Portugal-Amsterdam 2022 - #19 - Three Days Of A Raw Deal

 Friday, Saturday and Sunday were major photographic days. We booked an intense workshop with a noted photographer, Mark Tomaras, a friend of daughter #1 and 1A. In fact he was their wedding photographer. Mark is a real pro. He's from Chicago originally where he met #1 but has lived all over the world. He is currently residing in Porto where is wife originated. 

Mark outlined for us an full program where we would look over all aspects of our equipment in one session plus review various aspects of using light and composition. Then we had a second day of a four hour walking around and shooting session. Followed by a third session where we would look at what we shot and get into the post-production process. 

For Wife, much of this was a review of things she had learned over the years. For me much was new. In particular, Mark wanted me to shoot in Raw. This is something Wife has told me for years as well. I am sure you are all familiar with this, but I was only vaguely. JPEG, the format that most people shoot, is an image where the camera essentially chooses many decisions about how light is captured. So when you go to post-production, there is only so much you can do. But when you shoot in Raw, the information is just as it is captured without the camera making any judgments. So you can do much more with it. Real photographers only shoot in Raw. BUT, there is a need for much more capability in you post-production software to deal with Raw.

Without going into too many gory details, we can call this three days a 'learning experience'. I did learn a lot. But it wasn't necessarily fun. This is no critique of Mark, who is an excellent teacher, and fun person to be with. It was more of my confronting limitations of my own abilities and my own desires as far as how far I want to go down the photographic rabbit hole. Much of the time during the shoot and post-production section, I felt completely lost.

When we were all done, I decided I needed to confront what I had shot. Then I ran into another frustration. The tools I have for getting images off my camera onto my computer evidently are not happy about working in Raw. I kept having the downloading process crash. And I couldn't see the images where I normally do to weed out the ones prior to editing. It was very annoying. I finally got them downloaded through a laborious one-at-a-time process. Looking at them quickly, I was surprised that I had many more good shots than I would have imagined given how overwhelmed I felt. 

On Sunday, we went out again by ourselves. I decided I would shoot in Raw again. I had better luck getting the images off but there were still crashing problems. Nor could I view them as a slide show to do a quick edit. And I have no idea once I do post-production how to copy them as JPEG so I can get them uploaded to the blog. So I am not sure if any of these will make it here. 

Today we went out for final sightseeing. I decided to go back to the old mode of JPEG image taking. I had no problems downloading them and I will get a post up in the next day or so on them. But I am still wondering how much I want to do to get up the Raw photography curve. Maybe when we do our trip in the fall and have a couple of months in one place, I will give it a good try.

Portugal-Amsterdam 2022 - #18 - 24 Hours In Porto

 I received a nasty message from Sandia Outfitters HQ letting me know to I need to put a more positive spin on the death march daily tours or we won't be getting any victims...I MEAN CLIENTS...to be hiring us. So let's look at a typical day of touring from Tortuous Tours in Porto.

 9:30pm on Wednesday Night. Gonna crash soon to be ready for the next day.

 

 4:00 AM on Thursday. Still Dark.

 6:00 AM Light starts to show

 By 9:00 AM there is a great light shining from the east

 We head into the historic center of town. We have a tour scheduled of the Boursa, the historic Chamber of Commerce building. Built in the late 1800's it is in the style of buildings we see in Paris and Vienna of the same period.

 

 So much of the artwork we've seen in Portugal, particularly those in the monarchical palaces and the churches has been (in my opinion) very mediocre and stylized. Nothing that was moving me. The paintings done in this building were something totally different. They showed genuine emotion and personality.

This set of portraits really caught my eye.

This and another wall were portraits of every Chamber President from the origination of the building to the present. Looking at them closely, I was amazed at how much individual personality showed through.

 I was also amazed at how similar the style of painting was. Asking our guide, I found out they were all done by just two painters and not that long ago. They went back to old pictures, photos, etc. to find various images of those who were no longer alive, read history about them and them created new composite portraits. How cool is that!

There were other cool architectural features to the building. This floor has a parquet that is a three dimensional trompe d'oeil.

 In the neo-classical style of the period you made as complete representations of older periods as possible. This room is the Moorish Room and has exact replicas of calligraphy from the Koran as famous mosques.

