Harold Davis's Blog, page 109

Goodbye Malta!

I am home today after a long day in transit yesterday from Valletta, Malta early in the morning to Charles de Gaulle airport near Paris, France, followed by a fairly long layover then a nonstop from Paris to San Francisco, where Phyllis and Katie met me. Travel and Malta are beginning to seem like a dream! On my Air France flight home I binge watched an entire season of Game of Thrones, after learning that much of the location photography for the series was done on Malta.

This is an iPhone image I made from the terrace of my hotel on my last evening in Valletta, the capital of Malta. I shot two versions, one exposed to be bright and the other dark, and combined the versions manually on my iPhone using the TrueHDR app.

Valletta © Harold Davis

Related story: Impregnable. 

This evening on Xlendi Bay

Here are two iPhone images I made this evening with walking along the esplanade at the end of narrow and picturesque Xlendi Bay on the wonderful Maltese island of Gozo.

Xlendi Bay © Harold Davis

 

Street Lamp © Harold Davis

Moon over Xlendi Bay

The sound of the waves in narrow Xlendi Bay on Gozo, the Maltese island of Calypso, put me to sleep. Waking in the middle of the night, moonlight streaming through the open doors woke me. I didn’t even check the time. The whole world was in a dream state.

I went onto the balcony naked in the warm breeze, opened up my tripod, and made an exposure long enough ( 15 seconds) to show the movement of the clouds and waves in the glorious moonlight. Then I went back to sleep, and wondered, if it had all been a dream, when was I going to wake? The image remains as evidence that dreams sometimes converge upon waking reality.

Moon over Xlendi Bay © Harold Davis

Cliffs of Gozo

Gozo, the second largest island in the Maltese archipelago, is often said to be Ogygia, where the nymph Calypso detained Odysseus, using her wiles to make Odysseus her mate, and to keep him from returning to his wife Penelope and his mortal life.

Whether Gozo is indeed Ogygia I cannot say, although certainly the Maltese tourist bureau would like to have it so. In any case, this is a tremendously beautiful island, much quieter than the larger island of Malta, ringed by cliffs, with today a vast and dreamlike offshore wind pulling the waves into the island.

Cliffs of Gozo © Harold Davis

Tables and Chairs

I photographed these tables and chairs at a cafe with no customers yet from above in strong early morning light from the terraces of the Upper Barrakka Gardens in Valletta, Malta.

Table and Chairs, Valletta © Harold Davis

Dome, St Augustine Church

This is an interior image of the dome of the somewhat ornate St Augustine Church in Valletta, Malta. I exposed nine images handheld while sitting in a pew, using my fisheye lens with the camera pointed more-or-less straight up. I think the image looks almost like a mandala, or perhaps like a jewel, if one can abstract it from its source as a church roof!

Dome, St Augustine Church © Harold Davis

St Ursula Street, Valletta

This is one of the interior streets in the compact, picturesque, and fortified city of Valletta, Malta. I don’t think there is anyplace else in the world like Valletta—and I’ll be writing more about Valletta and Malta when I get the chance—but despite the world-class uniqueness, this view up a long and narrow street somehow reminds me of a more pedestrian version of San Francisco (when it is in a noirish frame of mind!).

St Ursula Street, Valletta © Harold Davis

Chapel

This is a fisheye image of a side chapel in the ornate but beautiful St Lawrence parish church in Birgu, one of the “Three Cities” near Valetta, Malta.

Chapel in St Lawrence Parish Church, Malta © Harold Davis

Thanks to Louis A. for showing me around Malta today, and I appreciate the kind parish priest in the St. Lawrence church who was absolutely okay with me and my tripod!

 

Center of Soller

This is a color and a black & white version of the center of the town of Soller, Mallorca, Spain, seen from high up on the roof of the hotel at sunset and photographed at a telephoto focal length!

Wallpaper

This iPhone capture shows the two somewhat clashing wallpapers that decorate the interior of The Red Fort, a fast food Indian restaurant in Soller, Mallorca, Spain. I intentionally composed the image to make it look flat to exaggerate the garish wallpaper contrast, but if you observe carefully, you can see that a passage divides the blue and red wallpapers (of downward stairs, but only the pale orange painted ceiling shows in the photo).

Wallpaper © Harold Davis