Ponta do Castelo

I went to a completely new place this time - I had never been there before. I checked maps and satelite pictures the evening before to make sure that I could park there, got everything ready and charged and set my alarm clock.

The days are starting earlier, but alarm for 5:30 it’s still quite comfortable. It’s going to get worse over the summer.

When I arrived there, as expected it was deserted and dark. There was another car at the car park, a van, I suspected that some people travelled and lived inside.

I took some pictures, they were OK, but a bit too similar to these. And then I found a rock with this magnificent view.

I carefully placed the camera close to the edge of the rock, making sure that I was not standing too close to the edge. Sometimes, the edges are not strong enough and they simply fall down. I certainly didn’t want to be part of that, it was very high.

The sun started shining through the clouds a bit so I had to use some filters - ND filter to be able to to make a long exposure and gradual ND filter not to loose details in the sky.

I took several pictures with different settings. The one that seemed to work the best was exposure of 10 seconds, ISO 100, f/22, just before the sun came up.

Later, I only had to do minor edits. I removed the piece of rock in the left bottom side. It just looks better without it. I sharpened the picture and played a bit with the final colours and I added a hint of pink to the top left corner - the sky was a bit pinkish there in reality too and it looks better in the final picture.

When I finished, the people from the van just woke up. They brushed their teeth outside and took over the photo shooting while I headed home for a good breakfast.

If you’re interested in prints, let me know!