We’d gone all inclusive but on the first night when we arrived at the hotel it was pretty late so there was no food or drinks actually available; we ended up having to walk around until we found a bar. Many mojitos were consumed.

Entertainment was a little lacking in the hotel in the evening but we discovered they didn’t really mind you popping next door to the Sunclub Salou hotel if you were buying drinks. And we were. My dad, being my dad, got roped up to take part in some balloon-based show.

On a daily basis we would always spend some time in the streets of Cap de Salou simply because you had to in order to get anywhere; typically we would be venturing into Salou itself, possibly to then head further afield, but we make use of the beaches several times as in addition to the main beach of the area there were a fair number of sheltered coves with walkways down to them and provided a less busy, marginally more private place to expose our skin and frolic in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea.

Away from the beach areas the Spanish buildings were typical of the area, although there were a few interesting pieces of architecture here and there. There were a few areas with shops, a fairground that was dead during the week we were there, and a bar that we enjoyed a few evenings at.

While the rest of my family would mostly stay in the main beach area and the coves westwards towards Salou if they wanted to swim (when they weren’t back at the hotel) my wife and I were more into exploring and photographing what we found. On one of the days we headed to the main beach and then started clambering along the rocks of the shoreline since we’d seen other people doing so. That led to us finding a whole area of views and construction that the others with us missed. Although they probably weren’t that interested.

A few spots along the Salou beachfront contained some interesting structures; a brick and concrete dome and a metal sculpture were two notable ones.

Living near the sea but with a beach that is simply pebbles it’s always nice to see clean, golden white sands and the beach at Salou didn’t disappoint. Under the blue sky wide angle photographs of the beach always look so inviting.

I found some of the architecture of the buildings in Salou very appealing. There were elements of brutalism amongst the modernism that you come to expect in any hotel or apartment complexes raised in holiday destinations in the latter parts of the twentieth century. Getting under the buildings and looking up to their shaped balconies produced some pleasing angled photos against the sky.

Moving away from the shops took us through some more green and shaded spaces, looking beautifully welcoming against the scorching temperature we were feeling from the relentless sunshine pouring down on us from above.

We then came out on the main promenade separating the beach areas of the Salou from the beach. Everything seemed very clean, very bright, very wide, and incredibly photogenic which was good as I’m quite fond of taking advantage of photogenic things and taking photos of them, so that’s what I did before we started back along the coast to the hotel area once again.

The processing for this photo consists of a new crop in the same ratio to bring the edge of the curving path right into the bottom left corner of the picture; I have a thing for pulling lines into the corners of photos. Colour vibrancy and saturation as well as white levels have been increased and the picture has been given a boost in contrast too using a technique to take away contrast halos. This involves adding a new layer with the sharpness and contrast in it over the top of the original twice, once in Lighten blend mode, once in Darken blend mode. The Darken layer was set at a low opacity while the Lighten layer was less transparent and had a layer mask applied in order to remove the sky. This had the effect of giving the golden finish of the sculpture a more metallic sheen while taking away any sharp or contrast-generated light patches in the sky that would have caused halos around the sculpture’s edges.

The reprocessing of this photo started with the new enhancement feature in Camera RAW to double the image resolution and provide for more space to work with cropping. The crop was made to pull that diagonal into the bottom left corner because I do like to compose lines into the corners of photos if I can.

Vibrancy, contrast, and slight detail enhancement was added then this result was overlaid over the original image twice, once in Soft Light and once in Lighten, both with under half-opacity. This gave the basic colours a punch and brought out more from the shaded stone of the obelisk and the darker parts of the horse element of the monument.

What I really like about these buildings are those curved edges. You can tell there’s some Streamline Moderne influences there, but what’s especially appealing is the way it almost looks padded, soft, like you could run headfirst into it and bounce off without a scratch. Do not try this.

Processing was pretty basic. The original image was cropped to remove some foreground distraction, then overlaid with an urban acid treatment to bring out teals and pinks in the colour scheme and to boost the contrast of the shadows in order to dirty-up the pollution on the building’s concrete exterior.