Floral Betancuria

I've just looked in Wikipedia and discovered that Betancuria proudly bear a "city" label in there. Well, I don't know. The population of the whole province was 721 in the latest poll, and not all of them live in Betancuria, so calling it a city seems just a tad excessive.

It's a pretty place, whatever it is. There aren't many real sights to see, and they've been photographed to death. You can hardly blame the photographers - apart from scattering of windmills, Fuerteventura doesn't have many historical architectural landmarks, compensating, of course, for this lack with its natural beauty. In any case, I decided to sort of skip photographing architecture - after playing a bit with a borrowed wide angle lens around the church.

So, here are just some floral things from Betancuria.

Fuerteventura snowflakes and noodle soup

There is very little chance of real snow here, although you never know of course.  We made this  garland before Christmas and it was hanging for a while over TV. Today I decided to take it off and throw it away, but first we went to the roof to photograph. Presence of one unwalkable shoe in the picture is explainable, but it will take too long, so let's say it's just holding the garland in place.

town abstracts

Some semi-abstracts snapped around the town. Enjoy

Puerto del Rosario - white hot

We went to Puerto del Rosario today, to get more bits of paperwork done. We haven't done what we intended, but got forms, a list of docs to bring over next time and an assurance that we are not needed there all four of us, just one representative will do. So we considered it a success.

When we started from home, it was a bit overcast. It started to heat up when we walked to a bit - in the direction of the shopping center (Las Rotondas), because I needed some dancing shoes. Inside the center it was cool and on the darkish side, and easy to forget how hot it is outside. Which it was

Egg tree of Stavern

We went to a little town (village?) of Stavern to have a little walk and some food. There is a fortress there, main building of which is on a small island (or maybe it's a peninsula, I am never sure with those scattered large rocks in the sea). The main visual impression on me was made by the row of large yellow sheds (maybe used to store ammunition, or maybe not. Sadly, I don't know Norwegian) and by a lilac bush branches hang by easter eggs, which somebody put on a bench just outside of them. Somehow, it seems sweet that they went into trouble of giving branches some soil to hold on to. Lilac responded well - you can see green leaves

polished street

this is how old street's surface in Zadar looks like. It looked just the same in Rovinj.

One of the things that surprised me in Zadar this year is how busy and touristy it was - maybe not quite as busy as Venice (i.e. you could walk relatively freely without having to squeeze between sweating bodies), but close. Even more surprisingly, Rovinj as I remember it three years ago was almost spookily empty. Considering that Rovinj old town area is more beautiful and has fewer or maybe even none of the new buildings, the explanations I can come up with are : we were there not in the peak of high season and there are a lot more tourists coming now to Croatia in general then it was three years ago.

Back to polished street: they look slippery, but those were uneven stones to start with, so they provide just enough grip to walk safely (although I don't know how it'll be in rain).

But I did manage to fall (and drop my camera!) on stony surface in Zadar - and that was not on old street, but on newly laid edge of a lawn close to the waterfront. Waterfront there serves as town beach, and especially show-off bathers take a loooong run before they dive, so there are always wet patches here and there. And whoever decided on the new layout for the area had a bright idea of making some of the surfaces of completely smooth, flat and polished marble. I truly don't know what possessed him or her. Some water on that marble and it's as slippery as ice, so beware.

Having said that, it's nice area, especially for a evening stroll, and of course "Greeting to the Sun" glowing disk is an absolute highlight.




photos from Croatia for sale at shutterstock

tendril

Between two rains went to Cambridge Uni Botanic gardens yesterday. I don’t know which plant exactly is that — although both me and Timur like green greenhouses there, he tends to drag me through “rainforest” bit pretty quickly, because it’s damp and hot there. So there is no time to trace the creeper plants to their roots and little name plates next to them. I have a very vague impression that it belonged to passionflower plant — red species (Passiflora coccinea), but I can’t be sure.

Various tendrils on Shutterstock

suspension bridge

I've already processed this bridge picture (from Fuengirola, Spain) a goodish while ago, but I tend to re-comd through my folders before removing them off my hard disk . I leave them on external back-up disk, of course. This time processing left me with more perfect silhouettes, and I am hoping that this time the pic will be accepted at picture agencies, since people on the bridge are now unrecognizable.

Zebra abstract

Zebras from Linton zoo. Shame that there is only four of them there (at least, I think it's four). In my opinion, a herd of zebras is a sure recipe for millions of instant masterpieces

smoke again

I did smoke photography before, but always with sideways sunshine for light (very weather-dependent, obviously). with this tutorial, it's almost ridiculously easy to produce good quality pics with flashgun (not weather dependent at all). Why I never thought about it myself, I don't know

another nice example here

hot royal blue

seems like everybody is freezing and snowed under. sun from Lanzarote to help.
spring will be here shortly - I was told that crocuses are already out in Bournemouth.

smoke

incense stick smoke, isolated on black, inverted and colored.