The Wind Star, eponymous ship of the cruise line, sits at anchor off the coast of Calvi, Corsica, looking like a relic of a different century—in contrast to the engineering choices inside her hull.
HDR Photography
The deep natural harbor of Mahón in Manorca has been in use for centuries and the small, charming structures along the waterfront have been preserved (with careful, direct action by the local population), leaving a (here’s my favorite adjective) Miyazaki-esque Mediterranean setting. The clifftop town above the harbor also makes for a perfect view from which to capture it all.
Monday’s post brought me back to the epic imagery of the Bay Area that I suspect I took a bit for granted back when we were starting Decaseconds in 2011. Convincing oneself that one is a photographer is easy when these are the views—but I’m glad I had the potency of these places to get me through those awkward early years of developing as a photographer.*
*Apologies for the wordplay.
Though boats are an everyday part of Dutch life, the large fraction of these boats that were occupied by people living and traveling in them (thus not leisure-craft nor houseboats) leads me to believe that I observed the river-and-canal-going equivalent of the caravans also visible at the edges of the image.
This bucolic Dutch morning puts me most in mind of Iain M. Banks’s science fiction utopias. That may sound “out of pocket,” but allow me to explain: His far-future settings often feature people who are choosing intentionally charming but low-tech lives doing what they enjoy in beautiful settings. These boaters traveling down the Vechte feel part of the same vein. Though they live in one of the most advanced countries on Earth, they can still choose relatively simple experiences and ways of living.