The Story
May, 2009. We've been in Barcelona a couple of weeks before and I was fascinated with the old Barcelona neighborhood. There I decided that I had to go for a visit in old Lisboa as soon as possible. I had several options but I decided to go to Bairro Alto mainly because of this funicular.
Before this day I, as usual, explored the location in Flickr and Wiki to check for good spots. I already knew that there were two "Elevadores" (lifts) in Lisboa: Santa Justa and Glória. But until that day I never had checked to see if there were more. When I found out that there were two others I felt ashamed. How come I, born in Lisboa, forever in love with this city, could not know this?
In google maps/earth I located this one and found out that it connected the low area of Santos to the high area of Bairro Alto. So the course was set: I would park in Santos, take the funicular to Bairro Alto and would explore from there.
This funicular is very different from the other two I knew. In the bottom side, you pick it inside a building and then it starts to climb the hill in some characteristic Lisboa's street. We bought the ticket and got inside. It took a little bit before it started the trip, but then it was worthy. It's a very small trip and you're off to one of the more typical Lisboa neighborhoods: Bairro Alto. This place is also one of the favorite places for the teens to go out at night (I lost the count of how many times I've been there) .
In the end of the ride, we got off the funicular and my wife went to the shops while I started exploring the site. I took some shots of the funicular, from the rails, from the people around and them moved on to Bairro Alto itself.
Equipment / Technical Info
Nikon D80
AF-S NIKKOR 18-70mm 1:3.5-4.5G ED
1/250 second
F/9.0
70 mm
400
Original Photo
Post Processing
This photo was the only one that I published from that day. I took plenty of photos in Bairro Alto but none satisfied me as this one. It had to be black and white but I tried something different: I left the characteristic yellow of the funicular as yellow and converted only the remainder of the image to black and white.
In Lightroom I've straightened and cropped it a bit and then applied the Mike Lao's "300 V1" preset (you can find it here: http://inside-lightroom.com/?page_id=11). The preset needed some adjustments after, so I reduced the Vignetting, increased the Contrast, the Blacks and the Clarity. Then I reduced the Saturation to the minimum on all colors except for the Yellows and Brushed all around the funicular where there were still traces of colors. This Brush was a -100% Saturation brush.
In CS4 I've selected all except the funicular itself and created a new layer with that selection. Then, I converted it to Black and White ("Darker" preset) and applied the "Warm (26)" action to warm it a little (you can find this and other actions to simulate the effect of Gradient filters here: http://www.thelightsrightstudio.com). Finally I've done: Auto Tone and Auto Contrast.
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/Ascensor-da-Bica-122720360
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