We’re here at my third post on Valencia on the Move, another opportunity to tell you about my travel photography.
Having talked about my arrival in the city and my search for a common factor in my camera shots, today I want to talk about my approach to landscape photography.
Despite being quite a small city, Valencia’s landscape displays two very different sides; two faces placed precisely at opposite ends of the city.
One one side, the Ciutat Vella with its alternating Gothic and Baroque style; on the other, the small but majestic Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias, designed by Santiago Calatrava.
The two areas are joined by the riverbed of the Turia, whose course has been diverted over the years, leaving an area since transformed into a magnificent, long stretch of green, crossed by a cycle path that takes you slowly into the small and modern City of Arts and Sciences.
I made use of my bicycle and crossed the whole riverbed, passing other cyclists, runners, dogs off the lead and all those who enjoy the peace and tranquillity of a Sunday morning surrounded by greenery. Cycling towards the southern part of the city, what really struck me was the preponderance of light. Today, if I think back to the landscape of modern Valencia, the first image that comes to mind is definitely the intense and luminous whiteness.
My approach to landscape photography has changed a lot over the years.
Before, when I found a beautiful landscape before me, the photo was taken immediately and the end result was very similar to a nice postcard. Today, the desire for a picture postcard is much diminished and I always find it difficult to choose what to photograph.
With a beautiful view before me, I usually look for the details, the light, the shadows, the changing geometric shapes, but above all I wait for my landscape to be enriched by people, by life.
Sometimes, my patient waiting is rewarded and I happen to get lucky moments in which the white of the landscape blends with its players. A few minutes in which the landscape becomes the background to a moment in time and the decision to take a side view picture enables you to capture the wish for something to remember and also leaves the presence of a landscape only to the imagination.
Photographing a panorama that forms the background to a future memory forces you to make ritual checks to make sure that the shot has come out just as you imagined, before you continue on your walk.
I only took a few photos home with me of the Modern City in its entirety, but for me its landscape will always be tied to that little group of enthusiastic, smiling nuns dressed all in white, who enriched by picture postcard of Valencia.
My photographic journey doesn’t end here; I’ll be back in a week’s time with my last post on Valencia on the Move.
Bianca Spina
My name is Bianca, I’m from Naples but I live in Rome. A blogger with big, red glasses, I’m naturally Inquisitive, Absent-Minded and Shy. I love colours, walking and taking photographs; I am won over by the inescapable charm of kindness and a smile, and it’s not hard to make me blush.
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