The Story
January, 2009. My sister was at the time working in Athens and invited us to go there for a week (check the Meteora II photo story for more details)...
It's a fantastic place. You can see big rocks with monasteries build on top. It was almost all the time very foggy, but every time it cleared a bit, the view was fantastic. I just leave you the photo. I think it speaks for itself.
If you ever go to Greece, do go to Meteora, you won't regret!
Equipment / Technical Info
Nikon D80
AF-S NIKKOR 18-70mm 1:3.5-4.5G ED
1/50 second
F/8.0
40 mm
100
Original Photo
Post Processing
This photo rested in my hard drive almost one year until I decided to give it a shot.
It was December, Christmas has passed and the weather was very rainy. On top of that, my wife was pregnant and my photo trips had been reduced to the minimum for us to be together more time. I already had published two photos of Meteora and in both I almost didn't touched them in post processing. This time I decided to give it a different atmosphere. Has I had noticed in other photos (like Bridge To Neverland) when they are shot under foggy conditions, the Contrast is very low. This was one of the first things to address. The second thing were the colors: they were very dull, so I decided to bring them up.
In Lightroom I've increased the Blacks, the Vibrance and the Sharpening, then I increased the Saturation on the Greens, Yellows, Oranges, Reds and Blues. Next I increased the Luminance on the Greens, Yellows, Oranges and Reds, and reduced it on the Blues and Aquas (to darken the sky). Next, another boost to the Contrast, Vignetting was added, increased the Clarity and the Saturation. Then I started playing around with Split Toning, with the objective of warming the colors a little: in the Highlights I increased the Hue to 40 and the Saturation to 20. Finally, I increased 0,75 stops on the Exposure and added a Gradient Filter to darken the sky.
In CS4, I've started by applying the Virtual Photographer plug-in (you can find it here: http://www.optikvervelabs.com) with the setting "Fall Colors" and then applied the "Tobacco Grad (125)" action to the sky (you can find this and other actions to simulate the effect of Gradient filters here: http://www.thelightsrightstudio.com). Then I adjusted the Levels and the Color Balance, increased the Brightness and Contrast and re-touched the Levels again ("Increase Contrast 1" preset).
I usually publish my photos with 1024px in the largest size and use a great Photoshop action by Manyk to do the re-size.
You can find it here: http://manyk.deviantart.com/art/Web-Sharpening-with-Photoshop-29038461
Final Photo
Link to image
http://jpgmn.deviantart.com/art/Meteora-III-148221264
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