out strolling in their formal wear.  To stabilize the camera and long telephoto lens while shooting from a heavily rocking small boat, use a fast shutter speed (choosing a higher ISO can help), turn on vibration reduction if your lens or camera offers it, and release the shutter at the instant when the boat reaches the top of its cycle of rocking.  It’s helpful to use a monopod if you have one (I didn’t) and to shoot a continuous burst of images so that you are more likely to get a good sharp one. Buy this photo on my website

After traveling south all the way to the Strait of Magellan (the farthest south I have ever stood, with Antarctica the only land mass below it), we continued northwest until we reached Torres del Paine National Park, any photographer’s dream destination.  The photographic possibilities here are endless, with rugged mountains meeting brilliant blue glaciers and clear lakes.  We had the opportunity to view this breathtaking beauty from various hikes and by boat.

Blue ice on Lago Grey’s glacier imitates the mountain peaks soaring behind.  I used a polarizing filter on the lens to bring out the intense blues in the glacier and sky, but had to be careful not to remove too much of the reflection in the water of the lake. Buy this photo on my website

Alpenglow lights the peaks behind Lago Grey and its glacier.  To make this image, I had to forego much of a really good dinner by shooting through the mealtime out on the deck of our lodge.  With the camera on a steady tripod, I shot a series of images using different exposures, a process known as bracketing.  Later, these shots can be blended together using the high dynamic range (HDR) tools in software such as Lightroom or Photoshop. Buy this photo on my website

Heading out of Torres del Paine through the heart of Patagonia, our adventure was not yet over.  We still had another national park (Los Glacieres) to visit on the Argentinian side before returning to Buenos Aires for our farewell dinner and our flights back home.

Patagonian Paradise.  Don’t forget to include yourself and your traveling companions in some of your images.  This one, made as we headed out of Torres del Paine National Park, made a great holiday card. Buy this photo on my website

Have you visited Patagonia, the capital cities of Argentina and Chile, Easter Island, or Chiloe Island?  What did you find most memorable?  Please add your suggestions for places to visit or subjects to shoot.  Just enter your thoughts in the comment box.

Want to read more posts about travel photography destinations?  Find them all here: Posts on Destinations.

 

Focus on New Orleans [Encore Publication]: This iconic US city pulsates with jazz, creole, and historic beauty

Some places are magnets that draw us back again and again.  I’ve made at least a dozen visits to New Orleans and each time, I find something new.  It’s an iconic US city that also defies easy categorization.  Home to unique and cutting-edge forms of music, cuisine, and culture, it is also steeped in a grand historic past that evokes France, Spain, Africa, and the Deep South of the US.  Quite simply, there is no other place like New Orleans, and nowhere else do travel photographers find more charismatic subjects.  Here are a few of my favorite images from a recent visit to NOLA, along with a few words about what they depict and how they were made.

Aside from Paris, I can’t think of any other city that has influenced the cocktail more than New Orleans.  Here I captured my older daughter enjoying a classic NOLA libation during dinner on our first night in the Big Easy.  I used only natural light and selected a large aperture to soften the background.  Laissez les bons temps rouler!  Buy this photo

It’s boozy, vomit-filled, sophomoric, touristy, overpriced, and downright awful, but Bourbon Street is a part of the landscape and is worth a quick walk-by.  At night, its neon assault can almost seem romantic.  This shot was handheld using a high ISO setting and a small aperture for greater depth of field.  Buy this photo

The lovely Spanish colonial architecture of the French Quarter cries out to be photographed.  I made this shot of a wrought iron balcony using a telephoto lens and enhanced the color vibrancy during post-processing.  Buy this photo

It’s the tiny cheap eateries as much as the temples of haute gastronomy that keep New Orleans at the top of the list of cities for dining.  Be sure to grab some po’ boys, beignets, or muffulettas at these humbler places, and bring your camera to catch some of the action.  This image of workers in a po’ boy shop was shot from the hip, street photography style, using a high ISO to allow for a quick shutter speed.  Buy this photo

New Orleans is rightly famous for its jazz, which seems to seep through every crack in the pavement of the city and can be heard in places humble or elevated.  None is better than the iconic Preservation Hall.  As with many performance venues, this hall allows photography without flash, but it is always better to ask permission first and to be discrete during shows.  Use a fast lens and high ISO setting to allow a fast shutter speed.  Buy this photo

