The Story
April, 2009. My wife's parents came to visit us and after lunch we took them for a walk in downtown Lisboa (check Rossio photo story for more details).
When we got there, I left them doing some sightseeing and got right to business. I mounted the camera on the tripod and started exploring potential angles. I started with the Restauradores square but the angles weren't quite as I wanted. Then I moved to Rossio square and hanged there for a while. My objective was to capture the cloud movement and "erase" the people from the street. So, I took a couple shots (they require some time of preparing) and moved on to another spot: Rua Augusta.
Rua Augusta is the main street of downtown Lisboa. It goes from Rossio to Praça do Comércio, near the Tagus river. It's a pedestrian street that's packed with some of the most fine shops (or at least it used to be) and a lot of restaurants. In the Comércio side of the street, it ends up in a triumphal arch. This spot, near the arch, was the place where I imagined the photo. From a lower perspective, capturing the arch, the clouds passing above it, the fuss in the street. It seamed a good composition. So I done the math (to calculate the exposure) and prepared the shot. I only took one shot here because there was a lot of people there and I was in their way. Anyway, I already had what I wanted.
And that was it for the day. Time now to find my wife and her parents, somewhere in Lisboa downtown.
Equipment / Technical Info
Nikon D80
Sigma 10-20mm F4-5.6 EX DC
Hitech 85 ND 3.0 filter
Slik Pro 340DX tripod
30/1 second
F/16.0
12 mm
100
Original Photo
Post Processing
This photo was the second one that I published from this day. It got published two days after it was taken. When I reviewed it in the computer I noticed three things: it was with the colors all messed up (as all the others from this day); it was dirty from the light that passed the filter holder (as the others) and it was very dark.
As happened with Rossio photo, I had two alternatives: Black & White or try to fix the colors. I've already turned the other into B&W and this one was too dark for it anyway, so the only option was trying to correct the colors.
So I imported the file into Lightroom and started with an Auto Tone, followed with a White Balance correction to make it warmer. Then I started adjusting the Hue of the Blues and Yellows. I was starting to despair... there was something missing. I started playing around with presets and I ended up using the "COL Nikonians - Mode Illa" (you can find it here: http://www.presetsheaven.com/2008/08/30/deviant-presets-for-lightroom-ii-turns-the-light-on) preset. That kinda put me back on tracks and so I moved on: adjusted the Hue of Oranges and started removing the flare spots in the bottom left of the photo. The latest was the harder step, if I had covered properly the filter holder (instead of using the camera strap for it) nothing of this would have been necessary. Finally I increased the Blue Saturation and decreased the Luminance.
In CS4, I've done: Auto Tone, Auto Contrast, Auto Color and Auto Levels. Then I just added some Vignetting. This gave me the full size (10Mp) final image.
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/Rua-Augusta-119153019
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