In May 2015, I led a photography tour to Andalusia, along with pro photographer (and my partner) Jed Manwaring. We had a lovely group with us, an enthusiastic and flexible group, and we saw so many wonderful sites! One great place was the Mezquita, the mosque-cathedral, in Córdoba. I had seen so many pictures of it and was excited to get there. As we entered the mosque, I tried to be mindful of the ancient and religious place we were entering. I thought about all the historical figures of the day that had spent time in this place, and marveled at this long-standing gem of moorish architecture. So much was present in these walls.
I wanted my pictures to reflect that, and as a straight image, they show the structure and architectural details very well. But by applying a texture overlay from Flypaper Textures, I could create a more weathered, antiquated feeling to the image. I chose the Marguerite texture from the Distressed-painterly set, but there are others that would have also worked well. I haven’t had much time to ‘play’, er, experiment like this the past year, so it’s fun to sit with a photo and think about what I want the final image to be for a change!
The image below was also using their texture overlays. You can get a 15% discount off their products by clicking the affiliate link above. I really like the entire collection they have, I just have to make more time to try them all out!
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Jed and I are leading this same photo tour to Andalusia in May 2017. For more information, visit my page here, and/or go to the Strabo Tour Collection Spain Tour page. I have a link to Spain images on Facebook, too.
Hi David. Nice work on your website. I will have to look more deeply at it when I get more time. On my way to Slovenia right now.
Yes, the bane of travel photography is dealing with all the travelers in our pictures – and we are in theirs, too! I try to go places very early if outside (such as the square in Venice) to avoid the crowds of people, but lately even there has become more ‘busy’ as photographer/tourists run around making pictures early. I also try to go inside ‘late’ when it’s likely that most tourists have been through by then, typically tour groups running in/out of places between 9 and 3, but then that may not give you as much time as you’d like to photograph it all. I wish I could offer more ideas – maybe traveling off season is the answer, but even then I have found mankind is more on the move than ever ever before and it’s getting crowded out there!
We had a tour of most of the iconic places in Spain and Portugal 2 years ago. Unfortunately, it was not a photographic tour, but still, it was our first visit to those countries, so it was rewarding. It was often difficult to work around the hordes of tourists. Do you have some special insight around this problem. You can see some of my images on my website.