A short trip outside of the city quickly reminds you that New Orleans is a part of the American Deep South.  This image was shot from an airboat plying the bayous of Jean Lafitte National Historic Preserve.  I metered the exposure on the lush vegetation lining the waterway so as to avoid overexposure from the bright reflections.  Buy this photo

I captured this image of an alligator seeking the sun on an overcast winter’s day by framing tightly around the gator and its reflection.  In post-processing, I cropped to emphasize the symmetry of reptile and reflection and converted the image to black-and-white, while increasing its contrast a bit.  Buy this photo

I’m a big fan of food photography, especially when the plate is as strikingly beautiful as this one served at Brigtsen’s Restaurant.  I framed the shot tightly with a fast prime lens and a wide aperture to reduce the depth of field.  Buy this photo

Wherever we travel, we should make images that bring out a sense of place.  This image of my daughters strolling in the Garden District works because it captures the iconic symbols of this neighborhood–the stately mansions and live oak trees–while being a bit playful and framed in an unexpected way.  And as I’ve said many times, remember to capture your travel companions in some of your shots.  Buy this photo

Have you visited New Orleans with a camera in hand?  Please share your experiences.  Where do you like to visit and what do you like to shoot?

Want to read more posts about travel photography destinations?  Find them all here: Posts on Destinations.

Focus on Lisbon, Berlin, and Barcelona: History, architecture, and cultures yield boundless photographic opportunities

My wife and I recently returned from two weeks of travel in Europe to fulfill several of my photography assignments. I’ll publish separate posts in the coming weeks covering some of those professional assignments. In today’s post we’ll explore the vibrant capital cities of Lisbon, Berlin, and Barcelona. While each of these three cities has a personality very much its own, I’m hoping my images will demonstrate that photographing cities, like photographing people, is all about looking for what we have in common even as we celebrate our differences. Urban photography is special to me because cities are the places where history, architecture, and culture often align most dramatically to paint a full picture of how we live today. Note that all of these images and many more are available to view and, if desired, to purchase; just click on any image to view the gallery. Enjoy!

On arrival in Lisbon, we are treated to an early morning view of the old Moorish quarter of Alfama. I like to underexpose by 1-2 stops when shooting sunrises and sunsets to bring out more intensity in the colors. If in doubt, bracket your exposures and choose the one that best captures the scene as you experienced it, or combine the different exposures into a composite high dynamic range (HDR) image.
I loved the look and feel of the old streetcars plying the streets of Lisbon, so I found this picturesque spot and waited until the next tram came into view.
If you had told me one of the most amazing experiences in Lisbon is visiting a tile museum, I’d have answered it’s more exciting to watch the grass grow. But it turns out the National Azulejo (Tile) Museum is absolutely incredible from start to finish. This ornate chapel, decorated in azulejo tiles, is entirely contained within a part of the museum. When shooting interiors it is often advantageous to use a wide-angle lens, but it’s important to keep the camera level to the plane of the ground and avoid shooting upward or downward in order to avoid the severe proportional distortion that can occur in these situations. While it is possible to correct for this sort of distortion in post-processing software like Lightroom, it is preferable to get it right in-camera.
A nighttime street scene in Lisbon’s old Moorish neighborhood of Alfama. When handholding the camera in a low-light situation, especially when a small aperture is required for depth-of-field, it’s a good idea to boost the camera’s ISO sensitivity setting in order to achieve a relatively fast shutter speed.
We spent a full day exploring the Sintra region about an hour west of Lisbon, at the very far western edge of the European continent. Quinta da Regaleira is a wonderfully eccentric estate including a palace, a chapel, and several strange features adorned with symbols of alchemy, Masonry, the Knights Templar, and the Rosicrucians. Our favorite feature was this stone tower. I’m always on the lookout for repeating geometric patterns that often make for compelling images. It’s important to compose such shots carefully to enhance the power of the recurring pattern. I converted this image to black-and-white during postprocessing to give it a high-contrast graphic arts style look.

