Ten Days in Northern Spain

I just got home tomorrow after 10 days in northern Spain - the headline is that I managed to rescue a doomed landscape result with some photographic versatility.

Bardenas Reales was a total disaster. On page 6 of the Nation Park terms and conditions, I found out that it is out of bounds between February and October, due to bird nesting. This means you have to stay right by your car, you can’t walk anywhere, and every 50m there are signs telling you to keep out. It's like going to Dartmoor and being told to keep off the grass.

It basically means they are not funded correctly and have no means of sustaining footpaths and other tourist infrastructure. Such a shame. No chance of running tours either. Police patrol in cars and fine you, so other than risking a covert operation for a photograph, the answer was to change of gear.

So I became a cathedral and castles photographer, which is a great second best as far as I’m concerned. I can't show you the outside of this one as it was covered in plastic and scaffolding.

This is a handheld tilt shift three shot in camera HDR. I’ve really started to see the benefits of this approach as it makes some extreme lighting conditions far easier to handle. I shot this along with RAWs to assemble in 32bit on the computer when I get back.

I particularly love the narrative of this image, the illuminated angel was a special touch. I had to work fairly fast as the angle of the light was changing all the time.

Another fabulous result was quite a long distance away, a superb hillside castle, that took about 2hrs of driving. You know me, I need to squeeze out a few infrareds every day… here’s another using the aerochrome filter.

I did well with the clouds and intermittent light, which really helped this scene. This is taken around lunchtime, in no particular lighting other than a slight side light, which is by far my favourite.

This is a monastery I visited, I’m not exactly sure where, but GPS will help me sort that out when I get home. You had to pay a euro for six minutes of lighting! It was so novel, we were the only people inside, which made a very memorable experience, including some angelic duetting from Rachel and myself. Here you can see the lighting is switching off, the altar first.

Over the road from my apartment in Tudela, was the city cathedral. One of the side doors had this incredible figurative arch which I managed to catch with some evening sidelight despite being down a rather tight alleyway.

On Saturday afternoon, I found myself wrecking a perfectly good pair of shoes by standing in a river nearly 2 hours. I had to use the tripod as a walking frame, because the river bed was so slippery. This is a munitions' depot leftover from the Napoleonic era, which made cannonballs.

So overall, a very good result considering the ridiculous headache that Bardenas Reales gave us. It meant another three days of head scratching, but diversity was the name of the game in the end.