The soil of northern Portugal is mainly composed of granite (in the northwest), slate and schist (in the northeast). Granitic soils, by erosion, can give rise to large blocks of the most diverse and varied forms. If there are no environmental disturbances, these large boulders are covered by lichens, mosses and even plants; if there are cracks where some amount of soil has accumulated, sufficient to provide life for a plant.

Our imagination naturally finds shapes and personal aesthetic associations as we look at them. Each observer can see what his imagination, intellectual and psychic formation, finds most similar. These granite blocks are a source of inspiration for a landscape photographer who tries to capture the object’s integration into the surrounding landscape and enhance the shape his mind discovered in the photographed block. One afternoon this June, while walking through a region where these large granite boulders dominate the landscape, my attention was captured by the set shown in this image. The sky threatened heavy rain with dark clouds, which actually happened a few hours later.

Photographed from a lower position, the granite blocks acquired a type of an anthropomorphic shape, a suggestion enhanced by the irregular distribution of the cover of dark lichens (Lassalia pustulata (L.) Mérat), with a front face much less covered than the others.

Regardless of any morphological association, granite landscapes suggest solidity, grandeur and drama, impressions that a landscape photographer can try to convey in his images. They show us the evolution of nature on a geological scale, always measured in millions of years, in which we imagine seeing the rain and wind erode, every day, a very tiny microscopic fraction of the rock, a process which, after millions of years means large volumes of eroded granite that can them acquire the most beautiful and bizarre forms.