Last night I went out in Málaga with Pachange, a language exchange group (if you’re looking for a language exchange group in Málaga click the link!). This morning I had an hour to kill before my train home so I thought I could take a few photos. Near the port I found an interesting piece of graffiti, and I would have shared it with you but this is what I found when I took my camera out of my bag.

Yes, that’s a broken UV filter, and those are sharp shards of glass sitting right on the front of my 18 – 200mm lens. I didn’t want to risk scratching the front element by removing the remains of the filter in the street so I carefully put the camera back in my bag and left it until I got home. Luckily I was able to carefully remove all traces of broken glass once I got home, the lens doesn’t seem any the worse for wear and all I need to replace is the filter, but I was worried for a while…

I have nobody to blame but myself – for a while I thought it must have happened while my bag was in the reception of the hostel overnight (as they didn’t have any keys for the lockers in the room, another story!).  But then I remembered that while I was packing yesterday I put my bag on my bed and it fell off onto the floor, the damage must have happened then – oops!

Well, I just thought I would share that with you. Perhaps the next time I’m in Málaga I’ll go back to the port and this time manage to get the photo I wanted…

I took this photo in August of this year in the village where I live, Pizarra. It is of a traditional flamenco dancer at the Feria. She is also my friend’s daughter, so if you look at the rest of the photos on my Facebook page you will see there a lot of her.

If you don’t live in Spain I should tell you that flamenco is very traditional, especially in the south of the country, and you can find scenes like this in every city and town when they have their Feria. Each town has a group of dancers that practice all year for parties – the dances are traditional but every year there are small changes to the steps and the outfits. Many of the people wear traditional dresses and suits. Many of them ride horses, the men (known as caballeros) in front and their wives or girlfriends behind.

Some things are less traditional – in the original of this photo a balloon in the shape of Spongebob Squarepants, the cartoon, can be clearly seen. This version of the photo looks like it has been taken with a very fast lens with a lot of depth of field, but in reality I did it in Photoshop If you are interested I made a copy of the layer, used the “Extract” filter on the top layer to extract the dancer and finally applied Gaussian blur to the bottom layer. I am very happy with the effect.

Normally I don’t like to make huge changes in Photoshop, but in this case I’ve made an exception. I really like the shape made by the dancer, her skirt and the positions of her head, her eyes and her hands, but the balloon in the background was a big distraction.

Taken with a Nikon D1X and a Nikon 18 – 200mm lens at 135mm, shutter speed 1/180 sec, aperture f/6.7

See the rest of these photos on my Facebook page: Richard Thomas Photography

This is one photo from a series I took 2 years ago of some houses that aren’t there any more. They were in an area called San Isidro very close to Málaga Airport – too close, they have now been demolished and in their place is the new runway. I’m not saying whether this is a good or a bad thing, I saw the houses covered in graffiti and decided to take some photos before they disappeared to record a moment in time. I haven’t published the photos before now, I wasn’t sure if the people that lived there would like them, but now I think enough time has passed. I don’t want to publish them later when the runway is about to open as I don’t want to be accused of a publicity stunt!

I had seen these houses on the way to work. I took these photos in June 2008 when the majority had already been demolished. At that time all the houses that were still there were covered in graffiti as in this photo. All the messages were similar: the people were saying that AENA (the Spanish airports authority) were stealing their homes.

When I started taking photos of this house I didn’t know there still people living there! This house was the most intact, with the most interesting graffiti, so I took a lot of photos of it. After 5 minutes a car appeared with a woman and a teenage boy. The boy asked me why I was taking photos and I explained that I was interested in the construction and its effect on the houses and families living there. He appeared to be happy with my answer and reported it back to his mother. Then I saw an old lady (his grandmother I suppose) who had come out of the house. I think she had seen me and called her daughter for help!

Taken with a Nikon D1X and a Nikon 18 – 200mm lens at 35mm, shutter speed 1/500 sec, aperture f/10

See the rest of these photos on my Facebook page: Richard Thomas Photography

This is the view from my office just outside Málaga airport, opposite the San Miguel brewery on the main approach road. Since I start work at 7am on Saturdays I thought it would be a good time to get some atmospheric shots of the brewery, so I took my camera and tripod in to work a few weeks ago. I was planning to take a series of photos and combine them into a high dynamic range (HDR) image, but that hasn’t been successful (yet – I’m still working on it!). However, in the meantime here’s a photo produced using a kind of pseudo-HDR technique using Adobe Lightroom along with the 300v2 preset from mikelao.

The original photo was a 5 second exposure. There wasn’t a lot of traffic around that early in the morning but you can see the tail light of a car (or maybe a bike) that travelled up the central road while I had the shutter open (the red line parallel to the crash barrier in the centre of the photo). The over-exposed area at the top left of the building is the San Miguel sign. I was hoping to adjust that part of the photo so you see the bright red and green colours (trust me, they are red and green!) of the neon sign, but my HDR-fu is not strong enough

Taken with a Nikon D1X and a Nikon 18 – 200mm lens at 40mm. Shutter speed 5 sec, Aperture f/9, ISO 125

View photo page on main site.

A couple of weeks ago I went to Fuengirola Zoo for the first time. It’s one of those places that you don’t really notice unless you are looking out for it, it’s quite small and encloses the Plaza de Toros on three sides, so when you get inside it’s quite surprising how much they have managed to pack in.

My main reason for going was their annual photographic competition – this is the third year they have held it, I heard about it last year but didn’t get around to going. This year I decided it had to be done – the main theme is Grandes Primates (Great Apes – Gorillas, Orang-utans, Chimps and Bonobos), so there is plenty of scope for really good close shots of animals with almost human expressions. So a couple of weeks ago I arranged to meet my friend James (another local photographer) and we spent a few hours snapping.

