The Cumbres del Sol mirador at Benitachell is an interesting point of view as you can see the Montgó and the San Antonio Cape all together. If you go higher, to the top of the hill, you’ll have a 360 vision. Have in mind is very windy, so grab cover even in summer.
I had been many times to Cumbres del Sol but, as usual, there were not enough richness in the sky for a good photo. Or it was full of straight and unnatural jet trails.
This day there were many clouds evolving over the Montgó peak.
I shot a series and realised looking at the camera visor that there were a scene full of details. I kept shooting for an hour and some of the photos called my attention in the visor.
Light and skies in winter are very interesting in this area. Haze is constant in summer due water evaporation by the heat. The air was clear so with clouds, you have a wide contrast; from dark blue in the sky to a grey range that ends into pure white in the clouds.
You have to play with the exposition to get a RAW, or digital negative, with the full dynamic range of the scene. So you can process the original image, the digital development, and reach your goal.
In my case that was to get a large format photography -or high resolution- as if it were a Renaissance painting.
You have a lot of great photographers that produce impressing images with direct messages, innovative, breaking, etc.
They are a hundred times better than I. Others produce landscapes with a range of colours that look very good. But this kind of images with message or live colours, that are very good, is something that bore me after a while, so I need to see new ones.
In my case, I’ve tried to do a series that the product is like a painting to be watch over time.
The Giclée printing system and the cotton paper gives a special texture perfect for this purpose.
Do not look for message neither impact in my photos, they are like landscape paintings. More decorative than breaking art. They are photographies that you can watch in one year again and glance at the details of the scene.
This landscape specially is inspired by the Renaissance painting. I love the landscapes seen in the background of the Raphael or Leonardo Da Vinci paintings.
In this time, artists worked in studios with a team of assistants. They were like the publicity and fashion top photographers nowadays.
Paintings were commissioned by the Church mostly, as if it were a publicity campaign. In that world there were no photography, neither TV nor any reproduction of images easily.
A large painting inside a church or a palace, made as big impact as a modern big commercial campaign.
You can see at the Museo San Pio V in Valencia a good example of “commercial” Renaissance painting; the San Sebastian painting by Juan de Juanes, and his team (1540, oil on wood, 113,5 x 51,5 cm).
Just imagine a normal person of the times, not used to see images around, entering the church and seeing this magnificent painting.
The anatomy of the human figure is perfect, spectacular. As a modern elite sports star. The “commercial” message with the icons of the angel and the crown as the doors to Heaven are direct.
Then you can see the background landscape where the artist, and his team, has added a series of details that could be another painting in itself. This background landscape is so rich that you can watch it for a while. See how the clouds have a wide dynamic range. It is obvious that the autor went to a high point of view as the Cumbres del Sol mirador. These Renaissance paintings took months to paint and were designed to be appreciatted for long time.
So this is the influence that drove me to the RAW Jávea/Xàbia series.
P.D.: Besides, to know the higher places near you can help you to see astronomical phenomena. For example the comet Neowise taken here July 16th. 2020. But this is another story…
P.D.2: Comets are stones covered with ice leftovers of the solar system formation. They have elliptical orbits. Its size can be as a small city. When they get close to the Sun, the ice melts and leave a trail of dust and gases millions of miles long.
Comet NEOWISE is currently about 70 million miles (111 million km) from Earth — or about thee-quarters the distance from the Earth and sun — and on an extremely elliptical orbit that carries it far out from the sun.
The comet is moving at about 40 miles per second — that’s about 144,000 mph (231,000 km/h) — but poses no threat to Earth.