Unwrapping the Beauty: Fallas Sculptures in Valencia

Each year in March, the city of Valencia goes crazy when the Valencians celebrate the end of winter with a unique festival: You know it is Fallas time when giant sculptures are erected on squares in the central districts of Valencia accompanied by amazing ear-shattering day- and nighttime fireworks and stunning LED-light shows.

^{32mm, f9, 1/160; Click on image to view fullscreen}

The Fallas festival ends in the night from the 18th to the 19th of March when all the sculptures are burnt and the city goes up in smoke and flames. This means, that by now, all of the sculptures you can see below are burnt, but luckily I was able to capture some of them for eternity and will publish my best photos in a small photo series. For more photos and videos of the Fallas, head over to @for91days's blog who convinced me to visit Valencia during Fallas and showed me around this amazing festival!

^{90mm, f6.3, 1/160; Click on image to view fullscreen}

For this first part of my photo series on Fallas, I have picked some photos of Fallas sculptures in the state of unwrapping. When Fallas ends on March 19th and all the sculptures have been burnt, the Fallas artists start to work on their sculptures for the following year, giving their best to show off their skills with the dream of winning the first price in the annual sculpture competition. After one year of work, the sculptures are transported to the square where they are going to be displayed to the judges and the public for five days before being burnt. But with the wrapping foil merging with the sculpture itself, I found that these half-wrapped sculptures are very special artworks that are destroyed even quicker than the sculptures themselves.

^{18mm, f9, 1/320; Click on image to view fullscreen}

^{42mm, f5.6, 1/60; Click on image to view fullscreen}

^{18mm, f5.6, 1/30; Click on image to view fullscreen}

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Camera Gear

The camera I used to capture this photo is a Nikon D5500 (APS-C) with a Nikon 10-20mm F4,5–5,6 and a Nikon 18-140mm F3.5-5.6 lens.

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