Gothic Quarter, Barcelona – Part 2

The gothic quarter of Barcelona (or Barri Gotic in Catalan) is the oldest part of Barcelona. It is a labyrinth of small alleys and winding streets offering excellent opportunities for photography. The gothic quarter dates back to the roman times and beyond and retains a charming character. I didn’t have anything else but my iPhone for this trip and these pictures are a result of post-processing in a custom workflow in NIK software.

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Rarity in the gothic quarter… A straight alleyway!

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Old and new! Video surveillance on a medieval street in the gothic quarter
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A path leading into the gothic quarter from the City Hall.

Please click on any of the above pictures to see a larger version on my flickr photostream.

 

Under the highway!!

The runnymead bridge on the notorious M25 motoway in London runs over the Thames near Staines. I wonder how many of the thousands of cars, vans and trucks that use the M25 daily have drivers who are aware of the river just beneath them.

The lines on this bridge were wonder to photograph, as were the effects of light reflecting from the Thames.

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Shadow and Light.
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Runnymead Bridge M25.

These pictures are from my iPhone, post-processed in Photomatix Pro and Adobe Lightroom 5.0

Inside Barcelona Cathedral

Catedral de la Santa Cruz y Santa Eulalia or the Barcelona Cathedral is the central church of Barcelona and seat of the Archbishop of Barcelona. This large Gothic church dates from between the 13th to 15th Century. The church is dedicated to Eulalia, a patron of the city and a martyr from Roman times.

These pictures are from the inside of the cathedral and taken using just an iPhone 4S and processed using NIK Software customised pipeline.

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Wildflower Diaries – iPhoneography

I went out with my miniature macro attachment to the iPhone last week and captured photographs of a few wildflowers. Apart from the overall mediocre image quality (thank you Apple!) and extremely shallow depth-of-field, the macro adapter does a reasonably good job.

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Goat’s Beard (Tragopogon pratensis) seed head
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Sun spurge (Euphorbia helioscopia) flower
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I-don’t-know-what-this-is-yet tiny pink flower πŸ™‚

All photographs from an iPhone 4S with a macro lens attachment. Post-processed in Adobe Lightroom 5.0.

 

Wildflower Diaries – Sainfoin

Sainfoins (Onobrychis viciifolia) belong to the pea family (Leguminosae/Fabaceae). My trusted Collins Complete Guide to British Wildflowers tells me that these are generally found in dry, calcareous grasslands, which is exactly where I found these growing!

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Sainfoin inflorescence
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A single Sainfoin flower
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Side-on view of a Sainfoin

All pictures with a iPhone 4S, the bottom two with an external macro lens attachment. All pictures corrected for contrast and white balance in Adobe Lightroom 5

 

Wildflower Diaries – Sun spurge

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Sun spurge (Euphorbiaceae) – highly poisonous

I bought myself a cheap andΒ  tiny macro attachment for the iPhone. While it was nice being able to photograph details of flowers using this, the quality is as to be expected – both by the camera on the phone and quality of the attachment. Nonetheless, I will be using this more when I don’t want to be lugging a camera with me on a walk