Posted in Photo of the Day, tagged abstract, architecture, Porto, Portugal, red, roof, slate, tile, warehouse on March 16, 2012 | 2 Comments »
“Warehouse Jumble” : Porto, 9th September 2011
Excluding backgrounds always changes the sense of a picture completely.
Here I just homed in on the gorgeous red roofs of Porto’s port wine warehouses, and their slightly odd angular alignment, resulting in a kind of homogenous magically beauty.
See a larger version of this picture here.
Posted in Photo of the Day, tagged cityscape, Europe, landscape, panorama, Porto, Portugal, river, roof, warehouse on March 13, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Porto, 9th September 2011
There you go, a straight, touristy shot of Porto looking out over the warehouses of a Port wine producer towards the Douro river and the medieval city centre on the hillside beyond.
It’s a nice place : go there…
Click here for a larger version of this photo.
Posted in Photo of the Day, tagged cathedral, church, Italy, Milan, roof, silhouette, spires, statues on February 26, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
“Saints and Spires” : Milan, Italy, 27th March 2011
I’ve been to Milan twice. The first time was about fifteen years ago in the company of a good friend of mine who had lived in Italy for a time and was going to show me around. This ‘showing around’ amounted to getting ripped off in a crappy touristy pizzeria, then drinking beer out of plastic cups in the mosquito-infested gardens of some great fortress or other. Not the greatest of impressions.
My next visit was an impromptu one a year ago. I had been based in Bologna and was nearing the end of a three-week trip to Italy. I’d planned on my final day being a trip out to Ravenna on the Adriatic coast, but as the morning dawned the weather looked dicey and I couldn’t face the prospect of a rainy day stuck in a small town with nothing to do.
At Bologna station I was very pleased to find that for a relatively modest fee I could get a high-speed train up to Milan in only an hour and a half, and even if the weather didn’t cooperate, it didn’t matter, since my goal was a prominent art museum.
When I got their, although it was cloudy and hazy, I couldn’t resist dropping by the extraordinary cathedral, which is quite jaw-dropping in its beauty. I wasn’t interested in going inside, though – my target was the roof. For a fee you could clamber up the stairs and find yourself on the marble-glad top of this enormous edifice, providing some remarkable views despite the poor weather.
A riot of hundreds of spires, statues, gargoyles and ornate stonework, it was worth the trip up to Milan just for this, let alone the excellent art museum I visited shortly afterwards.
I still don’t like Milan too much, especially when compared to Rome, Venice or Bologna, but this was a wonderful end to my holiday.
See a larger version of this photo here.
Posted in Photo of the Day, tagged architecture, Bologna, cityscape, Italy, landscape, panorama, roof, tower, urban on January 29, 2012 | 2 Comments »
“Bolognese Vertigo” : Italy, 24th March 2011
Pisa isn’t the only Italian town to have a tower that’s leaning: there’s quite a few, actually.
The Asinelli tower in Bologna is a staggering ninety-seven metres tall, and at the top, from where this vomit-inducing photo was taken, it’s a couple of metres out of whack, which doesn’t do a lot for your sense of well-being.
Add to this the fact that the tower is eight hundred years old, and the only way to get to the top is by flights of rickety dodgy-looking wooden stairs, and you’re in for an uncomfortable time.
I always head straight for elevated look-outs such as this, even though I’m afraid of heights – there’s a certain masochistic thrill to be had a hundred metres up with only some puny crumbling masonry between you and oblivion.
But what a view, clearly showing why the city is often called Red Bologna (aside from its famous left-wing political stance).
See a larger version of this photo here.
Posted in Photo of the Day, tagged architecture, building, orange, Portugal, roof, Sintra, sky, tiles on January 10, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
“Ornate Orange Roof” : Sintra, Portugal, 6th September 2011
Sintra is a countryside getaway for the population of Lisbon. Just a short train ride out, and you can escape the crowded run-down suburbs of the Portuguese capital and find yourself out in a rocky, hilly playground near the wild Atlantic, studded with beautiful forests, ancient castles and more modern follies of the rich and regal. Idyllic, except that you’re going to have to share this rural paradise with all the other thousands bent on making the same excursion as you. Hint: don’t go on weekends.
I’d barely got a couple of hundred meters from the train station on the longish walk to the attractions when I spotted this gorgeously intricate (and perhaps over-the-top) roof. There would be plenty more photo ops later…
You can find a larger version of this photo here.
Posted in Photo of the Day, tagged architecture, building, cartoonish, golden, graffiti, Lisbon, Portugal, roof on December 17, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
“Gorgeous Graffiti” : Lisbon, Portugal, 4th September 2011
Up near my hotel, quite a walk from the historic centre of Lisbon, I found a whole row of imposing old buildings which had been abandoned and given over to large-scale graffiti.
Not the usual low-grade eyesores, but really creative stuff plastered implausibly across the entire structure.
In this example the golden painting lends the place a fantastical cartoonish air, softening the hard edges of the original and almost dripping out over the edge.
This is quality work, in my opinion…
A larger version of this photograph can be found here.
Posted in Photo of the Day, tagged architecture, Beaune, France, medieval, pattern, photo, photography, roof, tiles on October 11, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
After my trek through the vineyards around the Burgundian town of Beaune, I still had some time left before my train back to Dijon, so I stopped by the amazing Hospices de Beaune.
Resembling a church, this ornate structure built in the fifteenth century was actually, as the name implies, a hospital for the poor.
Inside it houses some impressive art by Rogier van der Weyden and Lucas Cranach the Elder – big names indeed, considering the diminutive size of the town.
Here’s a detail from another part of this vast building’s roof:
Bigger versions of these photos can be found here and here.
Posted in Photo of the Day, tagged architecture, church, France, pattern, photo, roof, tiles on September 28, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Sometimes I deliberately zoom in on the textures and patterns I see because that’s what makes the photo a little different from the norm, especially where travel pictures are concerned.
Here, though, I did actually take a wider shot of a church in Dijon, but since the weather was bad and the sky a dull grey, I just kept cropping until it had all been expunged, and these colourful tiles were all that remained…
See a larger version here.
Posted in Photo of the Day, tagged abstract, Italy, pattern, photo, photography, roof, tile on August 6, 2011 | 2 Comments »
I don’t know why, but doing this daily photo thing seems to be driving me more towards the experimental, the abstract, and the ‘all detail no background’ side of my photography, to the extent that I would be ashamed to present a standard ‘touristy’ view of somewhere I’d been to on my travels.
And so, rather than present to you the glorious majesty of Orvieto cathedral, I instead give you this charming and slightly mossy rooftop I spied from a tower in said Italian town, which, in its own way, is just as glorious, and no less beautiful.
A larger version of this picture can viewed here at my dedicated website and store, Andy Lightfoot Photography.
Posted in Photo of the Day, tagged abstract, architecture, art, Buddhism, China, D50, DSLR, eaves, image, Japan, Japanese, Nagasaki, Nikon, oriental, pattern, photo, photography, roof, temple, Zen on May 21, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Nagasaki is a city with a more cosmopolitan heritage than most Japanese towns. As well as some areas of old European housing, there are a number of Chinese-influenced temples whose decoration is noticeably different from the Japanese norm.
This detail of the colourful temple eaves is an example of this, and was captured four years ago on my first DSLR, a Nikon D50.
A larger version of this picture can viewed here at my dedicated website and store, Andy Lightfoot Photography.
