Instead of a sports car for my 40th birthday, I got a new lens. I already have a 50mm lens, but it is a manual one, from ancient times. I missed having a bit more modern one. Now I can autofocus. I spent last weekend doing one-day trips to Norfolk coast and London. And so far, I’m quite happy with my new acquisition. I like this kind of lens. It’s field of view is not very open, and less in a non full frame body as mine, where it is like a 75mm equivalent. It is more appropriate for portraits. But also when you want to get close to any kind of subject. The other way around is just keep distance from your subject.
I saw the mill in the first picture while driving back home. I just stopped my car in a side road, and without turning off the lights I took a few pictures of it. This one is my favourite. In the lower part of the picture, you can see a hint of the lights of my car. The second picture is London’s Millennium bridge, a highly popular tourist sightseeing. I think that when I took this one, I blocked the view of a far more professional looking photographer, with his tripod mounted and all. I’m sure you will see other (thousands) pictures like this, anytime soon…
I will post more pictures from this last weekend soon. I need to test more thoughtfully this lens. Maybe I’ll try a few portraits, something that I haven’t done yet. Maybe a selfie… 😉
Happy new year everyone!. Here is my first post of 2014!
Last weekend I went to Warwick castle. In a day that was cold, but sunny, I did one of the things I most like to do: visit a place, and return home with lots of pictures. This occasion was in this great castle, two hours from Cambridge. The towers are really tall, and the rooms are full of great colours and details. I climbed the biggest tower in the castle to capture this sunset. My sigma 17-70 is quite lens flare resistant, but not in this case. Still, I like how the picture ended after my processing efforts.
This place reminded me a bit to Leeds castle, although that one was a bit darker, a bit less children friendly, I think. Almost eerie. Maybe it was the weather, instead a grey day this time the light was much better. Also, the Christmas theme helped a bit. We stayed there until the closing hours. I think I was one of the last visitors that left the castle that day.
As I said, you need to walk a lot if visiting Lisbon. You can do a stop in some terraces called miradouros, and rest a bit. The views, if the weather is good and the air clear, are amazing. The first picture was taken from Igreja de Graça. There is a small coffee there, and waiting for the sunset is a really nice plan to end the day.
The second one was here, at Largo Santa Luzia, another quite popular sight-seeing point. This time the new thing was that ship full of tourists, quite possibly taking pictures of Lisbon. I wonder how many of them were on that boat. From here, exhausted, I went back home. Walking.
Medina Sidonia was our base for exploring Cadiz. Well, it wasn’t exactly an expedition.
We were on holidays, so the plan was just visit some places, go to the beach, eat good food, etc. Nothing more adventurous, to be honest. Just spend a good time in a place we didn’t knew. Its funny, because I have lived in Huelva, the province next to Cadiz, for many years when I was a teenager. And I did never visited Cadiz at that time. Now, after more than 20 years, I do it as a tourist. Medina Sidonia is a place with a great history, that spans for more than 2000 years. It is placed on top of a hill, a very strategic place for resisting battles during long years. At the end of the day, those hills are really hard to climb. Uphill narrow cobbled streets are not the best thing for walking with beach sandals. But as a reward, views like this can be waiting for you.
+ high-res version
