My Blog bio picture
  • Welcome to my Blog!

    A very warm welcome to my new blog.  I am a retired, professional, photographer living in the Algarve, Portugal with my wife Chris.  I was born in the UK and prior to moving to Portugal, my wife and I ran a very successful portrait and wedding studio in Sunninghill, Berkshire.  

    Portugal is a wonderful country to photograph. With it's warm climate and sunny days, I am now finding time to capture it's beautiful landscape as well as it's people.

    2010 looks like becoming another very active year.  I have a number of projects I hope to undertake as well as running my photographic workshops.  You can find all the details on my website www.algarveincolour.com.

    This year has seen the formation of the International Group of Photographers.  The group comprises members, from a number of countries, who all have an interest in photography. We meet every Thursday at the Amigos do Museu in S. Bras De Alportal.  If anyone is interested in joining us, we would welcome your visit.  We recently held our very first exhibition of photographs and this has been very well received.

    For those of you who are interested, I shoot with a Canon EOS 1ds mk2 and a recently acquired Canon 5d mk2 .  I have a comprehensive selection of Canon lenses, flash guns and other accessories.  I edit my images on my 24" iMac which I love.  Currently, I am using Photoshop CS3 with quite a nice selection of plugins to assist me with enhancing my images.

    It is my intention to add to this blog on a regular basis as time permits and, as it is my very first blog and I am new to all this, I hope to improve on it's appearance in time.

    Please do comment on anything you wish and a very big thank you for taking time to stop by.

A Trip to Serpa

On Thursday I took a trip, with a photographer friend, to the pretty town of Serpa which is in the heart of Alentajo.  For those of you who have looked at my blog before, Serpa is about 50 km north of the copper mine of Minas da Sao Domingos.  I left Tavira at 8am and by the time we had reached Serpa the temperature was close on 40 C.

At this time of year it is better to try and photograph in the early hours of morning or later in the afternoon around 6 pm – the “golden hour”.  As you can see, the lighting is very harsh giving relatively high contrast images.

The last image of the “Chapel on a hot summer day” was taken at about 3 pm and just across the border and into Spain.  I saw this chapel, perched on a hill with no other sign of civilisation for miles.  It seems the chapel was built in 1995 but who uses it is a mystery.

Print Sales

Following on from my notes the other day, I am now pleased to be able to offer the following prints for sale.  These prints are currently on exhibition here in the Algarve and they have all received wonderful comments for which I thank you all.  It is my intention to produce, from my superb Canon Pixma Pro 9500 Mk2 printer, fine art copies of a selection of my photographic work.

The definition of “Fine Art” is rather contentious and many say it means nothing!  I tend to disagree.  My intention is to provide the very highest quality print possible from photographs that have been color matched throughout my processing.  In a nutshell, what you see here should be matched up to the finished print.  However, do remember that your computer image may not be color matched as accurately as mine.

I have looked at a number of “gallery” standard printing material and I have decided that Hahnemuhle Fine Art paper meets my high standards.  Coupled with Canon’s inks this will produce exhibition quality prints with a life surpassing 100 years.

It has been said, many times, that “a good photograph is a good photograph – but one mounted expertly can turn it into a work of art”.  All my prints will be supplied, mounted on the finest mounting board with beveled cut out for the image.  These are precision made, in the UK, by one of the world’s leading mount and framing companies.

All mounted prints come with a signed certificate confirming that they are part of a limited edition of ten and confirm the edition number.

Price – A3 prints mounted – €120 (plus post and packing)

Contact:- tony_woods@mac.com

Sweets, meat and other nice things!!

Many towns and villages in the Algarve have “fairs” where local and regional produce and handicrafts are shown.

Vampire Attack

The beautiful Cartia enjoys a few quiet moments alone by the water’s edge.  Suddenly, she feels someone is watching her.  A short while later, she comes under the spell of Jennifer who is lusting for blood.

My New Blog Design

You are now viewing the new design and layout of my blog.  For those of you who have visited before, you will not notice a big difference.  The new design is ProPhoto3 from Netrivet.com. It has a number of great new features and, I hope, it will make uploading my photographs much easier.  In particular, it will make slideshows simpler to upload and this new version also has a great “light box” feature – traditional film photographers will know exactly what this means.

Over the next few weeks I will be uploading more photographs I have taken over the last year or so.  I will also be showing photographs that have recently been exhibited at the Amigos Museum in San Bras da Alportal here in the Algarve, Portugal. All the pictures are for sale as limited editions from a maximum of ten copies of any one print. The prints will be produced, individually to order, on my Canon Pixma Pro 9500 mk2 on Hahnemuhle Fine Art material.  After this, each print will be presented on a high quality, precision cut, mount ready for framing.

If anyone wishes to purchase any of my pictures please do contact me at:-

tony_woods@mac.com   (Please note the underscore in my email address)