The Alfama neighborhood is famous as the birthplace of fado, a form of music typically performed by a solo singer accompanied by two Portuguese guitars. Fado is essentially a Portuguese version of the blues, with lyrics and melodies emphasizing the melancholy side of the culture. Most fado clubs feature extremely dim lighting to set the mood, and flash photography is strictly prohibited. This results in a technical challenge trying to capture good images. Here I used a very fast (f/1.4) prime lens almost all the way open and also boosted my camera’s ISO sensitivity setting to 6400 (as high as I like to go in order to avoid excessive digital noise), but still the required shutter speed was a rather slow 1/15 second. Instead of trying to capture the moving singer in tack-sharp fashion, I leaned into the mood of the place and allowed some motion blur to occur.
On our final day in Lisbon we explored Belem, an historic Medieval parish most well known for its medieval tower. Again, when shooting architecture with a wide-angle lens, try to shoot with the camera parallel to the ground to avoid distortion of the vertical lines. I also underexposed this image a bit to make for a more dramatic sky, recovering some of the shadow detail in post-processing.
Enjoying the Lisbon obsession, the sublime custard pastry known as Pastel de Belém, at the cafe that invented them (well, the recipe was probably borrowed from the Jerónimos Monastery next door). Food is a key part of any people’s culture, so I like to capture food scenes as part of every urban shoot. Insofar as possible, I try to arrange the various elements on the table so they tell a story in the frame of the image. Here I removed some of the items that cluttered the background, including just the pastries and the local coffee drinks. I try not to shoot straight down onto the food, as that usually results in unappealing shots. With food photography, some work is usually required in post-processing to adjust color temperatures and remove distractions like dirt and shadows.
After our stay in Lisbon, we enjoyed an unforgettable two days on assignment shooting the annual Mardi Gras Carnival festivities on the Poruguese owned island of Madeira. Those images will be featured in a separate post. Then, onward to Berlin. Our hotel was right next to the infamous Checkpoint Charlie section of the old Berlin Wall, shown here.
No visit to Berlin would be complete without passing through the stately neoclassical Brandenburg Gate. It can be very challenging to get a clean shot of very crowded iconic urban sites. Here I fitted a wide-angle lens, composed the shot looking straight toward the gate without pointing the camera up or down, and waited until nearly all of the tourists had left the frame. Some straightening of the vertical and horizontal lines still had to be done in post-processing to avoid the perspective distortion introduced by the very wide focal length.
Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial takes up a large city block and requires some time to take in and explore. To capture this large, powerful, and rather imposing monument, I composed using a moderately wide lens stopped down to a small aperture for maximum depth-of-field and keeping the horizon line with the background buildings completely straight. I converted to black-and-white in post-processing to achieve a stately, somber feel.
On our way home from Berlin, we had an overnight layover in Barcelona. With time in town for only one dinner and a bit of nighttime and morning sightseeing, we enjoyed Catalonian tapas for an authentic local dining experience. I arranged the stuffed pasta and wine glass in a pleasing pattern against the simple background of the wooden table and cropped the image to emphasize the food and wine without distractions. The color temperature usually needs to be adjusted during post-processing to give the food and beverage a realistic color.
Exploring Gaudí’s masterpiece, the cathedral known as La Sagrada Familia, at night. When shooting really iconic sites, I like to seek out unusual perspectives to avoid the dreaded “postcard shot”. Here I composed looking up from near the base of one of the towers, allowing the background to be filled by the dark night sky. This composition cleaned up most of the busy urban scene’s clutter and made for a dramatic capture of the basilica bathed in several types of light.
We had only 90 minutes to visit the interior of La Sagrada Familia before heading to Barcelona’s airport to fly home to San Francisco. I shot this self-portrait (Mary is also included) using a mirror positioned so visitors could view the soaring interior space of La Sagrada Familia.

I hope you enjoyed these favorite images from three great European cities, along with my descriptions of how the images were made. To view more images, or perhaps to purchase a few, just click on any of the photos to go to the gallery.

What are your favorite techniques or images from your urban photography? Do you have urban themes you like to document wherever you travel? Please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Want to read more posts about travel photography destinations? Find them all here: http://www.to-travel-hopefully.com/category/destinations/.

