Dia da Espiga

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“Dia da Espiga” (roughly translated to Day of the Wheat) is a Portuguese tradition dating back centuries and is believed to have originated from an ancient Pagan ritual. In some parts of the country this day is declared a holiday and the tradition is to go for a morning walk in the countryside to pick a variety of wildflowers, various grains (wheat, oats etc) and olive branches to form a bouquet which you then hang behind your front door and should only be replaced the following year by a fresh bouquet. The various plants in the bouquet all have different…

Azulejos Lisbon Portugal

Azulejos

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A long-time obsession of mine, photographing the amazing tiles in Portugal, has had new life breathed into it by having a camera on my phone. Documenting these everyday things that pass you by becomes so much easier when you have a camera with you in every situation. Yay for technology! These images were taken with my iPhone and edited with vscocam… follow me on Instagram for other obsessions, such as clouds and freshly squeezed orange juice, and my dog…

kerry murray travel photography portugal

Instagramming

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So I’m probably one of the last people in the whole world to get into Instagram, but here I am, finally. I resisted getting an iPhone for ages because I didn’t want to become one of “those” people… you know, the ones who are permanently glued to their phones and get that funny twitch everytime the email or facebook “pings” with a notification… but in the end I had to do it, the world moves forward, with or without me and it definitely makes my work life a whole lot easier to manage. But my favourite part is having a…

Blurry Things

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I have pretty bad eyesight, in that I am extremely shortsighted… have been since I was 7 years old, I was that kid at school with the ugly thick glasses, you know, the one who should have been really shy and quiet, so as to avoid being picked on, except I was loud and pretty obnoxious, which didn’t work too well for me in the picked on department. I guess I should have thought that strategy through a bit more… Either way, I wear contact lenses now, and I’m still pretty obnoxious, but getting better with age… and this is what…

Summer Thunderstorm

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This isn’t the first time I’ve tried to photograph lightning, and also isn’t the first time I wasn’t particularly successful… still, the results are better than the time I tried to shoot a passing thunderstorm from the beach in Cape Town, only to have my car battery die while trying to leave the parking lot… and then my dad had to come and tow my car, but the tow rope snapped in the pouring rain, and then he lost his car keys… The photos from that time, they really didn’t turn out well. At all. This is one subject matter…

After the storm

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I always make a point of going to Foz do Lizandro after heavy weather because between the flooded river and the rough seas there’s always a treasure of abandoned things washed up on the beach. It never fails to amuse and enthrall me the things I find half buried in the rain-soaked sand… once I found a mango, perfect and un-bruised. I took it home and ate it. It was delicious. Another time I found a pumpkin… we had roast chicken with pumpkin that night, and soup for several days… I didn’t tell my husband where the pumpkin came from…

A (late) spring blog post…

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As is typical of me I never seem to keep up with current trends and am either way ahead of my time or rocking the retro vibe (insert sarcasm here). So this is therefore my too-cool-for-school justification for my late homage to spring… heck, were practically in summer already, but late is fashionable, or so they say, so here it is! Spring has arrived in Ericeira.

In which I obsess about windows and doors:

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We have previously discussed my bicycle fetish and so it was only a matter of time before I had to confess to another photographic obsession. Windows. And doors. So technically 2 obsessions but who’s counting. I have recently been trying to ignore the windows as I walk down the street, because really… enough already. But last weekend we were in the Alentejo and I saw a window that I couldn’t resist, and so the floodgates have been opened… Casa Branca, Portugal    Lisbon, Portugal    Serra de Sintra, Portugal   Gradil, Portugal  Alcaçovas, Portugal   Ericeira, Portugal   Ribamar, Portugal  Óbidos, Portugal  Carvoeira, Portugal  Tabuaço,…

The Arrival of Autumn

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Let me just say up front that I do not like winter. At all. And before you all get upset and say how much you like to watch the rain and eat the chestnuts and drink the hot chocolate, well yes, I like those things too, but they could quite easily go into the “autumn” department and then we could skip straight to spring. As I write this I am listening to the south wind howl under the door and watching the clouds race across the sky. This is never good. This is the wind that brings the rain and…

The Creation of a Surfboard

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I shot this series of images for a story in a local magazine (A Concelho Mafra) a month or so ago. How to make a surfboard: The blanks are imported from South Africa (of course!) and machine-cut to the basic size. Above, to the right is the blank before the cut, to the left is after. The board is then sanded and the shape refined. This is followed by the fibreglass and resin. The Fin Control System is cemented in place at precisely the correct angle. And then the board is given a final sanding to ensure a smooth and…