Andalucia

Due to my job change early in 2018, we decided to take an early holiday.  To avoid it being freezing cold, we opted for a short Light & Land tour to Andalucia in Spain to photograph the almond blossom.  We expected it to be a bit warm, but we ended up wearing our winter lined trousers for the entire weekend!  The floor in the hotel room was like ice.

Our four night tour started with a flight out from Leeds Bradford Airport to Malaga, and we then got straight out onto the hillside near Orgiva in the afternoon to find some blossom.

Day two saw us take the drive through the Alhambra at Granada.  We spent the morning in the gardens before moving into the palace for the afternoon.  Sunset was spent at a viewpoint overlooking the complex.

Day three was blossom day.  We spent the entire day out on the hillside looking for interesting shots of the blossom trees.  They have some great shapes, and it was often a challenge to separate them from their surroundings.  We began to experiment with monochrome settings on our cameras – setting them to shoot JPG+RAW and having the JPG set to mono.  This gave us a mono image on the back of the camera, but the RAW file gave us full scope for colour conversions later.

On the morning of day four, for respite from the blossom, we took a tour around the other side of the valley, taking in some of them many whitewashed villages.  One of these was reputed to be the highest in Spain, and it was famous for Hams. One shop had space for 8000 hams which were hung for two to three years – there was a lot of ham!

On our last day, we went back up into the hills to find some more blossom, before taking our flight home.  We had fun with this impressive terrace as the sun rose over the hill – it was spectacular!