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One the terrific hotels I stayed in during last month's trip to South America was the Aranwa Sacred Valley Hotel & Wellness.  It is located along the banks of the Vilcanota river about a 1.5 hour drive from Cusco.  It is also 40 minutes from the train station in Ollantayambo which is where you travel to Machu Picchu.   The hotel, on the grounds of a 17th century hacienda is quite spectacular with beautiful surroundings and large rooms. 

The Monasterio is a Belmond hotel in Cuzco, Peru.  It is a former monastery, now converted to a fabulous (and photogenic) high end hotel.  During last month's trip to South America, I spent a couple of nights at this hotel and must highly recommend it. 

What an amazing site it was!   It has been on my bucket list for many years and it was worth the time, expense and effort to finally see Machu Picchu in all its glory.  

  I thought I would do some travelling in today's blog post.  Here is an AI-generated view of the blue church domes in Santorini, Greece.  It is such a beautiful place!

As I have mentioned in a prior post in this blog, I love the ability to use the Midjourney AI engine to move my thoughts to a different point in time and space.  My wife would like to plan a trip to Scotland and she wants to see some castles, so I asked Midjourney to show me the inside of a Scottish castle sometime in the past.  The image is rather dark, but I guess this castle depends on outside light, candles and fireplaces.  

Here is a change from the people and animal pictures that I have been posting.   Midjourney AI is capable of generating some interesting architecture images.  Here is a first attempt at a futuristic building design. 

One of the fun things about playing with AI is that I can change my location and my timeframe.  As an example, I asked the AI engine to show me Paris, France on a rainy night in 1900.  This is what it rendered.

I took a photo taken originally at Cape Spear, Newfoundland and put it through a "sky replacement" in Luminar Neo before adding a light using LensLight app on the iPad.

Here is a port side view of the HMCS Haida, now a historical site at its berth in Hamilton Ontario.  It is a fun, inexpensive tour through our naval history on this majestic destroyer.  It's also a wonderful place to go on a photo outing!

I love the simple-to-use Prisma app on my iPad.   I can sit watching a baseball game on TV and, with one button, generate dramatically different artwork from the same photo.  Here are three examples of a photo I took a month ago at the Cape Spear Lighthouse in Newfoundland.  I also added a light beacon in on of the photos using the LensLight app.

Here are a few shots of the fountain at Royal Botanical Gardens Hendrie Park.   One uses the Live feature on the iPhone to show motion blur in the water.  The other two feature the gate leading to the fountain.

Here is a panorama of a scene at Quidi Vidi Harbour in Newfoundland, complete with fishing boats and shacks.  Quidi Vidi is an old part of St. John's dating back to 1600 when fishermen from Britain made it a regular stop.

Here are a couple more shots of the lighthouse at Cape Spear, Newfoundland.  The day I visited was rather overcast and gloomy so I decided to play with sky replacements in NEO.  

One of the unique aspects of streetscapes in St. John's, Newfoundland is the brightly coloured houses a.k.a. "jellybean" row houses.  There are numerous theories of how this started.  Some say that the fishermen couldn't see their houses in the fog when returning from sea so they painted them in bright colours.  Others say that paint was an expensive commodity but they needed paint for their boats so they used leftover on their houses.  And others explain that men would stagger home after an evening at the pub and would wander into the wrong house - so colour became an important way for them to find the way to the right house.  Whatever the explanation it is an absolutely beautiful feature of St. John's!

I think the best way to get shots of the Toronto skyline is from a boat in Toronto Harbour.  These were taken last weekend while on a harbour and Toronto Island tour.

With the first human settlements dating back to 1000 B.C., the area of Chacchoben was a large community with many houses, plazas  and temples.  It is located 90 km west of Costa Maya in Mexico and is a popular tourist destination being so close to the cruise ship port there.  

Decision to hike last week in Oracle State Park had the added bonus of visiting the Kannally Ranch House.  The original 160-acre ranch was purchased by Neil and Lee Kannally in 1903.  This present Kannally Ranch House was built between 1929-1932 and is open for self-guided touring.   These two photos are straight out of the iPhone.  Tomorrow I will post a couple more that have had some post process editing.

Hallgrímskirkja  is a Lutherin parish church in Reykjavik, Iceland.  Completed in 1986, it is the largest church in Iceland and one of the tallest structures in the country. Sitting on the Hilltop  Skólavörðuholt,   the church is visible throughout the city.  It is named after Hallgrimur Petursson,  a hymn writer of the 17th century.

Here are two views of the Harpa, outside and inside.  Harpa is an architecturally beautiful concert hall and conference center in Reykjavik, Iceland.

 I stopped yesterday to shoot this water tower by the railway line near Red Rock Arizona.  To give a more dated look I used the Orange Zest preset in the Formulas app.