The #1's had decided they wanted to visit Valencia while they were here. We've been to Valencia a number of times so they decided to do that as an overnight visit on their own. At the last minute, we decided, 'why don't we do an overnight as well to a city we'd not visited. We focused on Murcia which is an hour a way. We liked the idea of an overnight even though it wasn't that far away. When we do day trips, we are always doing our photo shooting in the middle of the day which is hardly the optimum light for picture taking. This way we arranged to arrive in the early afternoon and organized our photo shoot for the later afternoon, early evening, and after sunset.
Murcia, like so many cities in Spain has a rich and varied history which you can read here.
Although the old town is fairly compact and there are not that many distinctive buildings, the combination of the overall cityscape, and the changing light over the afternoon and evening led to massive amounts of picture taking. As the whole purpose of the visit was photography, I have broken down the results into a number of posts. In this first section, we'll look at some of the artwork and some of the candid photos I was able to get.
Eyes
Seeing as much religious art as I do in the course of the massive number of churches we visit, I find there is sort of 'the norm'...things all looking pretty much the same...And then there are the things that hit you aside the head and say..."Oh! That's Different!'. The artwork in the Cathedral in Murcia definitely was in the later category. Especially, the eyes.
Then there was this statue
Either deep in meditation looking at the third eye or dealing with body issues if you want to be snarky
This Pieta was so interesting as one almost never sees Mary depicted as being older
Inside the Cathedral was one of the more unusual stained glass windows I've seen
Green is not a common color I've run across (and I've seen my fair share of stained glass in Europe). I took a lot of playing around with my camera settings to capture it. (No significant post editing here)
The Cathedral, as can be expected, has a long history, but was supposed to have had its real expansion done in the 19th century and is described as 'Baroque'. I don't know. Doesn't seem very Baroque to me. Seems more Gothic.
Some examples of more modern art around the center city
Cardinal Beluga at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th Century was a man of note in Murcia. The name itself seems a bit odd for Spanish. And this statue of him seems more like a Japanese samurai than a Spanish churchman
These are statues on the exterior of the Cathedral that I liked capturing in the evening artificial light
Candid Shots
Phone Focused
Friend noticing me taking a picture of her friend taking a picture
Grumpy Photographer (despite what her thought bubble says)
Photographer Escapes
Contemplates the state of photographers while eating ice cream
On the river bank
