Prague Old Town Square Panorama
Photo of the Day
The view from atop Prague’s Old Town Hall is one of the best spots to see the city’s spires piercing the sky with the Tyn Church dominating the skyline at the centre.
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Lyme Park Panorama
Photo of the Day
Tranquil Lyme Park seems to be a favourite of just about every British girl who grew up watching the Pride and Prejudice miniseries on the BBC. The thought of Mr. Darcy emerging from this pond after a swim still causes dramatic swoons years after it was filmed here.
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Fez Panorama at Dawn
Photo of the Day
The evening before I took this photo, I was in this same spot enjoying the calm perspective on the madness of Fez below. It’s a city that seems to be composed almost entirely of alleys and every corner, while magical, is usually inhabited by someone trying to make some tourist dollars. I was happy to have briefly escaped the onslaught of touts, guides, hawkers and salesmen and have a moment of peace.
There I was, observing a dun sunset and preparing myself to rise to this same spot for what would probably be a more interesting sunrise than that grey evening when a man approached me and started chatting to me about what a lovely view it was. I agreed and relished the chance to converse with someone who wasn’t aiming to sell me anything. No sooner did I have this thought when he pulled a sack seemingly from thin air and started showing me his wares.
I couldn’t believe it. I was one of the only people up here! How could this be a profitable location to set up shop? I politely declined his offers and got back to my camera, constantly hoping for more interesting light to break through and bathe the city. Fortunately he wasn’t too pushy and eventually started back down the hill towards the city.
As darkness fell, I was cautioned away from the area by local police who informed me this wasn’t the safest place to be hanging around at night. Thanking them for their concern, I made my own way down the hill only to return early the next morning to catch the sunrise you see below. I do have some shots from the evening which I might post later, but for now, I was partial to this sunrise.
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Dubrovnik City Walls Panorama
Photo of the Day
Back to Croatia we go with this image of Dubrovnik’s impressive city walls at dusk. I came across this vantage point in the midst of getting a bit lost one day on the way up the hill and made a mental note to come back for this shot.
I think of all the medieval cities I’ve visited, I might have to rank Dubrovnik’s walls as the most impressive. They’re remarkably intact and being able to still completely circumambulate the city on top of the parapets while constantly being treated to brilliant views and vistas makes them unforgettable.
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Human Planet Slideshow
This audio slideshow of images taken by photographer Timothy Allen is absolutely inspiring or altogether too generative of professional jealousy. It depends on your general glass-half-full/glass-half-empty outlook. I’ll try to go with the former, but I have to admit there is a part of me that wants to figure out how to commit some form of identity theft here…
But then you go over to Timothy’s site and read his inspiring words and you just can’t help but like him:
The moral of this story… Without sounding too corny… follow your heart. And for those of you that think that a statement like that is too wishy-washy, then I’ll rephrase it to… persue the vocation in life that you feel most enthusiastic about. You know… the one that you’d do regardless of how much it pays you. In my experience, if you live this way then no matter what transpires, you will be walking in the right direction in life.
The likelihood is that nothing will turn out the way you expect, so I would recommend not bothering with any expectations of the future. Just concern yourself with enjoying what you are doing in the moment. That’s the place where all the magic happens.
… and if you have discovered that photography is your passion then think yourself very lucky. Many people go through life never knowing such a feeling. Don’t waste it.
Yeah, the glass is half full.
Conwy Panorama
Photo of the Day
Picturesque Conwy castle steadfastly watches over the boats bobbing in the water below. This beautiful town in Wales is dominated by the medieval fortress at its heart which has the effect of making the town look rather good from just about any angle.
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Chefchaouen, Morocco Panorama
Photo of the Day
The blue-tinted old-town of Chefchaouen actually looks a bit green in this panorama shot at dusk in Morocco. The new town glows orange while the medina is set apart by the green-tinted fluorescent lights obscuring the sky-blue walls of every building.
This panorama captures some of the peace ready to be found in one of Morocco’s less hectic cities.
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Edinburgh Panorama at Dusk
Photo of the Day
With this panorama, I wanted to try it from a different viewpoint than the shots frequently seen from Calton Hill or Arthur’s Seat. While those are, of course, great views that I visited as well, this one gives a view of the city from within the city.
