A common take between photographers is that frequent visits to those places that are almost in our backyard is a good way for training the eye and our photographic skills in general… If I had to name such a place it would be the area around Cabo da Roca (the westernmost place in Europe), situated in the Sintra/Cascais Natural Park…

(I should warn you: this is not my typical posting stile, but the current situation of Portuguese natural parks made me feel that something had to be written)

This image was created in "Malhada do Ouriçal" a rocky beach some hundred meters south of "Cabo da Roca"… This is one of those places I keep on going to looking for the perfect image, and whenever I come back and look at the results it always looks like there's something missing… This day, while waiting for the sunset I tried shooting some infrared images in Rollei IR trough an Heliopan RG715…

From past experiences I knew that Rollei IR does not create images with a deep infrared effect, but the film is much sharper than other infrared films and produces a very nice effect with moving water… The exposure index for this film and filter combination is around 6, this means that long exposures are not hard to get event in the middle of the day, still I waited for the sun to be covered by a cloud in order to get an exposure time of 8 seconds…

I like this image, but honestly I don't feel this is still my perfect image from this place. I keep on going there over and over again and almost risk to call it "my photographic sanctuary", but now whenever I do I can't help feeling that I'm doing something wrong, or should I say illegal...

Over the time the Portuguese authority for the management and conservation of natural areas (ICNB - Instituto da Conservacao da Natureza e Biodiversidade) has taken an arrogant attitude towards nature photographers, by limiting their activities while refusing to establish an open dialog policy that would probably benefit everybody.

The situation reached an insane level when ICNB published a price table that targets some activities that take place in natural areas. The table is not only unclear about what a "photo shooting session" is but also imposes prices that are impossible even for professional photographers to withstand… This means that a blind and straight forward application of such a table would make if impossible for someone to enjoy the beauty of Portuguese Natural parks through photography.

Responding to this situation a group of Portuguese photographers sent a letter to ICNB by March 16'th 2009, you can download the English Version here.

The letter still did not have any answer…

Don't get me wrong I don't mind paying a fair fee for visiting natural areas, specially if I feel that my money will be used in the conservation of the area… I just fell that for this case, the fee is not fair and even if I pay what I am asked for I'm not sure it will be used the right way…