The Devil’s Cloud Factory

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Enough with the photos from Mijas already. In total, there are now more than 50 pictures in the Gallery, 17 posts on the blog and I’ve received almost 40 comments, all of which were spam. This all since the site went live a little over two weeks ago. Also, over 3000 page views and more than 500 unique visitors. These numbers are OK, given that I don’t really do anything to draw people here, except maybe the odd Tweet.

Anyway, here are the first couple of photos from my latest medium distance travel adventure. I went to Iceland at the end of February for almost 2 weeks of photography. I took these photos on the third day of my stay, after I had arrived late at night two days before. Unfortunately, my bag didn’t arrive at the same time as I did, so I was extremely happy to be re-united with my tripod and immediately took it out on a late night trip.

After spending the evening floating around in the thermal baths at the Blue Lagoon, watching the sun slowly go down behind the rough volcanic rock landscape that is typical for most of Iceland, I grabbed my camera gear from the car and wandered of into the cold, dark, windy night. It was quite a difference to the 40°C hot water in the pools, but I had a good winter jacket. The footpath away from the Blue Lagoon was very small and dimly lit by a few LED spots here and there. And it was longer than I had anticipated.

As soon as I saw the illuminated steam getting close enough, I climbed onto a lava rock formation so I could get a better view. The steam came from the Svartsengi Geothermal Power Plant, the main reason I was in this area after dark. I had seen some photos of this place on the internet and, as with lots of the pictures I take, decided to have my own attempt at getting some photos. One problem was that this power station produces clouds around the clock, every day of the year, which means it is not visible on satellite imagery or Google Maps. This makes it harder to plan from where to take pictures, especially if you don’t want to put in a lot of effort finding the right angles by walking around on the ground – which is of course what you have to do to get the really good pictures.

However, once I saw the power station up close and personal and could see how the wind prevented the steam from drifting upwards, and instead wrapped most of the plant into clouds, I decided it wasn’t really worth the effort. I took some pictures with a long lens from where I was standing so I could capture a bit of the light and how it gave the steam and the different pipes and boilers a dramatic look, like some equipment in a laboratory in hell.

Once I was confident that at least some of the pictures I had were good enough, I decided it was time to embark upon the hour long drive back to my hotel in Reykjavík. There was some sleep I had to catch up on, because I was very stressed out about my bag maybe not arriving at all the night before. While I could have easily replaced most of the contents of that bag, Pentax batteries and chargers were not available in Iceland, a downside of shooting with a less popular camera brand. Lesson learned: next time, I’ll put at least one spare battery and the charger in my carry-on luggage.

Some more Pictures from Mijas

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Well, I didn’t find a picture of a donkey carriage, but I did find one of a horse carriage. Apart from the animal in front, the major difference is that the horse carriages are larger than the donkey carriages. I don’t know how many donkey powers fit into a horse power, but I think horses are better suited for pulling carriages than donkeys.

The horse carriages seemed to be really popular with couples and families, but they weren’t popular at all with the drivers of regular cars. Usually, you can’t overtake them in the city because the streets are too narrow, so you have to drive behind them really slowly until either you or they take a different road. Luckily, I only needed to drive down the main street for a very short distance to reach my hotel.

My hotel was the Hotel Mijas, a relatively large four star hotel in the city. I read about hotels in Spain that the 3-star hotels are usually very poor quality and even though I only needed a place to sleep and get breakfast, I decided to get a slightly above average hotel. The hotel looked very nice, both from the outside and inside, designed as I imagine a rural Spanish villa would have looked like about a century ago. And it had free Wi-Fi in the lobby, so I could Skype home and keep publishing new photos on Secret Cologne every couple of days.

Looking Down at the Mediterranean Sea

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From the terrace of the Ermita de la Virgen de la Peña, I enjoyed a great view over the Mediterranean Sea. Far in the distance, a thin layer of clouds was disappearing for the day and in the front, under the very long shadows of a street lamp and some trees, a bed of flowers was growing.

Every morning, when I was leaving town early, I encountered a couple of city workers who were watering the plants. If they wouldn’t get watered every day, probably not that many beautiful plants would be able to grow in that climate.

The city’s main street is a long and rather small road where you have to drive really slow. There are lots of tourists walking around during the day, and you frequently have to stop for them to cross the road or you get stuck behind a donkey carriage. Maybe I’ll post a picture of a donkey carriage tomorrow if I can find one that I like.
From the top of a building above main street, I could look just over the buildings on the other side of the street and from there straight down the mountain all the way to the sea. I know I keep going on about the view but it is something I don’t normally get to see or pay much attention to.

Ermita de la Virgen de la Peña

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When driving through Mijas in the evening, looking for a place to park, I noticed this little chapel that looked like a cave on a little ledge near the center of the city. I decided to take a closer look during my morning walk.

The Chapel is called the Ermita de la Virgen de la Peña and was caved into a natural rock formation by a Carmelite Monk in the 17th century. A few years later, a belfry and a room next to it were added, but built out of natural bricks outside the cave. Above the entrance, there is a statue of the Virgin de la Peña. I took a look inside, and it really did look like a chapel in a cave. And it was full of the only types of people you would expect at a historical site in rural Spain at 10 in the morning – Japanese tourists. So I skipped taking photos of the inside. Also because my camera didn’t perform well in low light situations.

Taking photos of the outside, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to go ultra wide angle, use a normal lens or do a detail shot with a telephoto lens. I ended up taking all three shots so I could decide later which one I liked best. However, I still cannot decide which one I like most, they all show different aspects of the chapel in their own way. I guess I like the middle one most because it shows the statue, the old belfry and a little bit of the cave without any distractions in the frame.

For the last shot, I wanted the sun to look like it was the statue’s halo, so I had to shoot with a telephoto lens directly into the sun. This is something you should never do! Most of the optical elements inside a camera lens are magnifying glasses, perfectly tuned and adjusted to collect a large amount of light and focus it on a tiny area. When looking through the optical viewfinder of a camera, this tiny area would be your eye, which might get severely burnt or otherwise damaged.

Instead, I used my camera’s live view function. Probably not the best for the camera sensor either, but unlike my eye, it has a heat sensor and shuts down before burning up. The downside is that I can’t press the camera to my face when using live view which makes it harder to hold it perfectly steady. With a shutter speed of 1/8000th of a second, this is not necessary to prevent motion blur, but I had to keep the camera perfectly aligned in the shadow of the statue’s head to avoid a bright spot next to the head as well as lens flares. It took ten attempts to finally get the photo right.