Travel
The images featured in this week’s blog post are from a very early morning walk around the swamps of Tauparikākā Marine Reserve in the West Coast of New Zealand. The soft morning light really transformed this magical place and really brought out all the details in the landscapes…
The West Coast of New Zealand is brimming with beautifully wild landscapes. Among them are dozens of incredible waterfalls nestled in among vibrant forests. Here are just three of my favourites - Roaring Billy Falls, Thunder Creek Falls, and Coal Creek Falls.
The Tauparikākā Marine Reserve lies in the West Coast of New Zealand, on the way between the cities of Wanaka and Queenstown and the Franz and Fox glaciers. Although I had been planning to visit for some time, I must admit this spot completely surpassed my expectations. In only a few short walks, it guides you through a stunning beach, a gloomy swamp, and surprising views over the wetlands. It’s almost like someone decided to take a selection of New Zealand’s stunning scenery and collapsed it into a single location. Well worth a visit!
Beyond The Remarkables mountain range and Deer Park Heights, Queenstown also boasts many other landscapes. In this post I share a few more of my favourites from my last visit, including views over Shotover River and a pink sunset across the lake.
In addition to the stunning views of the mountains that I shared in my previous blog post, Deer Park Heights is also home to several herds of deer. They roam the area freely, serving as an intriguing foreground to the Queenstown landscapes below.
One of the best places to catch spectacular sights of The Remarkables mountain range in Queenstown is Deer Park Heights. This lesser-known spot just recently reopened after several years out of operation. It is a photographer’s dream, and also full of famous locations from the Lord of the Rings movies. More information on the locations and how to book your visit can be found here.
Sunrise is often the quietest time in any big city, and in Rio de Janeiro it feels a bit odd and wonderful to have the landscapes to yourself, before everyone else wakes up. The unusual serenity of the sunrise often brings with it some stunning light, especially on mornings with clear skies. Below is a collection of some sunrises I captured in Rio, from several locations. In a country like Brazil, I strongly recommend photographing at unsociable hours only if you can do so as part of a larger group - going alone can be dangerous depending on the locations you visit.
One of the most popular tourist attractions in Rio de Janeiro is the Sugar Loaf (Pão de Açucar), where you can take a series of cable cars between the mountains and see the city from above. A few years ago, I visited this spot at sunset and came out with several images I am very fond of.
Today my blog features Rio de Janeiro, my hometown (home-megacity?). Although it suffers from many political and societal problems, Rio is undeniably a beautiful, colourful, and vibrant place. The real magic of the city comes alive at night, as the sun comes down and lights the sky up with a deep orange that perfectly matches the bright city lights. Here are some of my best images of this magical time…
The fifth and final blog post in the Serra da Capivara series finally zooms out to showcase the wider beauty of the land, including panoramas of the unique rocky formations in the region. The area contains a wild and beautiful mixture of cliffs, caves, rocks, forests, and vast plains and scrubland. These images were taken in the summer, the driest and hottest time of the year, as is reflected by the dry vegetation.
The caves in the Serra da Capivara National Park are truly stunning - even the ones left unpainted by our prehistoric cousins. The fourth blog post in this series features a few of the cave walks through the park, which are best enjoyed on local anthropological tours that will guide you through the history and interpretation of the cave paintings.
The third part of my Serra da Capivara blog series is a little different: these are images of the locally-produced, handcrafted ceramics inspired by the ancient cave paintings discovered in the region. These are made as souvenirs for tourists, and help support the local population that lives in the surrounding areas. Perhaps due to its location, the national park remains somewhat undiscovered, and has yet to properly tap into Brazil’s international tourism market.
For the second post in my Serra da Capivara blog series, I feature some of the amazing cave paintings in its ancient caves. Some of these date back some 25,000 years, giving valuable insights into the lives of early South American communities. Intertwined with the paintings are some of mother nature’s own artworks, such as the ruffling textures of the caves’ walls.
Time for something a little different! This month, I am featuring the Serra da Capivara National Park, in the northeast of Brazil, over five weekend posts. This UNESCO World Heritage Site is of great interest to geologists, anthropologists, and animal behaviour scientists. It houses some of the oldest cave paintings in South America, and, for the animal enthusiasts among us, a tool-using population of capuchin monkeys. In this first blog post, I share some of the fauna inhabiting the park, including these clever primates. I was even lucky enough to watch them crack nuts with rocks for several minutes, and caught a couple of images of this behaviour too.
The beauty of this place is in its name: Bonito is the Portuguese word for beautiful. This town is an ecotourism hub in the centre of Brazil, with no shortage of activities and sights to see. Some of my favourite attractions in Bonito are its caves, the Blue Lagoon Grotto (Gruta do Lago Azul), and its waterfalls. Although I don’t have any images to share from it, Bonito is also home to the Buraco das Araras, or Hole of Macaws, a huge sandstone sinkhole where hundreds of scarlet macaws (and other species, in smaller numbers) live all year round.
Although I admittedly spent much of my time in Belgium eating chocolates and waffles, I did find some time for photography! If I am not mistaken, all the images shared here are of the little town of Bruges, which you might also spot elsewhere on my website. I would love to return some day and spend more time exploring this adorable country.
Another place I have visited but never before featured on my blog is Austria. I visited twice - once for work, then again for leisure -, and both times I spent most of the time in Vienna. It turned out to be a city full of interesting buildings to photograph. I feature some of them in the images below.
I was lucky enough to spend three years studying for my undergraduate degree at the University of Oxford in the UK, and I still miss it at times. The city is a charming mixture of many architectural styles, dating as far back as the 1000s, when it was founded. My college was more modern than most, built exclusively with the purpose of accepting women as students and academic staff at the University in Victorian times, but I still got to explore almost every other college in my time there. The collection of images below is a little longer than my usual blog post length, but I hope it will be a fun one to scroll through.
Burano is a Venetian island full of colourful fisherman’s houses and quaint little shops. It is a short ferry trip away from Venice, but a world away in its aesthetic. The residents clearly take a lot of pride in their homes: every faccade (which originates from an Italian word - facciata -, by the way!) is uniquely decorated to suit the owner’s preferences. Burano is also much quieter than the mainland city, providing a perfect escape in the busy summer months.
From all the places I’ve ever been, Italy was definitely one of my favourites. The food, the views, the architecture, and the culture of this country are all incredible and like nowhere else in the world. Back then I used to photograph with my first ever DSLR camera, my trusty crop-format Canon 7D. Even so, I still like many of my images from Assisi, a little town in the region of Umbria surrounded by beautiful countryside.
