Tenerife, Spain.

On a transatlantic cruise in March 2023, one of our stops was off the African coast in the Canary Island archipelago. The main island in the chain is Tenerife, and the port city is Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The archipelago is a Spanish territory, and As of 2023, Santa Cruz has a population of around 208,906 within its city limits.

Santa Cruz is renowned for its Carnaval de Santa Cruz, a spectacular pre-Lent celebration considered one of the world’s biggest carnivals. However, the festival was held earlier in the year, and with our typical cruise ship stop of a single day in March, we missed the festivities.

As an aviator, I’ve long known of a tragic day at the Tenerife airport in 1977. The deadliest aviation disaster in history actually took place there. This accident involved two Boeing 747 passenger jets colliding on the runway in dense fog at Tenerife North Airport on March 27th, 1977. The crash resulted in the deaths of 583 people due to the fire and explosions that erupted after the impact. As with most major aviation accidents, the investigation findings significantly improved aviation safety protocols, especially regarding communication and runway procedures.

About the photo: As our cruiser sailed into the port city, I saw an Aida cruise ship already docked. I’d just taken a cellphone picture of the town and also snapped a shot of the cruise ship. When it came time to process images from Tenerife, I noticed that the two images would merge into an ultra-wide panorama. Adobe Lightroom Classic created the panorama, and I sent it to Luminar Neo for final adjustments. After tweaking the Enhanced AI tool and making a few slider adjustments in the Develop module, I spotted the new Twilight Enhancer tool. That tool provides options to tweak the exposure and color controls to create an altered reality. I chose the Mauve preset and then worked through the sliders to adjust the color to my liking.

A while back, I was asked if it was OK to edit photos for sharing with the Cellpic Sunday tag. My goal for Cellpic Sunday is to provide a tag for sharing images created with the camera that most people carry with them every day. Indeed, I routinely make significant changes to my Cellpic Sunday photos and document them in this section of each post. Edit to your heart’s content and post them with the #CellpicSunday tag.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s also acceptable. The second rule is to link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment. Oh, you don’t have to post it on a Sunday.

John Steiner