Darren Lewey is a photographer who has been running tours and workshops in Morocco and Spain since 2010. Previously he worked in UK education and for British television as a director/cameraman. Darren studied photography at school and then at college working mainly with a Pentax67. Last year he seriously began taking landscape photos again alongside some of the portraits he has been producing in Morocco, a country which is great for people and architecture and dunes.
Here’s what Darren had to say about his photos of Andalusia (Spain):
“Andalusia is a region a day’s drive from me that offers a unique kind of landscape. Forest rivers and coastline are in close proximity and each offer different challenges. The main areas of interest are in the Los Alcornocales Natural Park and the mining areas close to Seville. Photographing trees have long held an interest for me, the challenge is finding form amongst the chaos. For this project I traveled in spring to western Andalusia and set myself a task of producing a gallery in two weeks mainly photographing in the morning and late afternoon. Early on I began to think in pairs, in book form, so finding images that would work well together became part of the plan and each day I would do some basic post to see how this was panning out.
Many of the trees are cork and their bark offers strong textures. There’s also holm oak blending into some forest scenes which adds colour variation. For these shots I wanted a classical ‘Old World’ feel with a strong hint of abstraction. I tend to scope for tighter compositions and mostly use a telephoto to help achieve this. For the coastline shots I kept my back to the sea, there are images to be made of the levels with waves breaking over them but they need a lot of processing to get them to sing or a fab sunrise with clouds. Looking at the rocks gave me more opportunities to hone my compositions and show how the rocks interconnect within the frame. The red river or Rio Tinto near Seville is genuinely that red and even redder after summer. For all the photos I rarely crop preferring to get in right at the time. I always use a tripod and shoot medium format which is ideal for revealing detail.”
You can learn more about Darren’s photography tours here – Images in the Sun.
Darren’s Photos of Andalusia
All photos in this post are © Darren Lewey, used with permission.
