Not too many people including residents of Porto have a courage to wander around narrow streets of old Sé district. Most of the tourists stay close to the Sé cathedral and its square. Looking down from the cathedral hill to the narrow streets of Sé, with locals standing at every corner doing nothing, with almost every building partially or totally ruined, one can be very reluctant to enter and visit.
Number of Sé habitants went down almost 50% in the last decade. Living conditions must be horrible there. Some part of Sé does not have running water. Houses are abandoned, ruined, with dirty, tiny rooms, no central heating and lot of humidity. Police raids searching for drugs are not uncommon. Welcome to UE forgotten regions.
I myself like to walk around those small and dirty streets with my Nikon turned on. Faded colours of the ruined buildings, its strangly behaving locals, no straight arquitecture lines or 90 degrees angles make Sé so unique. Photos must be taken in winter or early spring, with cloudy skies making a perfect background and dimmed light reducing high contrasts. It´s especially beautiful after rainor early in the morning, when the Sé is covered in mist from the nearby Douro river.
Most of the pictures above are made using the HDR or DRI tecnique between 2005 and 2008.
Nikon D80.
Maciek.
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