Sagres - the missing Lighthouse, part 1

10 Aug

14 months ago

We moved into our current house. There are photos decorating walls. One of them in a lighthouse on a cliff. Since the first moment I saw it, I didn’t like it. The light is very harsh. Everything is in focus, short exposure. The composition is trashy. The sky is boring, the rocks are boring. It looks like taken by a mobile phone in automatic mode. I must admit that there was a visible effort to make some kind of a composition. But placing a small yellow flower in a foreground simply isn’t enough; the rest of the composition is odd.

This picture actually brought me to an idea that if this sells, I can become a professional photographer because I already could do better 😜

1 month ago

I was having a creativity crisis. My personal trainer recommended me to go to Sagres. I put it to Google to learn more. That was the place where we went in winter and it was the windiest place I’ve ever visited. We felt cold after first minute and therefore didn’t really enjoy the place. But wait a second! That’s the lighthouse! The same one as in our bedroom! Ha! Let’s go there and beat the picture from the bedroom. Let’s take my own picture, one that I’ll like more.

03:45

My watch starts beeping, I jump out of the bed as silently as possible and head to a bathroom. I brush my hair and teeth and get dressed.

3:52

I’m having a glass of water in the kitchen and filling my bottle with more fresh water. I’m ready to go. But this time, I’m waiting - I’m not going alone, I’m going with my father in law (J). That’s going to be fun! I promised him to see a sunrise at the southwesternmost point or Europe. I knew that he wouldn’t be able to resist such an adventure.

5:10

We are arriving to the point that I found on the map the day before. Half a kilometre walk with a headlight and we got to a place on a cliff from where there is a nice view of the lighthouse on the cliff. When the sun starts getting up, it will be nicely lit.

There was only one problem. A serious one. The lighthouse was not there.

Well, there was a lighthouse, but instead of the oval shape was a square shape. I was puzzled. I checked the maps, where did I make a mistake? I couldn’t really understand it. Maybe I confused it for the other lighthouse that was about 5 km away. But I double checked! I was puzzled, a bit angry and a bit ashamed.

J was amazing, without any complains (laughing actually), we turned back and walked back and then another kilometre to a “backup” place. We were getting more light, we could turn the headlight off already.

We spent about two hours on a huge piece of a rock. It was a beautiful one. While I was trying to capture its beauty, J was patiently watching fishermen. They were like goats on the cliffs, it didn’t look safe at all. But it was clearly worth the risk as they were getting the fish out one by one in a very continuous pace. He also helped me to hold a filter (yep, bought a new filter and forgot to buy a holder…) and measured exposure time.