Author Archives: Michael

The Alhambra, Day 2

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It’s always great to get a second chance to photograph a place. The first visit is about discovery and it’s sometimes overwhelming as you try and take everything in. The return visit is often more about details or things you just didn’t see the first time. Different light conditions and weather can also dramatically change how a place looks and feels.

My second day in Granada, Spain, began with a return visit to the Alhambra. This time the first stop was the Palace of Charles V — a building I had bypassed entirely on my first visit. The main space is circular and ringed by a colonnade. Around the periphery are smaller rooms like this one with the staircase (This is actually three photos stitched together in Photoshop):

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It was hard to get the main courtyard all in-frame and to show it full circle. I went to my rarely used fisheye for this shot and actually like the distortion it creates. I had used this lens in a circular Art Deco church in Tulsa in April, and realized that the distortion is less confusing in round spaces. One of those little tidbits I’ll file away for future shoots. You never know when you’ll find yourself in a round room, right?

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After the Palace of Charles V we followed much the same path on this visit as I had taken on Day 1. Here are just a few more shots of things I saw differently this second time around:

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This next photo really shows the advantage of visiting at different times of day. I had photographed this room the afternoon before but the light was not coming through the stained glass as it did this following morning. The patches of colored light on the wall add an altogether different feel to the image and tells more of the story of what’s going on outside of the frame.

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More Granada to come…

The Alhambra, my first view

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It was a long trip to Granada, Spain. I flew to Chicago, had a 4-hour layover, flew on to Madrid for another layover of nearly 5 hours, then one more flight before finally arriving in Granada. I was checking into my hotel around 2:30 in the afternoon the day after having left home. My host was gracious enough to not schedule anything for the rest of Day 1 in Spain. I knew I’d be anxious to start exploring, however, and had asked if a pass could be arranged for me to photograph the Alhambra rather than taking a nap or otherwise resting up from the trip. (I find that, in general, I escape most of the effects of jet lag by not taking naps and, instead, getting back into a regular pattern of sleeping only when it’s dark as soon as possible.)

As soon as I knew I was going to Granada, I knew that I’d want to spend as much time as I could at the Alhambra. A combination of fortress and palace, the Alhambra dates back to 889 with several massive renovations and expansions over the following centuries. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the centerpiece of any visit to Granada. It was scheduled to be the first stop of my actual tour on my second day in the city, but I looked forward to having an early visit on my own, to try and photograph the elaborately decorated buildings without being a part of a tour group.

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Little did I know that the Alhambra limits visitation to 7000 people a day, and they sell out nearly every day of the year. My dreams of wandering the structures alone were shattered, and I found myself surrounded by throngs of tourists — all seemingly wielding cameras of their own. Oh, well. I was still on my own and could sprint ahead of groups, and wait for others to pass before getting my shots. It worked. And sometimes the tourists WERE the shot. When I returned the following day with my own guide and group, I encountered even larger crowds so I was glad to have had this extra visit on Day 1 to set my own pace and get my bearings in the sprawling palace and its gardens.

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These shots are all from my solo Day 1 visit. I know it probably doesn’t look like there were all that many other people there, but I was looking for the quiet spots. At times it was nearly shoulder-to-shoulder with people. Even in such a situation I find that you can minimize the impact of the crowds on your photographs by careful framing. I often found myself “aiming high” and shooting over the heads of the other visitors to crop them out of the shot. What I wouldn’t give, though, to have this complex completely to myself for a few hours around sunset some evening. And a tripod would be nice — something else not allowed on either of my visits.

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The “texture” of the Alhambra is what I found most appealing. The level of detail in its decoration was absolutely incredible.

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I’ll continue posting images from my Granada trip over the coming weeks and I’ll try and stay somewhat chronological so you’ll be able to see some of the images that I made on my return visit to the Alhambra the following day. I skipped the Palace of Charles V portion of the Alhambra entirely on my first visit, but it would be the first stop on our return.

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New book and other announcements

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The latest book in my “Journals of a Travel Photographer” series is now available in the Blurb bookstore. Here’s a direct link, or you can visit the store page on my own website for links to this and other books in the series. The Spain book features images from an 8-day trip I made to the Extremadura region of Spain last year. It was my first trip to Spain and I immediately fell in love with the historic cities and Roman ruins found throughout the region. Check out the preview on the Blurb site for more. A Spanish-language version may be following soon.