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Cape Town Night Panorama
Photo of the Day
At the very end of a job I was working in Cape Town, I was able to briefly escape up the beautiful Table Mountain for an evening and this panorama is the result.
On the job, we only had a rather massive studio tripod, so that’s what I dragged up there with me, but that turned out for the best. It was a windy evening and the stability proved handy. It was also useful to have the full ten feet legs at my disposal. I wanted to get slightly over one of the railings near the edge and needed to send a fully telescoped leg down to a ledge below to do it. Lengthy tripod legs were a welcome addition to my kit that evening.
Cape Town was such a photogenic city and I pine for a time when I can go back to spend more time shooting it.
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Barcelona Cityscape Panorama
Photo of the Day
Fortune and a bright, purple dawn smiled on my as I descended Montjuic Hill in Barcelona. After searching around for a good vantage point, I eventually settled on an area close to the site used for the swimming events in the 1992 Summer Olympics. I would have loved to have been inside that facility for its more unobstructed views, but I made the best of it when I realized it wasn’t going to be open any time near when I needed it to be.
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Ait Benhaddou Panorama
Photo of the Day
An almost 17-foot version of this panorama of Ait Benhaddou will soon be adorning the walls of one of my clients. It will be an absolutely giant print and should make for quite the decorative addition to his walls.
The oasis kasbah of Ait Benhaddou, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the desert hills beyond made for a striking contrast that was hard to capture in any way other than a panorama. The small river divides the new part of the town that features the hotels and restaurants from the old section that stands frozen in time.
The picturesque kasbah has been a filming location for a number of movies for obvious reasons. It’s a location with one foot in the past and that’s now by design – as part of UNESCO giving it world heritage status, the ksar is meant to be free of modern development, so the ten families that live there do so without electricity making the location go almost perfectly dark at night except for a few candlelit windows.
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Beeston Castle Panorama
Photo of the Day
The hill occupied by Beeston Castle rises up strangely from the middle of the flat Cheshire plain. For as far as you can see, this and the other small hill occupied by Peckforton Castle nearby are the only elevated points. The rest is as flat as England ever seems to get.
A panoramic shot seemed to be the only sensible way to try to capture the vista from on top of the hill. Blessed with an almost perfectly clear day, who knows how many English counties I could see over the tops of those ruins.
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Prague Evening Panorama
Photo of the Day
Prague’s innumerable spires pierce the sky in this evening panorama shot not too far from Prague Castle (St. Vitus Cathedral, inside the walls of the castle, is visible on the left side of this image). I love how the warm lights blasting the city’s more famous buildings makes them stand out dramatically against the dusky blue of the rest of the houses.
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Penmon Point Lighthouse Panorama
Photo of the Day
Penmon Point, at the eastern end of the Isle of Anglesey isn’t exactly the hottest of places on a January morning before sunrise, but I couldn’t help but be warmed by the sight of this lighthouse just off the shore. A beautiful sight.
Panoramic shots that include the sea can sometimes be difficult to stitch together – by the time you have moved your camera for your next shot, the waves have shifted and twisted the water’s appearance to make seamless joins a bit tricky. Extending the exposure time can help and it did for this photo. Visibly turbulent seas can be a handful when joining shots, so sometimes it’s better to have things looking a bit more smooth. Even more importantly for this shot though, the long exposure’s smoothing adds to the atmosphere of the image.
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Djamaa El Fna Panorama
Photo of the Day
Marrakach Morocco’s Djamaa El Fna is, simply put, wild. At any point in the bustling square at the heart of the city, you might find snake charmers, open-air dentists, food hawkers selling all manner of culinary oddities, carnival games, musicians and dancers, monkey handlers, brightly-costumed water vendors, wizened story tellers, boxers smacking each other, and who knows what else.
While it’s an interesting site during the day, it really comes alive in the early evening when the food stalls are set up, the hungry crowds roll in and smoke starts rising off grills and barbecues. It can be a bit of a sensory overload with those smokes wafting intense cooking smells, the musicians competing for audiences’ attention, a glut of interesting sights, and the masses of people pushing up against each other, but the best strategy, as with the nearby souks, is just to get lost in it all.
