View my video of Big Monday at Nazare, Portugal here
I was lucky enough to guess right on the waves at the Praia do Norte in Nazare, Portugal to witness (and film and photograph) the first great wave day of the autumn 2016 season. It was Big Monday.
You can view the short film I made about Big Monday by using the link above. I will also be updating this post to show more of the material I have from Nazare and some links to where you can license it if required.
by Jonathan Mitchell
LISBON — 20 September, 2015 — As Greeks head of the polls today to vote on whether to continue supporting Syriza, Portugal’s general election campaign is heating up with opinion polls published in the Expresso newspaper giving the Socialist Party – the mainstream left party – a slight lead 1.5% over the PSD and CDS/PP coalition.
Many here are weary of the government austerity program – which has consisted of a lot of cuts to services like health and one of the largest tax hikes in Portuguese history. The Socialist Party is campaigning on an anti-austerity platform – with the shadow of the former leader Jose Socrates (who is currently in prison under corruption charges) hanging over the campaign.
According to the polls published in the Expresso today, some 46.7% of Portuguese believe that Antonio Costa (the leader of the Socialist Party) will be the next prime minister to govern Portugal, against 39.8% who think that Pedro Passos Coelho will retain power.
“Now’s the time to turn the page on austerity,” Costa said. “Our goal is to ease the tax burden.” This may have some resonance with some voters hit hard by the tax regime, analysts say. Some four out of five Portuguese people say they have problems making their income stretch through any given month.
Some analysts say that the ruling coalition may nevertheless get voted back into power, pointing to factors like mass migration and recent economic statistics – which appear to show that the economy is finally growing again after several years of stagnation.
Antonio Garcia Pascual, the Barclays Bank chief economist for Europe, recently told the Financial Times that he sees the elections as a “close call” between the centre-right government coalition and the opposition centre-left Socialists, with the polls seemingly backing him up.
“If we stay on the path we’ve been following, we won’t need any more bailouts,” Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho stated during a live radio debate last week. Much of the campaign has been relatively dull and Passos Coelho’s campaign largely is based on him being seen to be a safe pair of hands in a difficult time.
The Socialists disagree and say they will lower taxes to stimulate the economy, while adding that training programs and mass migration to countries like the UK, Angola, Mozambique, Brazil and even Guinea Bissau give a distorted picture.
Portugal has some 9.7 million eligible voters – who will elect lawmakers to a four-year term in the 230-seat Parliament in Lisbon on the 4th October, 2015. Many Eurozone watchers will be looking carefully at the result. -ends- approx 500 words
Jonathan Mitchell is based in Lisbon, Portugal and is available for commissions to cover the upcoming polls. If you are looking for stock images, you can find them at Photoshot.com – along with many other news archive pictures from Portugal (and also Live News).
All images and text © 2015 Jonathan Mitchell
These images of Lisbon are among some of the best I took during my stay in Lisbon, Portugal. I am now offering a photo tour of Lisbon for photographers of all abilities visiting the city. Travel shots can be hard to sell these days, so very few images from this portfolio have been licensed.
I spent most of January 2015 in Nazare, Portugal to photograph the large XXL wave phenomena which is apparent in the winter months.
The results (even when the sea was calm) were pretty good and it is a location I hope to return to in the future.
I’ve posted some of the images here, though there are many other select images from these shoots which are outstanding, especially of the XXL waves that came in mid to late January (though without surfers, they are nevertheless very dramatic images). Please contact me if you would like to use any in your projects (all the images are Rights Managed).
Jonathan William Mitchell Writer / Photojournalist Blog 