Richard Thomas' Photo Blog

Just for a change I’m posting a photo that is hot off the press – I took this yesterday! For those of you who don’t know El Torcal is a park near Antequera in Andalucia that is famous for its weathered granite rock formations. One of my friends from work (Hi Noomi!) went there last week and said it would be a good place to take photos. I took my camera to work yesterday in case the weather was good – as it was nice and sunny when I finished at 4.30 I jumped in the car and headed up to the park. After an hour of driving with the roads getting twistier and steeper I arrived at my destination. There is a car park with a visitors centre (closed by the time I got there) a couple of miradors or viewpoints with with views down to Malaga and two marked paths. I chose the longer of the two paths, 3km that supposedly takes 2 hours. It’s not an easy walk, quite a lot of it is clambering over rocks, but it’s very scenic and amazingly quiet – I can’t remember when I last heard complete silence, where I am sitting now writing this I am in the countryside but there is the constant sound of dogs barking and crickets chirping. The nature is quite impressive, as well as Griffon Vultures, wild mountain goats and a shiny, green lizard I found some very tasty blackberries (the only place I’ve seen them in Spain).

Anyway, on to the photo. Considering I was snapping away at loads of rock formations I thought were photogenic I was quite disappointed with most of the results. I’ve picked out a few more photos that I might put on my site but this is the best of the bunch. I had been looking for a rock formation that I could get the sun behind and this fitted the bill perfectly. I took three photos with the sun in different positions and this one came out best. OK, the sun wasn’t moving, it was me that was changing position, but you know what I mean. The blue sky is also quite deceptive, there were quite a few grey clouds around, just not in this photo

As always I welcome your comments…

Taken with a Nikon D1X and a Nikon 18 – 200mm lens at 18mm. Shutter speed 1/400th sec, Aperture f/10

See more photos from this day on my Facebook page: Richard Thomas Photography

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 at 22:33 and is filed under Photo Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.