Last summer we hopped on a ferry boat in the fishing town of Peniche to spend the day on Berlenga island, off the west coast of Portugal. The Berlenga archipelago is a nature reserve so the “human footprint” is quite limited… apart from a few houses at the harbour, the lighthouse and the fort, there isn´t much here apart from seagulls and clear blue seas. We only spend the day but I loved the wildness of this place and would definitely like to come back and spend a few days here.
Tiny Atlas Quarterly is one of my very favourite online travel magazines and I´ve been a fan since they published the first issue in 2013, so it goes without saying that I am very stoked to have one of my images on the cover of their latest, the West Coast issue. Apart from their inspiring imagery and creative layout, what I love about TAQ is that it´s a labour of love, a personal project started by Californian photographer Emily Nathan, that has grown exponentially since it launched a few years back. What started out as a space for creative collaborations and…
Being a freelancer and working from home has it´s pro´s and con´s, like everything else in life. Pro´s include being able to work when the inspiration strikes, whether it´s during the “real world work hours” or at 3am and conversely, being able to take time off on a Tuesday afternoon because the weather is great and you´d really just like to be on the beach right now. It also means that you can spend the entire day in your pyjamas which may or may not be a good thing… I´m on the fence about that one. The crappy part, however,…
These images are the culmination of a year long project documenting the day to day activities of the Quinta de Sant`Ana, a wine estate just north of Lisbon. The idea of the project was to capture the year of a wine farm, following the seasons and recording all the elements that influence the time-line of small scale wine production. The quinta recently updated their website with some of these images, which you can see in the screen-grabs above. And the photos below are some of my favourites from the year long project… as well as a “behind the scenes” shot…
Earlier this year I spent a week in Albufeira photographing the city and surroundings for Booking.com. They have recently launched a new “Travel Guides” feature on their site, exclusively for people who have booked accommodation through them, and they asked me to photograph their new guide for Albufeira. I can´t post the link here because it´s only visible to booking.com members who have reserved accommodation in the area but I grabbed a few screen shots to give you an idea of how my images were used…
Tear sheets from an article I photographed a few months back for Accent Magazine, AeroMexico´s first and business class in-flight mag.
Tavira is another little gem in the Algarve region that, while it´s still a lot more touristy than the Ilha do Farol, it certainly isn´t over-run with the drunk, obnoxious type of tourist… or at least, it wasn´t when we were there (thankfully!) The whitewashed walls and splashes of colour are reminiscent of the Greek isles, although the ubiquitous patterned tiles make it unmistakably Portuguese. As with many of our explorations around Portugal, we were travelling more for work than holidays so this little town left us lots to discover next time, when we aren´t on a tight schedule…
The Ilha do Farol is probably one of my favourite places in the Algarve, at least from what I´ve seen so far. This southern stretch of Portugal has unfortunately (but quite deservedly) made a bit of a reputation for itself as being cheap, trashy and full of drunk Brits on holidays… you don´t need to spend more than 5 minutes in Albufeira to know what I´m talking about. (Quick tip… don´t ever, ever go to Albufeira.) But the Ilha do Farol is none of these things… this long thin island off the coast of Olhão is only accessible by boat…
Another town we visited during our Spanish mini-roadtrip was Luarca… a very picturesque fishing village on the north coast of Spain, in the Asturias region. We had such great luck with the weather this time around, if you´ve been following the blog for a while you may remember that we went camping in the Asturias and Basque Country in the summer of 2013 and it rained almost every day… so we were very happy to finally see this landscape in the sun! The fact that we weren´t staying in a tent was also a relief.
The Mercado do Bolhão in Porto is one of the most iconic markets in the city and dates back to the early 1800´s. I´m sure that in it´s hey-day it must have been one of the biggest and busiest markets in Porto but unfortunately it has fallen into disrepair and is desperately in need of renovations and some serious structural improvements. There are sections of the market that are, literally, being held up by scaffolding and there are a lot of empty stalls and shops. Nevertheless, this market is still worth the visit and hopefully something will be done to…
Kerry Murray 