I started this walk very early.
The sky just started turning from black to blue, my sleepy hometown looked even sleepier than usual, and the JPEG metadata of this opening picture show that the photograph was taken at 7:23 AM. At this point, I was still in my garden.
Less than a minute later, I was shooting from a quiet crossroad with no cars around.
Here I took a look uphill, towards the parish church immersed in the fog.
A minute later, when this photograph was taken, I was walking towards the old town's center.
Here you can take a look at the Christmas lights on the main square.
The Street sweeper was doing his job on this blue morning, while a swarm of small, yellow lamps was glittering above his head.
Soon the man walked across the square ...
... and continued the cleaning operation in front of another building, the small church with a pretty large name - Church of Our Lady of Good Health.
At this point, the sky and the overall atmosphere, have changed from blue to dull & gray. The street lamps and the seasonal decorations were fortunately still on, so the Christmas spirit hasn't left the place completely.
I continued walking through the narrow side streets around the square ...
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... in search of more vistas and compositions before the street lights disappear.
When I decided to photograph this scene, a street lamp and some small but lovely pieces of festive decoration were shining inside the frame, just behind the traffic signs, but when I pushed the shutter button, the shiny stuff disappeared leaving me with the pretty dull shot.
As the dawn was evolving into a proper early morning, more people started to appear on foggy streets. When I say more, I mean just a few more. Barely more than one.
It was time to take a couple of paparazzi shots.
At one point a yellow car entered the scene and added a bit of shine and color to the picture.
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These humid winter days are relatively warm, so it's possible to encounter some insects out in the open from time to time. This grasshopper was climbing the facade of one of the houses along the road that leads from the old center to the pond and the fields at the edge of town.
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A couple of houses further, I found a small snail on the facade.
Here you can take a look down one of the narrow streets that lead to the sea. I didn't take that one but continued straight ...
... passed by some garden walls and trees ...
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... and soon ...
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... I reached the pond.
The white ducks ...
... and the old white goose that is here since ... I don't know ... can't remember ... it seems like the goose was always here ...
... those ducks and the goose looked great in today's dark & gloomy atmosphere.
The ducks were busy searching for food in the shallows.
The goose was swimming around them, and at moments it looked like the big old bird is watching over the smaller ducks.
I didn't photograph only the birds here on the pond.
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The weeping willows also looked great ...
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... so I spent some time with these beautiful trees.
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I took quite a few photographs and then, an hour later, when I returned home ...
... and sat in front of the PC screen ready to work on the photographs for this post ...
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... I took some of those weeping willow shots and started playing with some options in Photoshop.
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After some experimentation, I came to this simple but effective edit ...
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... and I was very satisfied with the poetic, dreamlike atmosphere.
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It looks like I entered some kind of paralleled dimension or some other strange version of reality on my walk around the pond.
With this shot, things have returned to relative normality.
In this shot, each duck is in its own pose, and the poses look like sequences that show the movement of a duck in search of food under the surface. Since the ducks look practically the same, the photograph ended up being considerably more interesting and funny than I expected.
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At one point the birds formed a very photogenic diagonal line across the pond.
I took one more shot with the same trio of ducks ...
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... passed by the weeping willows and walked back home.
AND THAT'S IT. AS ALWAYS IN THESE WALKS ON HIVE, THE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE MY WORK - THE END.