Focus on Iceland [Encore Publication]: A world-class landscape photography destination

Iconic Icelandic scene: The lovely Gullfoss Waterfall can be viewed from three different levels to obtain different perspectives on these dramatic falls.  To capture this image, I climbed to the top level, secured the camera and wide-angle lens on a sturdy tripod, and attached a neutral-density filter to allow a long exposure even in the harsh midday lighting.  I shot a series of seven exposures, each one stop apart, and then combined them into a single image using image-processing software.  This technique, called High Dynamic Range (or HDR), allows a single image to show a wide range of tonal values from extremely dark to extremely bright. 

My two daughters, my wife, and I recently returned from an inspiring two-week adventure traveling through Iceland.  Our itinerary took us from the main city of Reykjavik to the scenic Snaefellsness Peninsula’s volcanic landscape, then up to Iceland’s far north just below the Arctic Circle, down to the southern coast dotted with geothermal fields and spectacular waterfalls, and ending with a visit to Iceland’s premier attraction, the Blue Lagoon.  Throughout this adventure we had the opportunity to meet and learn about Iceland’s Nordic culture and Viking roots from Icelanders of all backgrounds and trades.  Iceland is a photographer’s dream, filled with glorious landscapes, otherworldly natural features, and friendly people.

Our Icelandic adventure began in the largest city, Reykjavik.  While small relative to other major world capitals, Reykjavik is modern, well-functioning, and ambitious in its development.  Its harbor-side location lends the city a strong measure of natural beauty.

Reykjavik’s new Harpa Concert Hall is Iceland’s premier home for the arts.  The brightly colored glass façade of the building was inspired by Iceland’s volcanic landscape.  While it’s tempting in architectural photography to use a wide-angle lens in order to include the entire building, I find it’s often more interesting to use a moderate telephoto lens in order to emphasize just a part of the whole.  This abstract image takes the viewer’s eye along the multicolored façade with its varied patterns of texture and reflections.

A big part of the joy of travel photography is using our camera as a tool to get to know the people we meet.  While we shared a city bus ride with a group of schoolkids out on a field trip to visit the National Museum, this little boy and I were playing a game of virtual peekaboo, resulting in this unorthodox portrait.

Stunning view over Reykjavik and its harbor from the top of the tower at Hallgrimskirkja Church.  A polarizing filter can help darken skies and enhance the sense of drama in clouds and water. 

Departing Reykjavik for the Snaefellsnes Peninsula, we traversed a fabled landscape first discovered by the early Viking settlers.

A short hike took us to the summit of Mount Helgafell, a sacred hill about 250 feet high.  When composing landscape photos, keep in mind two useful tools, the Rule of Thirds, and the principle of Leading Lines.  Both are used in this image.  The Rule of Thirds suggests placing key elements of the image along the lines that cut 1/3 and 2/3 of the way through the frame in both the horizontal and vertical dimensions.  And Leading Lines draw the viewer’s eye across the frame to rest on the most important spots.

The coastal town of Stykkisholmur sits on the coast along the scenic Snaefellsnes Peninsula.  There we came across this curious house with windows at street level and a doorway at the second story level.  Often the most memorable photos are made of the strange places we happen upon during our wanderings.

During a visit to a horse farm, we saw a demonstration of all five gaits (one more than other breeds) that Icelandic horses are capable of.  So smooth is the Icelandic horse’s cantor that you could, if you like, enjoy a mug of beer while riding.

Even a dreadful rain storm couldn’t spoil images of Godafoss Waterfall.  Meaning “waterfall of the pagan gods,” the falls received their name when the leader of Iceland’s parliament decided that the country should adopt Christianity as the official religion in AD 1000.  Informally, Icelanders were still allowed to practice pagan rites in private, but the head of parliament made a symbolic gesture of throwing most of his pagan statues into the falls.  Waterfalls are wonderful subjects for landscape photography, but they should be treated with care and patience.  A sturdy tripod is essential for holding the camera steady during the long exposures required to lend a dramatic blur to the turbulent water.  Here I fitted the camera with a wide-angle lens and a neutral-density filter, which blocks out most of the light and allows a slow shutter speed even in broad daylight.  The camera was mounted on a tripod and I used a cable release to trigger the shutter in order to avoid shaking the camera.  During post-processing I decided to convert this image to black-and-white in order to remove the distraction of the color and really emphasize the dramatic effect of the roiling water.