And after you’ve done that, sometimes it’s good to retire someplace a little out of the way to see the bigger picture. Rooftop bars surround the square and provide a bird’s eye view of the semi-controlled chaos below. Buy yourself a beverage and take it all in. That’s what I did and shot this panorama while I sipped a cool drink.
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Godrevy Point Panorama
Photo of the Day
I was recently inspired by a client of mine to gather together a number of my panoramic images and now I have a bunch in handy web-size format, I thought I would share some of them. For the next little while, we’ll have a bit of a panorama-rama.
The first installment comes from Godrevy Pont in Cornwall where I caught a few young lads’ fun as the sun started its descent. The cold waters didn’t deter them from using the rocks as diving boards into the ocean and its their frolicking that makes this photo for me.
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Zadar from Above
Photos of the Day
After Zadar’s legendary sunset had finished on my all-too-short day there, I hustled up the steps of the bell tower of St. Anastasia Cathedral to catch the blue dusk descending on the the twinkling lights of the city. I managed to precariously perch a tripod on top of the tall parapet at the top to keep the camera steady and got decent results from my tiptoes.
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Zadar’s Greeting to the Sun
Photo of the Day
The shot from a while ago of the folks relaxing next to the sea organ in Zadar is complimented by this one of the Greeting to the Sun, an art project/giant outdoor disco floor created by architect Nikola Basic. This clever circle of solar panels captures the brilliant light of Zadar’s endlessly sunny days and stores the energy until night when it can release it in the form of an impressive, underfoot, ever-changing rainbow of lights. The panels also accumulate enough energy during the day to help power the lights along the boardwalk (no disco lights there though).
I had to wait a while for the crowds of curious onlookers to step off the circle before I could get this shot, but I could have stayed there for ages just being hypnotised…
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Zagreb Cathedral at Dusk Panorama
Photo of the Day
Today’s photo of the day comes from Croatia’s cosmopolitan capital, Zagreb. The spires of Zagreb Cathedral poke themselves into the dusky, blue evening sky.
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Relaxing by Zadar’s Sea Organ
Photo of the Day
This isn’t just your average seaside relaxation spot. Here in Zadar, Croatia, these folks are chilling out and not just enjoying the sounds of the waves lapping against the chore, they are also appreciating the unique music of the sea organ.
You see those small holes in the boardwalk? They lead down to the water where waves push air up to create random, entrancing harmonies.
The sea organ is the creation of architect Nikola Basic along with the nearby Greeting to the Sun installation (a series of solar panels that release their energy in a hypnotic light show in the evening). Together, they make for a magical little stretch of coastline.
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Zadar’s Cathedral of St. Anastasia
Photo of the Day
Just around the corner from the St. Donatus Church, Zadar Cathedral, a.k.a. the St. Anastasia Cathedral, is another of the old town’s incredibly old and charming buildings. That massive blue sky in this image is making me pine for some of Croatia’s near-perfect weather…
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Zadar’s Church of St. Donatus
Photo of the Day
Moving away from the Croatia’s Plitvice Lakes, Zadar is one of the must-stop cities on the way down Croatia’s coast and one of the building’s to admire there is the over-1000-year-old, pre Romanesque Church of St. Donatus. Here it is in the evening, flanked by the tower of the nearby Cathedral of St. Anastasia.
Peace Above the Plitvice Lakes
Photo of the Day
Okay, I know, I know. There’s some waterfalls visible in this shot of a happy couple enjoying the sun and sights of the Plitvice Lakes. I forgot those little cascades were visible down there. I didn’t lie, I just kind of messed up the truth. I hope you can forgive me.
Let’s just forget it ever happened and imagine we are sitting on that perch up there and feeling as content and blissful as that couple must have been feeling at that moment.
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Jeff Johnson’s Travel Tips Video
Give yourself a ten minute break and check out this video about commercial travel and lifestyle photographer Jeff Johnson‘s work. Jeff’s outdoor photography has allowed him land an impressive client list (including a staff photographer position with Patagonia) and to make impressive images from plenty of far-flung destinations.
Check it out:
Darby Sawchuk is a Canadian-born photographer who currently resides in Manchester, England. He has travelled to over 40 countries and is always adding more to the list. He creates stock for multiple agencies and is available for assignments.
+44 0790 992 8932