The Extremadura book has actually been out for a couple of weeks, but I have been late in announcing it here on the blog due to a second trip I just made to Spain — this time to the province of Granada. I also plan on releasing a “Journal” book about this trip in a few months. Several blog posts will feature highlights over the coming days and weeks, as well. For a bit of a preview, however, you can check out my interview that was published in the Tamron e-newsletter last week:

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The story features a few of the photos I made on the Granada trip using the Tamron 18-270mm VC PZD lens. I have also recently received their SP 150-600MM F/5-6.3 Di VC USD for testing — stay tuned for some future posts featuring images from that lens.

So there’s plenty on the way in the coming weeks. I just wanted to make sure I got this plug in for the Extremadura book before inundating you all with images from my more recent Granada trip.

Kansas State Capitol

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For five years I had an office just around the corner from the State Capitol in Topeka, Kansas. At the time we signed the lease on the place in 2003, I thought it would make for a great opportunity for me to build my library of Capitol photos. After all, I’d walk to work every day so I’d pass the building several times a week in all sorts of weather. What I didn’t realize was that the Capitol was about to undergo a long, long renovation. A renovation that would have it covered in scaffolding for the bulk of the time I officed downtown. When we moved to Lawrence six years ago, it was still impossible to get a clean shot of the most iconic building in Kansas. Only a few weeks ago did the work finish and the scaffolding and cranes came down. In the end, the copper on the dome had been replaced so the green patina is no more and the dome now has the dull sheen of a new-ish penny.

I photographed the interior a couple of weeks ago but with Spring finally arriving, I decided it was time to get back to updating my exterior photo files. Any photos of this building made prior to 2014 are now dated due to the new dome, so I’ll be continuing to revisit the Capitol many times in the coming year(s). Last night I got started by setting up shop on 9th Street — probably the best view of the Capitol if you want to see it in context to downtown. Until about 10 years ago, this was the one downtown intersection that still had historic buildings on all four corners. The northwest corner (in the distant right in this view) has since been redeveloped with a retail/parking structure, but this angle still remains one of the most “historic” views.

Here are a few more images made while waiting for the sun to set last night and experimenting with some different post-processing effects. All are from more or less the same position but shot with lenses of different focal lengths, each giving more or less prominence to the Capitol in relation to the other downtown buildings.

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Flames in the Flint Hills

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Flying W Ranch near Clements, KS, puts on a great show with their Flames in the Flint Hills. Ranchers in this part of Kansas burn their grass in the early Spring to encourage new growth and Josh and Gwen Hoy make an event out of it. Typically a sold-out event, at that. For those of us that live around the Flint Hills, the smell of burning grass is a sure sign of Spring. It’s not uncommon to see fires in the distance from the highway, but to be on foot right in the midst of the burn at twilight… well… that’s something special.

Here are a few of my favorite shots from Flames in the Flint Hills last Saturday night:

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Spring is coming

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This has seemed like an incredibly long winter. However, as I looked back through my image files this morning to see what photos I’d shot on previous March 14ths, I found this image I took in our neighborhood on March 14, 2010. With high temps predicted today in the mid 60s, this just goes to show that it could be — and has been — worse. Everywhere I look around the yard, bulbs are coming up, the witch hazels are blooming and there are signs of things thawing out. Spring is coming folks. Hang in there.

Trujillo, Spain

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The last overnight during last November’s tour of the Extremadura region of Spain was in Trujillo — birthplace and home to Francisco Pizarro, conqueror of Peru. That’s his statue in the Plaza Major above. We arrived just as the sun was going down and hurried to squeeze in a walking tour of the town while the light held out. We wound our way up switch-back streets, on our way toward an old fortress that provided outstanding views as the sun set.

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Above, the interior of the thirteenth-century church of Santa María la Mayor with its altarpiece by Fernando Gallego. The church was fairly dark when we entered, but our guide demonstrated a box on the wall where you could insert coins to get the interior lighting to come on for a few minutes. An energy-saving feature and fund-raiser all in one!

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The next morning I awoke early (thanks partially to a temporally-confused rooster outside my window) and took one last walk through the ancient streets before catching my ride back to Madrid.

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I hope you’ve enjoyed these posts documenting my trip to the Extremadura region of Spain. Many of these images will soon appear in another book in my “Journals of a Travel Photographer” series (you can see other titles in the series here). I’ll post a link here as soon as it’s available but here is a sneak peek of the cover:

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