Today I drove to the coast near the village called Barbariga, about 30 kilometers from my hometown. In this post, I'll show you the stuff I photographed by the sea, and on the way there.
Here you can see the beach, the final destination of today's little trip. You can see a bit of the blue sea, plenty of white pebbles, and some of the evergreen oaks that grow there.
These two buoys were dancing on the small waves fifty or sixty meters from the shore.
I had the macro lens with me, so I was also able to take a good look at the flies that were active on the pebbles very close to the sea. I like to include all kinds of things in my posts. From the macro details to the wide scenery and distant stuff brought through the power of zooming in. Besides giving a healthy dose of unpredictability and fun, that variety also conveys the way I look at things around me. In my world, the story about a place is never complete without insects, plants, and other seemingly insignificant details that can be easily overlooked.
I'll return to the flies later because now, is time to leave the beach and travel back in time ...
... to the chapel photographed half an hour earlier, near the small town called Vodnjan.
Here you can see a detail from its front facade. I don't know how to define this thing. A spy hole? A circular window?
Can't tell you much about this roadside chapel because there isn't much I found about it on the Internet. It was built in the 19th century by the Tumia family. This is the biggest roadside chapel I ever saw in Istra. It looks like some cemetery chapels from the area.
This old, fairly small metal plate was photographed near the door.
Here you can take a look through the fence that covers the upper half of the locked metal door.
In front of the chapel, is the road that leads to Vodnjan, while the rest of the building is surrounded by olive trees.
Here you can see a friend in the olive orchard.
Five or six kilometers further, after Vodnjan, I stopped by the side of the road ...
... to photograph this yellow piece of plastic nailed to a tree. The inscription exclaims that Jesus is alive. I don't know. Could be. Life and death are pretty fluid and hard to define when it comes to Jesus and similar entities.
Here you can take another look at the scenery in that area. The old, dry stone wall is the protagonist of the shot.
The flower shown in this photograph wasn't photographed there.
Some minutes later and a couple of kilometers further, I stopped again.
Here you can take a better, more up-close look at the anthers in the center of the Romulea bulbocodium flower.
These flowers look like little stars scattered across the stony ground.
These yellow flowers belong to the common dandelion (Taraxacum officinale).
Ten or fifteen minutes after taking the previous shot, I photographed a small bee and the equally small bushcricket nymph on the dandelion flowers. When it comes to the bee, I can't tell you the name of the species. The family is probably Halictidae. The bushcricket is the very small, very young Tettigonia viridissima.
This small bug nymph ...
... was found and photographed on a different kind of flower.
The Anemone hortensis flower.
When it comes to this nymph, I can't tell you the name of the species, but the family is most certainly Miridae.
Here you can see a small bee from the genus Lasioglossum of the Halictidae family. Can't tell you the name of the species. In the following photograph ...
... another bee of the same kind is posing inside the Romulea bulbocodium flower.
I photographed only two more flowers before continuing towards Barbariga. This Anemone hortensis ...
... and yet another Romulea bulbocodium that grows very low on the ground.
Here you can take one last look at the scenery around my car parked by the side of the road. In the following photograph ...
... I'm walking toward the sea.
I reached the evergreen oaks (Quercus ilex) that grow near the beach, in this shot.
Small groups of these trees looked like interesting minimalist sculptures from a certain angle.
I left the trees behind me when this photograph was taken. You can see a small sandy area surrounded by rocks and pebbles in the foreground of the shot. I spent at least half an hour there, very close to the sea, busy searching for treasures in the sand.
Here you can see one of the jewels I found on the beach today. An emerald. Is a bit rough around the edges but it looks great when properly illuminated by the midday sun. This precious fragment was very small, and it can be admired only through the macro lens. I can't tell you the value of an emerald, but I know that bottle debris like this one ain't worth anything nowadays. Maybe one day, in a post-apocalyptic future, with glass production being low or non-existent, they will be considered precious. In the following photograph, you can see something even better.
This is an empty shell of a tiny sea snail from the Conidae family.
This fragment of the green bottle glass has spent much more time in the sea, and its original shape has been changed by the elements. It looks more precious now.
On one of the bigger rocks there, I found this small monument to the emotional moments of the summer. I'll say that was created by a teenager, but who knows, I could be as well wrong. The message is simple and kinda mature. I can imagine all kinds of people sitting there at sunset and writing it.
Here you can see one of the flies introduced at the beginning of the post. In the following shot ...
... I sneaked closer to the insect and the scene was photographed in natural light. I did a better job here, in other words. I'm pretty sure that this is a fly from the genus Fucellia of the Anthomyiidae family, but I can't tell you what species exactly is this.
This very small spider from the Linyphiidae family was running across the barren macro landscape on the surface of a coastal rock when it got caught by my camera. The name of the species? I don't know. Erigone dentipalpis, maybe.
This photograph was taken in the nearby forest.
The roots of the trees were visible in some places ...
... and they looked great.
The moss looked great too.
It was almost too intensely green when illuminated by direct sunlight.
At one point, I came across a highly unexpected advert along the unpaved road that leads through the coastal forest.
In this photograph, the friend who was there with me came closer to the thing to take a few shots with her mobile phone.
Here you can see that someone embellished the advertising photograph and changed a bit the original message.
I was back on the beach when this photograph was taken.
I was near the sea again, but I didn't stay there for long. I spent only a couple of minutes photographing some buoys ...
... and then ...
... it was time to walk back to the car and drive back home ...
... so the post ends here. With a small, shrub-like Pistacia lentiscus tree.