Mindelo, Cape Verde.

On our transatlantic cruise in March and April, our first island stop found us sailing toward the island of São Vicente and the city of Mindelo, Cape Verde. As we left the independent nation, we sailed by Bird Island, (Ilhéu dos Pássaros), and the lighthouse high on the top of the small island.

The lighthouse, built in 1882 and named after King Luis I of Portugal, sits atop the highest point on the small island. A long staircase connects the lighthouse to the keeper’s residence. According to Wikipedia, the range of the light is about 16 miles (26 km). The lantern sits atop a hexagonal building.

About the photos: We happened to be on our balcony when we passed the island. At first, I couldn’t determine what that long white area is. It looks like a fence from the distance. As we got closer though, I noticed the lighthouse at the top and the picture became clear to me. We were some distance from the island, so I had a chance to test out the range of the two telephoto modules in my Samsung S23U. Though you can pinch-zoom through the entire camera’s zoom range, there are three buttons that allow you to swap modules, each with a separate lens. I didn’t take a 1x image of the lighthouse, but the image immediately above is a 3x image using minimum zoom. The opening image is a 10x representation, again at minimum zoom for the super-telephoto lens.

Both images were processed in Luminar Neo with minor adjustments. The large amount of blue in the photo caused me to tweak the Color module in Neo to remove the blue color cast, especially in the 3x image. Other than that, a tweak of the Enhance AI which basically increased the contrast and structure was all the images needed. Click on either image above to see them in 2K HD on my Flickr site.

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 acceptable as well. 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, and, you don’t have to post it on a Sunday.

John Steiner

This week, Anne tells of a treasured trip to Australia and asks us to share some of our own. You can read her challenge post here.

As this is being written, we are in Cape Verde on a Transatlantic cruise. Today, we will be sightseeing on the island nation of about 600,000 people, but this new experience for us started over a week ago as we landed via airplane in Rio de Janeiro.

Our stay in Rio was our first trip to Brazil, and we made the most of our two days before boarding the Norwegian Star. Our first stop was atop the peak where the iconic statue of Jesus overlooks the city.

Of course, we visited the famous Ipanema Beach before boarding the ship for our trip across the Atlantic Ocean to Barcelona.

We rode a small tour bus to the top of a nearby mountain in Cape Verde. The ship overshadows everything else in the city. One of 10 islands, the country became independent from Portugal in 1975.

Due to my small Internet access package of about 20 minutes per day, I have to sign off for this week. Thanks to Anne for a challenge theme that fit our current travel so well.

The photos included here are minimally processed with my cell phone editor. Feel free to comment, I will read and respond when we return home in early April.

John Steiner