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travel spain

Photography Travel

Las Fallas: The Sights and Sounds at Night

The Las Fallas festival in Valencia, Spain is filled with activity all day and is especially colorful, loud and bright at night. Every neighborhood comes alive with street parties, music, processions, loud firecrackers and crowds milling around the fallas monuments while eating buñelos or churros dunked in hot chocolate. The atmosphere at night was very festive!  Here’s some night shots I took during the 2016 Las Fallas festival in March.

The fallas monuments are lit up and take on a new mood after dark.

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The beautiful “Illuminations” shine brilliantly and light shows are choreographed to music. These huge lighting structures take up an entire city block and are several stories tall. So beautiful!!

illuminations

illuminations 02

The massive fireworks display during Nit de Foc is well worth staying up until 1:00am to watch among the massive crowd near the Alameda.

nit de foc 01 nit de foc 02The grand finale, on March 19th, is the night of La Crema, when more than 700 fallas monuments scattered throughout Valencia are set ablaze surrounded by millions of spectators. There are a large number of firefighters carefully watching these massive structures burn and shoot flames high into the air, readily spraying water on them to make sure the fires stay under control and don’t damage nearby buildings. It was spectacular!

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Here’s a few videos of La Crema taken by people who had a much better vantage point to film than I did:

Falla Convento (the one on the corner of the street where we stayed):

The Main Falla in Plaza del Ayuntamiento:

Falla L’Antiga de Campanar:

 

Photography Travel

Valencia: City of Arts and Sciences

Any visitor to Valencia, Spain, who is interested in cool architecture must visit the Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias. The Cuidad covers 2 kilometers and contains complexes dedicated to arts, culture, science and leisure. The architects were  Santiago Calatrava and Félix Candela and the project was completed in the late 1990’s.

After visiting it a few years ago when I came to Valencia the first time, I knew I would do a return visit so I could photograph it again. Here are some color infrared images as well as some monochrome images I shot in an afternoon at the Cuidad.

cuidad de artes IR 035-Pano-Editcuidad de artes IR 101-Edit cuidad de artes IR 068-Edit cuidad artes b01 cuidad de artes IR 072-Edit cuidad de artes IR 040-Edit cuidad de artes IR 027-Edit cuidad de artes IR 015-Edit cuidad de artes IR 042 cuidad artes b02 cuidad de artes IR 055 cuidad de artes IR 050 cuidad de artes IR 064 cuidad artes b03 cuidad de artes IR 084 cuidad de artes IR 086