Sometimes we get the best photos by turning our lens on small and easily overlooked features.  The volcanic soil at Lake Myvatn makes a fertile habitat for colorful lichens.  There were hundreds of other visitors present during our visit to Lake Myvatn, but nobody else noticed the vibrant natural display just below our feet.  The amazing palette of colors in this image is entirely natural. 

This abstract image shows the facade of the Lutheran church at the Laufas turf houses.  I was struck by the textures and patterns of the architecture, so I used a telephoto lens to crop the composition so as to show only a part of the building, then converted to black-and-white during post-processing to simplify the presentation.

The Laufas turf houses were built over a period of several hundred years for wealthy families, and included all the comforts of contemporary living.  When photographing architecture with a wide-angle lens, it’s important to keep the camera level so as to avoid excessive distortion of the vertical lines. 

Leaving behind the lovely Snaefellsnes Peninsula, we headed north to reach Akureyri, Iceland’s second-largest city located just a few miles below the Arctic Circle.

In Akureyri, just a few miles below the Arctic Circle, we enjoyed the warmth of a wonderful home-hosted dinner.  Our hosts were both professional musicians, and they performed an impromptu concert for us after dinner.

Suited up for the cold and wind, our group boarded a vessel for a whale watching excursion in Dalvik.  I made this portrait of our on-board naturalist, a true native Icelander, using a moderate telephoto lens.

There are so many wonderful subjects to capture during our travels that it’s important to remember to shoot a few of ourselves.  Because our daughters, in their early 20s, don’t get to travel with us very often, we cherish the few photos we have featuring all of us together as a family.  To grab this fun shot of our human family interacting with a family of trolls, I configured all of the camera’s settings before handing the camera to a fellow traveler in our group who triggered the shutter.

A short flight from Iceland’s far north back down to Reykjavik positions us to explore the famed Golden Circle, a road connecting Thingvellir National Park, Geysir geothermal region, and Gullfoss Waterfall.

At Thingvellir National Park, we hiked along the rift zone where two tectonic plates (the Eurasian and the North American) are drifting apart.  It’s hard to capture the majesty of dramatic and varied geological features, so I like to combine several layers of landforms in the image.  From top to bottom, this composition captures the sky, the rocky rift zone, and the ropey lava in the foreground.

Visiting the Geysir geothermal area, from which all geysers derive their name.  Along with Yellowstone’s Old Faithful and Calistoga’s geyser, Iceland’s Strokkur is one of just a few regularly erupting geysers in the world.  A hard truth in travel photography is that we can’t control the weather and often we can’t control the time of day when we visit certain locations, so we have to make do with what we’re given.  To make the best photo possible given the poor contrast between the geyser’s eruption and the cloudy sky, I stepped back several hundred yards to include the observers, the dramatic clouds, and the mountainous background in the composition.

An excursion via super truck (a large four-wheel drive vehicle with the tires partly deflated) afforded us the opportunity to explore the otherwise inaccessible glacial terrain, including hiking into this otherworldly ice cave.

My daughters, who only recently attained legal drinking age, enjoy a shot of local Icelandic vodka chilled with glacial ice during our hike into an ice cave.  In the dim lighting inside the cave, use of a flash is required to light a portrait, but to avoid firing the flash too close to the axis of the lens, I attached a flash unit to my camera via a remote flash cord.  This simple and inexpensive accessory makes a huge difference when using flash lighting.

Our ATV tour took us off-road across the volcanic landscape of the Reykjanes Peninsula.

On our last full day in Iceland before flying back home, we visited the legendary Blue Lagoon spa near Reykjavik.  Crowded, expensive, and touristy, it is nonetheless supremely relaxing and lots of fun.  This spa is also a very social place where it’s easy to meet—and photograph—visitors from all over the world.

The one site that nobody sets foot in Iceland without visiting is the Blue Lagoon.  During our time there, I made portraits of several visitors from different parts of the world.  It’s important to spend some time chatting with and getting to know your subject before making their portrait.  This practice is partly due to courtesy (it’s rude to shoot photos of people without their permission), but it also yields better images because your subject will relax and show you their true self after they get to know you.

All of the images appearing in this post and many more are available for viewing and purchase on my website here: Iceland photo gallery.

Have you traveled in Iceland?  Please share the most memorable aspects of your photographic journey in the comments box.

Want to read more posts about world-class travel photography destinations?  Find them all here: Posts about destinations.