Latin Bridge in Sarajevo
Photo of the Day
The infamous Latin Bridge in Sarajevo was the scene of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the event that served as a catalyst for World War I.
That violent history isn’t evident on the bridge anymore. It’s only the buildings around it that still have scars from more recent conflicts, but even those are slowly being wiped away in preparation for a brighter future for Bosnia.
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Ta Prohm Panorama
Photo of the Day
Why oh why didn’t I take more panoramic shots when I was in Asia? I had not yet developed a fondness for stitching together images and, when looking at this image, I kick myself for that because I love how this turned out.
This is one of the few panoramic shots I took during my travels in the far east and it is now motivation for me to plan a trip in that direction again.
This is Ta Prohm, a temple near Angkor Wat in Cambodia. The trees that almost seem to melt down through the ruins give it an amazing Indiana Jones atmosphere that’s only topped by the more isolated Beng Mealea.
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Stonehenge Panorama
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A fiery sunset creates a silhouette of Stonehenge.
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St. Michael’s Mount Sunset Panorama
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The fairy tale island of St. Michael’s Mount is awash with colour on a gorgeous evening in Cornwall.
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Sarajevo Panorama
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I was pleasantly surprised by Sarajevo. I entered the city from the South and initially, I had trepidations about it. It seemed to sprawl forever and all I could see were the bullet-marked faces of uncharacteristic Soviet buildings. It looked a bit grim, really.
The Old Town changed my mind completely though. Mosques neighbour synagogues which neighbour churches and a cluster of pedestrian only roads form a medina that wouldn’t be entirely out of place in Morocco (if Sarajevo were more hectic). Combine that with the city’s sad but fascinating history and it became an enticing destination.
My brief stay in Sarajevo was ended with this view of the old town as night descended on Bosnia-Herzegovina’s capital.
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Riga Panorama
Photo of the Day
Taken from a popular vantage point in Riga, Latvia atop St. Peter’s Church, this shot was blessed by a beautiful day and good light that gave shape to the fantastic city below.
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Prague Old Town Square Panorama
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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
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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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Conwy Panorama
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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
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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
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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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Plitvice Panorama
Photo of the Day
Happy 2011 everyone!
We finished 2010 with plenty of shots from Croatia’s wondrous Plitvice National Park and I have another batch of lovely waterfalls to share, so let’s get on with it.
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Dubrovnik from Above
As promised, here’s a glimpse of what’s in store for visitors to Croatia. This panoramic view comes from near the station of the newly-rebuilt cable car that now whisks visitors up to the mountains above the city of Dubrovnik. Destroyed during the Yugoslavian civil war, the cable car has re-opened and now provides easy access to this majestic view of Dubrovnik’s old town.
At the station at the top, one hall features photos of the cable car’s original construction, shots of it after it had been destroyed and images of its recent re-construction. One worker there revealed his sadness at what had occurred during the war. He was 15 when it all happened, so these memories became a big part of his formative years. When asked if he considered Croatian’s friends with the Serbs that had carried out the attacks on Dubrovnik, he said, “We are neighbours. I don’t hate them, but I will never forget,” revealing the scars of a complex and awful period in the region’s history.
Dubrovnik’s scars are no longer exceptionally obvious on the ground. – you have to do a bit of searching to see the remnants of that recent war. But from this high up, you can forget about all that and just revel in the glorious view.
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Photo of the Day: Golitha Falls
Today’s image is another from Cornwall, specifically, a perfect spot called Golitha Falls.
As tranquil as could be, this perfect forest full of gnarled, moss-covered trees at the edge of Bodmin Moor is home to a babbling stretch of the river Fowey. It’s a short walk, but every view along the way is picture perfect.
This shot, though it may not look it, is actually a panoramic stitch of about 15 images. I actually expected it to come out more horizontal than vertical, but this crop worked best of all. The scene really did sweep around me, but the resulting panorama doesn’t necessarily capture that. That’s not to say I’m unhappy with the shot. Far from it!
To get it, I did have to perch somewhat precariously on the edge of a rock, but the risk proved worthwhile.
Overcast days are good for shots like these. With less light on the scene, it’s easier to get a longer shutter speed to blur the motion of the water and you also avoid any nasty hot spots on the ground.
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
