“Colorful Buildings, Portree, Scotland” — Colorful Portree waterfront building and reflections, Isle of Skye.
Just a few days after sharing a post in which I mentioned that I photograph a lot of subjects that are not icons… here is a photograph of an icon! This scene in the town of Portree, Isle of Skye is definitely in that category. I’m pretty sure that this scene will show up if you search (or as I hear I should now say, “search up”) “Portree.” It is an attractive row of colorful buildings, and their reflection in the water adds to the effect.
“Lisbon Graffiti #2” — Brilliantly colorful graffiti on a door in the Alfama district of Lisbon, Portugal.
I am often a bit uneasy about photographing street art, tags, and graffiti. In some cases it feels more like attention-getting vandalism than creative work. But there are exceptions in places where it seems to be mostly tolerated, and when the work seems like an interesting expression.
This photograph is a bit of an exercise in changing my perspective. If you were in Death Valley or other places where sand verbena grows and blooms, you might first notice a pinkish-purple color out on a gravel slope somewhere. Getting closer you would see large, sprawling individual plants with large pink-purple “flowers.” But a closer look reveals that these are actually globular clusters of many small flowers.
“Lisbon Graffiti #1” — Colorful graffiti on a door in the Alfama district of Lisbon, Portugal.
Here is one more photograph of Lisbon graffiti, this one from a wall next to a sidewalk in the lower Alfama neighborhood. The colors and patterns are so vivid that you might not even notice the doorway in the wall behind the paint. The colors of this street anrt are were perhaps the most intense that I recall seeing.