During August it is quite difficult to find models who can work, as most of them take the chance to go on holiday. That’s why it’s the ideal time to go looking for locations, making a trip a little longer than usual. In this case we are heading to the north of Spain, to the area of Cantabria and Asturias, also visiting Castilla La Mancha and León.
For a week, we travelled through coastal and mountain areas, looking for beautiful locations with different natural environments, where we could do sessions during the next months. Some of the locations we found were beautiful and surprising. Others turned out to be incredible and spectacular. I am always amazed to discover that there are so many beautiful places so close to us. With all the locations we found, we have made three different videos, the first of which we present to you in this blog entry and corresponds to the area of mountains between Castilla-La Mancha, Cantabria and Asturias.
We also found some small animals, such as some vultures eating a dead calf or a fox in the middle of a road that just sat there looking at us, apparently not caring about our presence.
Waterfalls, rivers, lakes, mountains and atypical rock formations were appearing as we drove along the roads. We couldn’t help but stop to admire the landscape of Orbaneja del Castillo, a town with some very peculiar rock ridges and a beautiful waterfall coming out of the village, both visible from the road.
The Riaño reservoir, next to the village of the same name, was tremendously surprising for its beauty, and because the road literally went into the water. In addition, the sunset just behind Riaño allowed us to record some very nice shots.
The Chivo viewpoint, in Brañavieja, a village at a high altitude on a ski slope, offered us a beautiful sea of clouds with sunset included, which we could not avoid repeating the following day to be able to enjoy that spectacle again. On the first day the weather was calm but on the second day the wind, the fog and the 2 degrees Celsius temperature made filming extremely difficult, as the tripods and cameras literally tended to fly away.
Nevertheless, we managed to get some very nice shots.
Throughout the trip, whenever we had the chance, we took the opportunity to take some stock photos, taking advantage of the fact that we were already there.
Experience has taught us that when looking for locations, if you don’t do the session in a very short period of time, the weather conditions, the light, and even the season, will have changed and the landscape will be absolutely different. Therefore, taking advantage of the fact that you are already in those locations is important, as everything you take with you will be a safe bet.
You can be looking at a beautiful green landscape with lush forests in August and come back to do the session in October and find that the trees are in autumn and there is even snow. If you go in November or December there may be no leaves on the trees and the landscape may be completely different, even completely snowed in.
Sometimes we couldn’t get to the place we had chosen because the roads were completely covered with snow and the van skidded.
In case you have missed the reasonable deadline, the best thing to do is to come back the following year.
The orientation of the sun changes completely according to the seasons and, moreover, its path is much wider in summer and more closed in winter. It is very important to calculate the position of the sun at sunrise and sunset, as the sun neither rises nor sets in the same place throughout the seasons.
If you have calculated a beautiful place for a sunset in August and you come back in winter, the sun will not set in the same place as in August. The same goes for the orientation of the light in general for the pictures you have intended to take there. If you have worked out that you had a background with ideal light in the perfect location in September, and you go back to do the shoot in March, the sun no longer travels the same path and therefore the light no longer has anything to do with what you had when you found the locations.
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