This is a little street scene in Lisbon’s Alfama neighborhood. The area rises from the river’s edge toward the hill of the St. George Castle. This was the original center of Lisbon before it expanded, and it later was the home of less wealthy citizens of the city. Its age (it escaped destruction in the 18th-century earthquake that destroyed much of Lisbon ) means that the area retains the original narrow and twisting streets.
Continue reading Largo do Peneireiro
This is, in several ways, kind of an odd Death Valley photograph. The fine-grained gravel covering the slopes and hills here are not widespread in the park — in most places the ground tends to be lighter in color. On the other hand, the curving shapes and runoff erosion channels are seen elsewhere, as are the plants. (If you look very closely, you will see not only the larger green plants but lots of small wildflower shoots just emerging.)
Continue reading Eroded HIlls
I love little off-kilter scenes like this one. In the center are two tile illustrations of the fado music tradition of Portugal. (The tiles were seen in an earlier post on this website.) They are aligned to perfect verticals and horizontals. But everything else tilts — the bench on the cobbled sidewalk, the pipe that frames the image, the wiring attached to the walls. A door at the left, barely intruding into the frame, is the only other thing that lines up.
Continue reading Bench, Wall With Fado Tiles
Death Valley National Park is a huge landscape, in more ways that one. The park is huge. It is the largest park in the contiguous states. (Alaska, where everything is on a larger scale, has four larger parks.) Within the park we often are able to view huge distances — in fact, Death Valley’s visual scale reminds me of places I’ve seen in Alaska. Here we look down Rainbow Canyon and across the entire Panamint Valley (one valley west of Death Valley itself) toward more desert mountains.
Continue reading Panamint Valley