In this week’s Photographic Friday, I’ve taken a slightly different angle to push my skills. So the theme for most of this week’s travel shots is context. Photography teaches us to either create context or directly avoid context to showcase the subject matter. So this week I play around with this a bit. So come on in and see what you think.

1. Lagos

With a rendezvous with mum and Bob we took our first visit to Lagos. Whilst we’ve been to Portugal many times over the last five years, we’ve never found anywhere to park up. So staying at Burgau gave us an opportunity to grab an Uber and have a mooch around. The sights are wonderful, especially the cliffs and there is some really interesting context to discuss.

These two shots have very little context although have all been about framing. In many ways, I felt like the larger context wasn’t necessary to convey the detail of the church and fortress. What do you think?

These two shots of the Pointe de Piedade offer similar views although with a wider angle. I think my preference is the left one.

Getting down into the belly of the rock formations gave a really good perspective, even though the light wasn’t great and makes the pictures look distorted. The right hand one looses its magnitude I think.

I was disappointed in my timing on this photo. I really wanted the sailing boat to be right in between the v of the rocks. Although my patience wasn’t good enough.

2. Salema

I cycled from Burgau to Salema, a small fishing town some 4 miles away with some gruesome hills to cope with. Thank goodness for electric bikes. Anyway it was well worth the trip. One because the beach was gorgeous with some incredible looking rock formations and two because there are supposed to be dinosaur footprints. I’m left a little dubious about their authenticity given the linear shape of the prints, although I would love it to be true.

A couple of interesting context shots here. I really like the left picture as the subjects are all that really matter. Whereas the right picture gives much more of an impression of the beach and the boat’s relationship to it, which gives it a story.

I was disappointed in the first picture not to have caught the walkers right in the middle of the boardwalk. I think it would have made a better shot. And yet with the kid’s toys, it just leaves the story open to interpretation.

Here are two shots of the dinosaur footprints. The close up really does very little to the context in which they sit. Whilst the detail of the right image doesn’t really show us much, it does give us a much more interesting story, I think.

The rocks at Salema were so interesting and full of colour, texture and form. Whilst the context is minimal, I think the colours are so dramatic that it somehow seems to work.

3. Praia de Faro fishing community

This is one of my most favourite of places to come. With the miles of white sandy beach and dunes on the one side and the lagoon and fishermen’s shacks the other. The backdrop with Faro in the distance creates a stark contrast of lifestyles. It always gets me right between the eyes and I feel incredibly grounded here.

Whilst the busy photo on the left may seem too contextual, this is in fact the very truth of the place. This simple way of living, in comparison with the life across the lagoon is poignant.

I’m not a great fan of empty space in the middle third of a picture, although somehow I think it suits the story of the photo. The gulf between the two encapsulates exactly the two lifestyles. Especially noticeable with the light on Faro. And I always love a play around with black and white. I’ll be honest, that the fishing boat is far too close to the bottom edge, although its context with Faro’s skyline somehow is forgiving.

4. Tomato Beach

The number of photos I have of this wonderful stretch of coastline is what I can only call voluminous. Although there is something about these cliffs and the colour of the ocean against the red and white sandstone that is so appealing. I can never resist a picture of an umbrella, in part because of its colours and also what is going on behind it?

Another play with black and white and I really can’t make up my mind which I prefer. That said, the context I focused on here was in fact not mum and daughter, and more the waves in relation to them. Without the waves, the picture had a lot less character.

The two pictures above, give a perfect example of context. The man standing on cliff means so little to the story of his pose without the wide angle perspective. You can see so much better how close he is to the edge and why he is there.

And I wanted to share these two shots of the cormorants to show how shape and context work together. Whilst there is little background to give away the story, the shape of the first image is far nicer, I think than the second. I would normal delete the second shot, although I think it is a good example of context.

5. Other shots from the week

In other business, this week there are a couple of other shots I wanted to share that I really liked, so I hope you will indulge me. I especially loved this little dog at Salema beach, he was such a character and a poser. And see how uninteresting the sailing boat is without any context.

And the final two images give two very different stories. The macro gives us an intimate peek into the flower’s composition. Yet the wide angle offers a whole different perspective. There’s a bit too much sandy space for me in this one, although there’s something about it I really liked.

So once again we come to the end of the first week in February. And it is time for us to leave the Algarve and seek new experiences away from the crowded coast as we begin a slow return to northern shores. I hope you’ve enjoyed our saunter around the south coast of Portugal. Kx