My handpicked photos of 2011

New year, new photos, new projects. Time also to put the past year in perspective, and with that in mind comes the obvious compilation of my photos of 2011 work, in my case this ain’t exactly a “best of” or a “personal favorites” post, is something in between, some of the photos that represent something in the past year: for being the best, the most popular or just have a cool story behind.

Myanmar

Photographically speaking 2011 was a great year with a clear best moment: having been almost a month at Myanmar in a very intense trip almost exclusively around photography, but also with other smaller trips and smaller things just around the corner.

My personal favorite Buddhist monk photo. I love those lines anf the boy’s stare

My monks photosare the ones that people talk about when browsing my Myanmar pics and were the ones that gave more pleasure to shoot. The red robes, the eyes, was a pleasure to shoot and still a pleasure to look at.

But although Myanmar was only about monks was certainly mostly about people. It’s a paradise for street photography: and exotic and colorful country, huge cultural diversity (you can see Myanmar as the country where China meets India) and one of the warmest and kindest peoples of the world.

NIKON D90 (50mm, f/1.8, 1/1000 sec, ISO1400)
A paradise for portraits, although sometimes there are too many people competing for the photo. This was one of those cases.

Bagan was the exception to a photo trip mostly dedicated to photographing people. An impressive scenery!

Ireland

My other trip of the year outside Portugal and Spain, when you go 22 days to Myanmar and 9 to Ireland there aren’t much vacation days left to travel.

Ireland was a kind if trip I love: road trip with nothing more than our car and the roads to drive, and there are few roads more beautiful to drive than an road along Ireland’s rugged west coast. I have a soft spot for dramatic coastlines.

Everything is colorful in Ireland, both the landscape and the buildings. This is a toillet of a pub at County Clare.

Dingle, the my favorite spot, also because it was the only day with a stormy, cloudy weather that suited the landscape

Rainy day with lousy weather at Couty Kerry doesn’t mean you can’t play around a bit.

At home

All of the action throughout the year happened at home, in my home town or in short trips at Portugal or Spain. And that’s perfectly OK, Lisbon is one of the most photogenic cities in the world and Portugal and Spain have a huge variety of landscapes and sceneries to choose, from lost stone villages in snowy mountains to dry Mediterranean plains.

One of the most rewarding moments was following my family harvesting wine grapes, shooting them while I wasn’t carrying big buckets full of grapes.