Luís F. Quinta - Southwest Alentejano, Portugal

The Natural Park of South West Alentejano and Costa Vicentina was created in 1995, although that area has been first classified in 1988. The coastline is 110 km long, and is full of beaches and cliffs. The large variety of habitats is home to a great diversity of fauna and flora.
I began my photographic work in the region of Almograve, a coast area with cliffs of small height and several beaches. The dark schist mixed with the shade in ochre from the gravel always results helps to create good images from marine landscapes.

In this area there is a lot of vegetation that in this time of the year is in full bloom. In fact with so many beautiful places it is too difficult to be in all of them at the same time and with good light. At the beginning I make a schedule with the places to be visited according to the direction of the light an the tides . Since I had been assigend to work in a coastal area, the tide height and times could have been a problem for taking some of the images I had in mind.

The contrasts between and sand stone, between the green algae and the puddles add another impression to the scenery. It was a harder work in what concerns the agenda, to manage time-tables, many kms, it was more psychological than body-wise.
And, this, taking into account that I had only scheduled to photograph landscapes and flowers.
If I would have had to think about photograhping animals I would have needed some weeks more.
I already knew the area I was going to photograph well enough but in this mission I knew even much more about the SW Coast of Portugal. Then I travelled more kms of the coast, I went downwards  some cliffs I have never ever visited, etc..

As the days passed I only could think “how my country has beautiful and amazing places and lots of Portuguese people do not know these areas of Portugal”.

Luis Quinta / Wild Wonders of Europe

Please note that blogs reflect our photographers' opinions and not necessarily those of the directors of Wild Wonders of Europe.