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The last days our weather has been quite variable. It is common to go from rain to clear skies in a short time, it is also usual to have cool nights, foggy dawns and then clear and warm days. It is also not uncommon for a heavy downpour to fall during the late afternoon or early evening. So this relatively unstable weather provides a fascinating range of possibilities for landscape photography on country roads and in the foothills of the mountains...

^{55 mm | 1/640s | f/7.1| ISO 100}

^{18 mm | 1/500s | f/6.3| ISO 100}

^{20 mm | 1/640s | f/5.6| ISO 500}

The visual possibilities are very varied and it is a pleasure to observe how the light, temperatures and general characteristics of the landscape vary constantly every few hundred metres along the road that crosses the valleys and begins to ascend towards the mountains to the west of the village. It is therefore necessary to be attentive to take advantage of every space offered by nature in a sometimes unpredictable way.

^{48 mm | 1/400s | f/5.6| ISO 500}

^{55 mm | 1/2000s | f/8| ISO 100}

^{18 mm | 1/1250s | f/5.6| ISO 250}

I don't have a "recipe" of fully adequate parameters for walking and taking landscape pictures in the midst of such an overwhelming diversity of scenery unfolding in short intervals of time and almost always unpredictably. So what I did was to take my camera, attach my little 18-55mm zoom (yes, the one that comes with the camera kit) and do all this in manual mode (M). This practically forces me to adjust the settings with every scene I shoot. Obviously I shoot in RAW so that I have plenty of room for manoeuvre during post-processing, but I try to make the photo as complete as possible from the moment of capture.

^{55 mm | 1/800s | f/7.1| ISO 100}

^{36 mm | 1/1600s | f/5.6| ISO 640}

All these photographs were taken on the same day during a walk of no more than 4 kilometres and at a time interval of no more than two hours. So, this can provide you with an idea of how variable the scenery is here. I have also placed the settings used in each photo to give you an idea of how I am adapting to the conditions as I face them. This is a really lovely thing to do and is a very interesting photographic exercise for me.

^{45 mm | 1/640s | f/6.3| ISO 100}

^{46 mm | 1/5000s | f/7.1| ISO 100}

^{20 mm | 1/2500s | f/5.6| ISO 320}

As you can see in the title of this publication, these photographs were taken in the rural areas and mountains surrounding my town called Montalbán (central region of Carabobo state in Venezuela). Here we have a typical tropical climate but the diverse relief makes the variations are marked between the lower and higher areas. I am trying to improve my fitness in order to be able to make some ascents to the high peaks, some of which reach 1800 m.a.s.l. and to be able to share more pictures of this landscape with you.

^{20 mm | 1/2500s | f/5.6| ISO 320}

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ADDITIONAL TECHNICAL NOTE: Photographs captured with my Nikon D7000 DSLR camera in RAW format, then processed in Adobe Camera RAW for adjustments regarding light, sharpening, contrast and depth... The pictures are then exported to JPG format on which minor modifications such as straightening and adding watermarks were carried out using PhotoScape 3.6.3. and/or Photoshop

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Thank you very much for your visit and appreciation!

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Montalbán, Carabobo, Venezuela.