I have finally decided on the 4 photos I am entering (2 great apes, 2 of other zoo residents) – this isn’t one of them but it makes me laugh every time I look at it so I thought it was a good candidate for the blog. Pelicans are funny looking creatures in any case, but this view of one preening itself shows just how they have to twist and contort their bodies to accommodate their long necks and beaks. Despite the angles and distances involved it looks like quite a precise operation.

Taken with a Nikon D1X and a Nikon 18 – 200mm lens at 90mm. Shutter speed 1/320th sec, Aperture f/8.5

View photo page on main site. Check out the nature page for a close up of a chimp.

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

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

A slightly different photo this time. more abstract than usual. I took this one day in August 2005 when I went out with my camera for a day in the City of London. I worked in the City for nearly 10 years before moving to Spain, but it’s a completely different place at the weekend. Gone are the hordes of suit-clad office workers (like me Monday to Friday) to be replaced by wandering tourists carrying cameras (like, er, me on this particular day!). My main aim was to get photos of the architecture close-up, so I only took my 70 – 210mm telephoto lens. I got the tube to Liverpool Street and started at 30 St Mary Axe (aka the Gherkin), moving on via the old Nat West tower (ridiculously called Tower 42 these days) to the Bank of England. My wandering then took me to Holborn Circus, St Pauls, the Millenium Bridge and back towards the Tower of London – maybe I’ll post some more of the photos I took that day at a later date.

This particular photo was taken outside a cafe on Cheapside - I spotted the chairs piled up and thought they made a nice pattern. I didn’t really have the right lens on me for the job as I was travelling light so I’m pleased with the way it came out. I’d almost forgotten about it until a couple of weeks ago when I entered it into the weekly challenge on the BBC Photo Blog, “Viewfinder” – the theme was Metal. It was only second time I had entered and I was extremely pleased when it was chosen. Unfortunately, they haven’t responded to my suggestion that they publish the number of entries they get each week so I have no way of knowing whether it was a massive achievement or those were the only photos they received You can see my photo along with the others chosen here. I especially like the interpretation of the theme in the first one, nice bit of lateral thinking!

So there you go, as always I welcome your comments…

Taken with a Nikon D1X and a Nikon 70 – 210mm lens at 75mm. Shutter speed 1/80th sec, Aperture f/4.5

As Hannibal Smith was so fond of saying, I love it when a plan comes together! The last couple of years haven’t been good for one of the largest breeding colonies of flamingoes in Europe, as the water levels in the lagoon at Fuente de Piedra have been so low. However, following an unusually wet winter, I heard the flamingoes were back in force so I packed up my camera, telephoto and tripod and headed up there one Sunday evening in May.

The lagoon is bigger than the village named after it, so it’s not difficult to find – once you get into the village you just head downhill and follow the signs for the visitor centre. The shop was open so I thought I’d ask about the best place to go. Not knowing the Spanish word for flamingo didn’t help, but the shop was full of them (obviously) so a bit of pointing and asking “¿Como se dice en Español?” yielded the answer “Flamenco” (just like the traditional dance). You learn something new every day I also elicited the information that whilst there were about 50 flamingoes in the small pools near the visitor centre, to see the big flocks I would need to walk around the edge of the lake a fair way. Once I got to the lake I could see what she meant – way off on the horizon I could see hundreds of birds slowly moving around in the shallow water feeding and occasionally taking to the air. I had about an hour to go before sunset so I grabbed my camera and headed off.

The path I was following was getting less and less distinct but after about 20 minutes I found myself as close as I could get to a large flock (there’s a fence that keeps you about 50m away from the water’s edge), with the sun heading towards the horizon behind them. I was using my 500mm manual everything lens, and I think it paid for itself in this one session (previously I’d only used it to get a really good shot of the full moon – more on that later, maybe). In my mind I had a vague of a photo I wanted to get, one or two flamingoes in silhouette reflected in the water. At the time I didn’t realise that I’d reached my goal when I took this photo, so it was a nice surprise when I went through the photos on the computer the next day.

You might have seen this photo before – I submitted it to the readers photos page in a local ex-pat newspaper, Sur in English and it became the third photo out of three of mine to be printed when it appeared on the back page on 12th June.

Taken with a Nikon D1X and a Nikon 500mm lens. 1/10000 sec, f8.

View photo page on main site. Check out the nature page for the other 2 flamingo pictures there.

The 2009 Málaga Feria has just finished, and I went along for the first time last Wednesday afternoon (taking my camera with me of course). The daytime festivities are centred on the old town, with the pedestrianised shopping street of Calle Larios transformed into one big party. Sun shades are hung across the street from the buildings on either side and the entire area is filled with dancers, musicians and revellers. I have a few photos which I will be uploading to my site next week, but as a taster here is the first.

There were several bands in the street (I saw at least 5 just in the time I was there). In some countries you have marching bands, but this being Spain there is nothing so regimented. These are best described as “wandering” bands – they play their instruments while standing roughly in the same area, milling around and interacting with the crowd, who out of necessity don’t give them much space. They tend to have members without instruments whose job it is to get the crowd dancing and singing along, not difficult given a) the fact that the Spanish love a party and b) the fact that everyone is nicely “lubricated”.

No so much to say about the photo, except I like the reflection in the end of the horn – if you look carefully you can see the crowd behind me, the buildings opposite and some of the decorations hanging above. More to follow next week, I’ll add a link here when the rest of the photos are available.

Update 21/04/2010: You can see the rest of the photos on my new Facebook page.

Taken with a Nikon D1X and a Nikon 18 – 200mm VR lens at 82mm. Shutter speed 1/200th sec, Aperture f/6.7