Cabo Raso Special Protection Area

Anima is the Italian word for Soul. I decided for this title as this location is one of the reason why I started with seascape photography. When I first visited this location, I was speechless. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to capture that feeling with an image, but I felt the need to do so. Six years later I came back, and that's what I saw and felt on my skin.

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Another one from Adraga, our last evening in Portugal and mother nature was very kind :-) This shot I like a lot because the scene unfurled only after I had setup my tripod. I wasn't planning for the sun to appear there, I composed the shot when it was still hiding behind the rocks and took one frame, then suddenly there was the sun and it couldn't have chosen a better place to appear :-) I had to blend two shots here to cope with the lense flares. To cope with the dyn range again the Lee 0.9 hard grad was enough... ah I come to like those filters.

Hope you like it, this is a little more of a scenic shot than my last one!

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Praia de Adraga is regarded as one of the best beaches of Portugal mainly due to the stunning scenery of cliffs, jagged rock out crops and golden sand. This opinion was confirmed by a poll conducted by a British national newspaper that rated Praia de Adraga as one of Europe’s top 20 beaches.

Praia de Adraga is regarded as one of the best beaches of Portugal mainly due to the stunning scenery of cliffs, jagged rock out crops and golden sand. This opinion was confirmed by a poll conducted by a British national newspaper that rated Praia de Adraga as one of Europe’s top 20 beaches.

Praia de Adraga is regarded as one of the best beaches of Portugal mainly due to the stunning scenery of cliffs, jagged rock out crops and golden sand. This opinion was confirmed by a poll conducted by a British national newspaper that rated Praia de Adraga as one of Europe’s top 20 beaches.

Praia de Adraga is regarded as one of the best beaches of Portugal mainly due to the stunning scenery of cliffs, jagged rock out crops and golden sand. This opinion was confirmed by a poll conducted by a British national newspaper that rated Praia de Adraga as one of Europe’s top 20 beaches.

After more than four years I finally returned to Praia da Adraga. One of my favourite beaches. It has changed a lot. Where I was taking this photo there was roughly 1-2 meters more sand four years ago. In the background to the left you see rocks which weren't there back then. This offered a lot new compositional opportunities. But this beach doesn't only change over the years. It changes within days. I went there four times and some rocks were gone again since the tide had brought new sand.

Photographing this beach was a real joy, especially with such great light. I took around 50 photos until I got the perfect wave for the foreground. You really have to ram your tripod deep into the sand for such scenes where the water washes around it, then it will be rock solid and you can camp on such compositions until all fits together. I just had to be carefull and watch for the occasional rogue wave ;-)

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In contrast to my last picture from this beach here's one with a stormy sky. We went back to this beach on our last day in Portugal.

Originally we had planned on going down to the Ursa beach which was a big MUST GO THERE on my list. But unfortunately the weather didn't let us go. The Ursa beach is only reachable through a steep 45minutes hike along the cliffs... well usually no problem and I would normally have gone down there despite the weather. But after all this was a vacation and I had my girlfrind with me and when we started the hike it became so windy that it was very uncomfortable. Also the tracks we were walking on seemed to serve as little water runways in case of rain and well, this day it looked like rain. We might have gotten down to the Ursa beach but the way back very possibly with rain was not how we wanted our vacation to end. That's the part when you have to remind yourself that doing photography is a hobby which should be fun and that your very, very tolerant girlfrind might be a bit pissed if she got drenched just because of one or two decent photos ;-)

So we went back to Adraga again and this was a good decision. After above Image rain started and 5minutes to the car was much better than possible an hour climb ;-) Also what was very interesting was the transformation the Adraga beach had gone through in the last two days. The rain and tide removed nearly 3 feet of sand and rocks emerged where the last time only their tips were showing. And it was also a complete different shoot because of the weather.

About the shot. Again I used a lee 0.6 hard grad here so one exposure was enough. But I also learned that when I go on with this shooting technique I need a better camera. The 40d is good but when it comes to shadow detail and noise It's quite hard to get everything right in one exposure. This in mind I'm quite happy with how this shot came out!

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(reprocessed)

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Praia de Adraga is regarded as one of the best beaches of Portugal mainly due to the stunning scenery of cliffs, jagged rock out crops and golden sand. This opinion was confirmed by a poll conducted by a British national newspaper that rated Praia de Adraga as one of Europe’s top 20 beaches.

Normally I don't like an empty sky during sunset. Usually this just looks boring on a landscape photo, the drama is missing and so on. But in this case I have to admit the clear colorful sky gives the perfect harmony. Those jutting rocks are such strong graphic elements in the picture that I don't need drama in the sky which might distract from them. That's at least my current opinion about this shot but I'd be interested what you think?

PS: I went to Adraga a second time with clouds in the sky and a very transformed beach, tides and rain did a great transformation in 2 days.. so I'll soon show some pictures as contrast!

About the shot: hoya HD Pol + 0.9 Lee hard grad Just some contrast processing and sharpening. I did increase the saturation too but the changes are not very drastic!

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Guess where I shot this ;-) I think by know you know this beach, praia da Adraga. Maybe I'm posting to much pictures I shot there but I had two very different evenings there and this beach is just full of compositions. In contrast to my last upload this was shot during a very calm evening. I went for the pano crop since the sky was just empty anyway and I think the wide view suites this beach very well.

Details: Hoya Hd polarizer + Lee 0.6 hard gnd

enjoy :-)