By the way, this is a commercial building and you can rent this room for a wedding for just $35,000. Keep that in mind if one of your daughter's is planning a big wedding.

We've been considering taking the historic trolley system.

Until I saw the masses of other tourists who have the same idea.

 

 Our next major stop was the Ingreja Sao Francisco (San Francisco church)

 

Sigh, yes another gigantic monument to Baroque/Rococo excess.

What's not to like about the life like representation of martyrs being beheaded?

But within all the excess there are the occasional gems.

A LOT going on here.

There is the usual overload of what I call 'spiritual brain dead looks'.

This is the predominant facial expression you see on the vast majority of people in both paintings and sculptures. I am sure it is supposed to capture the expression of oneness with God but they leave me feeling like they are brain dead.

However in this scene we see something different.

How that's pretty cool. And how about these? Tell me you don't recognize these expressions.

Tell me these aren't people checking out stuff on the cell phones...centuries before they even existed!
Then there were some great pictures in the museum of the church. Unfortunately the lighting was such, I could not get good pictures of most. But I liked the softness of expression this commander's face and the detail of the gloves.

We headed to the Nova Gaia side of the water where I did a Zoom meeting in an outdoor cafe (very digital nomad-ish)

And ended the day where we began.

Portugal-Amsterdam 2022 - #17 - Porto - We Revive Tortuous Tours!

 Some of you have been on this blog long enough to remember the halcyon adventure travel days of de-I Sandia Outfitters expansion into the world of international travel planning with our subsidiaries Pathetic Travel (I strongly recommend you go to this link!) and Tortuous Tours. These brought you such memorable journeys as Bataan Death March Tour and Trail of Tears Tour of Paris. While we don't take on outside clients like we used to, Wife and I have in our deteriorating aging sadly managed to become our own clients. This usually occurs from a lack of planning leading to incremental decision making resulting in unintended consequences.

Today was such a day. After the way more intense climbing simply to get to and from a restaurant and then to shop for groceries, we had made a vow that - Today we will take it easy! These kinds of vows by Wife and I are as effective as the annual New Year's Resolution...meaning not effective at all. 

With this exhortation of "Take It Easy" we head down the hill from the apartment to the bridge (under construction) that will take us to a funicular up to the main part of town.

 Uh Oh. It doesn't seem to be moving.

 It is closed for an 'indeterminate' amount of time. You are directed to...

 So we can get to...

 Sorry. Nope. No way. We will wander our way along the waterfront and think of something else.

Wife mentions she'd like to visit the Boursa, a commercial building you need a tour of. It doesn't look that far uphill into town.

We make a reservation for the next day. You will note on the lower left of the picture an item of the most extreme dread. Right. The tour bus belonging to the cruise ship contingent. Yes, we are in one of those major stops of the cruise ship nation. 😱

Right near the Boursa is one of the 'must see churches, the Ingreja Sao Francisco

 

 We have time on our hands and no plan...NOT a good combination for Wife and my decision making. There's lots of things around we can see in the distance.

 

 It is too bad I didn't translate the heading under this as it says this is "The Modern Representation of the Spirit of Porto Devouring Its Attackers" (read tourists)

 Now we are wandering, steadily making our way up and up

 The masses of tourists are overwhelming - this truly is your A-List part of town!

I have no idea of what this is...

Finally we come to something meaningful

The Portuguese Museum of Historic Monument Restoration

 

 Portugal has been a leader in the technology of restoration

This is an exhibit of the classic 'site shroud' which you've seen in our travels over the years.

This is a monument to Chief Engineer Joao Cristiano do Flores Silva who at the turn of the 20th century was the prime mover of modern monument restoration

Okay...

...None of that is true...

...I made it all up...

...just a crap load of monuments not visible because of construction and restoration.

BUT this is true!

This the Camera Municipal do Porto

Designed during the days of the dictator Salazar, these large scale municipal cameras were early mass surveillance systems! Even Dr. Who was interested in them!

...Okay that's all made up too...

That's just the name for City Hall.

By now it is late. We've climbed and walked way more than we wanted to. We are in the middle of the worst tourist area. We're hungry and don't want to climb even more to get away from the tourist oriented restaurants. We will even settle for...

But NO...The Travel Gods Mile Upon Us!

The first honest to goodness street food during this trip. And it was really good Doner Kebap!

We took an Uber to the apartment and collapsed.