On one of our spring outings, we went to see where the Guadiana River earns its name. The Peñarroya reservoir dam, where the drops and the natural travertine (or limestone tufa) barriers end — and past that big wall, the river officially starts. Right next door is Peñarroya Castle, which was the real reason for the trip. This year water levels have been crazy high, since winter and early spring dumped a ton of rain.
Wandering around and heading down to the reservoir shore, these old water-level markers from the 1950s caught my eye. Got a few shots of them, playing with focus and that soft, diffused light from a cloudy morning that still had good clarity. No fog on the reservoir, so it felt really rewarding to knock out these two photos.
What tells the story here are these things — they’ve seen 7 decades of floods and droughts and they’re still in pretty solid shape. I was impressed by how well they’d held up and how photogenic they were.
Still, even though they look cool, on the first one I used f/8 for decent depth of field on the subjects — but the background stayed too recognizable. It would’ve been nicer to open up the lens more for a soft background blur. Extra problem: I couldn’t back up from the foreground because the concrete base ends right behind that first marker, and behind that? Just water 😅, so I had to put the lens at its widest focal length, 18 mm.
Plus I focused on the second and third markers, so I basically pushed focus almost to infinity….
The second photo — my favorite — already has that tiny bit of background blur that puts the marker front and center. Shooting with the camera almost kissing the waterline and a little more room to tighten the frame gave me that foreground of water, like a soft, calm carpet under the subject so you can dig the texture. Could’ve opened the lens a touch more for even better separation, but hey — we’re beginners, and it’s good to look at your shots and see where you can improve.
Photobones: you never learn, do you — remember to actually use that aperture when it counts…