Tourist… Just for One Day
Photographically speaking, I rarely cross the Tagus river, in Lisbon, to photograph Portugal’s capital from the other side, Almada. So, when recently I took a few hours to visit the south bank of the Tagus, I felt like a tourist. Here are some pictures of the day.
Back in the early seventies — of last century — I used to take the ferry to cross the Tagus river, and photograph from the other side. I was studying photography at Ar.Co (the first courses of that Art School), and sharing a camera with a friend at the time: a battered Nikkormat with a 50mm lens. Only in 1977 I got my own camera, a Canon AT-1, the first of a series of Canons.
Crossing the river to the other side was an adventure then. We went after the old industrial quarters in Almada, a line of buildings along the river bank facing Lisbon. It was a kind of a paradise for young people discovering the joys of photography, and a good playground for some of the exercises we had to prepare for the school. The place still looks much the same, except for more graffiti and derelict, abandoned buildings whose walls may well collapse some day, as the warning signs hanging here and there suggest.
The views are much the same, but I’ve changed and my gear has also changed. The 50mm was a challenge but also a limitation, so going back to the same place with a EF 100–400 f/4–5.6 L IS II USM allows to build different perspectives, and that’s what I did. And because Lisbon’s skyline is there just asking for a panoramic view, I kept creating panorama after panorama. This is a collection of some of the views.
The hazy day I got was not the best choice for this adventure, but I find the challenge interesting, because it is the kind of situation many tourists or even photographers traveling through the country have to deal with: for many of them there is no going back to places at the best hour of the day or even another day, so it is important to learn to do the best with the conditions available. It is something I always try to explain to people photographing with me, so it is also good for me to be challenged and come out with images that may not have “the best light” but still manage to work as intended. To show a place in the best light available. My experience of years as an editorial photographer, always having to come back with usable images, does help to achieve results under different conditions. You just adapt.
The journey of a few hours took me from the Tagus river bank to a beach where fishing with the traditional “arte xavega” is still alive, although the oxen used in early days, mostly in the Northern area of Portugal, have been eschewed for tractors, noisy, polluting the air and not photographically as interesting. Still, for someone that never saw the original, this is an opportunity to see a group of fishermen in a boat — not a row boat as in the old days, but a modern one with an engine — throw the nets to surround the shoals of fish, which are pulled to land by the tractors.
Photographically speaking, the visit was interesting, but the images I created during the tour to scout some locations where I’ll have to go with a group of visitors, are more than enough for me to be happy for a long time. In fact, I much prefer to explore the north side of the Tagus, and except for the enthusiasm of my days at the photography school, I never felt the need to cross the river and explore the south bank area. That’s one of the reasons why the day spent there recently made me feel like a Tourist… Just for One Day.
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