The Story
May, 2009. Once again, we followed my sister and this time we ended up in Barcelona. She was studying there for some months and we couldn't waste the opportunity to know this beautiful city (with free accommodations). Before we went there, we've made a list of places to see and the Barri Gotic (Gothic quarter) was one of the main spots. I've had seen some pictures of it and I was hopping to find this exact spot, but I didn't knew exactly where it was. So it was a nice to have if we would end up in this alley.
In the first day of our visit, we started with Casa Batló from Gaudi in the morning and then we met up with my sister in the Gothic quarter to have some lunch. After lunch we were strolling around the Gothic and we ended up in this exact spot.
I took some photos of it and then we moved on.
Equipment / Technical Info
Nikon D80
AF-S NIKKOR 18-70mm 1:3.5-4.5G ED
1/30 second
F/3.5
18 mm
800
Original Photo
Post Processing
February 2010. Facing my new reality (parenthood), I decided to check my hard drive for some old photos to process. I'd been to Barcelona almost one year before and I always had the feeling that none of the photos that I published had any special value. For some reason I can't explain, this photo wasn't in my candidate list from the Barcelona shots. This time I decided to give it a chance.
I imported the NEF into Lightroom, slightly aligned it and when straight to the "Awesome BW" preset from synaestheta (you can find it here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/presets/discuss/72157612664073371/). The photo was almost perfect but it still needed some adjustments so I've: increased the Sharpening, added some Post-Crop Vignetting to hide that wooden bars in the top and reduced the Saturation to the minimum. Finally, I've changed the Split Toning to match the one that I used in some others photos like Bridge To Neverland or The Hero.
And that was it. Basically it's the synaestheta preset with a different tone.
Final Photo
Link to image
http://jpgmn.deviantart.com/art/Barri-Gotic-154393278
