Underground

The Story
April 2011. I was alone on holidays that week and I decided to spend some time shooting. When I scheduled that holidays I expected (hoped) that the weather would be rainy so I could go out and take some overcast skies' photos. Unfortunately it was sunny all week so I had to improvise.
I decided to go to the "Parque das Nações" vicinity to check some new spots. "Parque das Nações" is a new zone in Lisbon that was recovered for the 1998 World Exposition and since then it had become a great spot for architectural photos as lots of new (and modern) buildings were built there.
I've took a walk around the vicinity and took some outside photos of the buildings but they all suffered from the same problem: too much blue in the sky.
In my way back to the car, I decided to stop by one of the icons of this area: "Gare do Oriente". This train/metro/bus station was designed by the famous architect Santiago Calatrava. I've had seen too many photos of that station that I thought it was too much of a cliche to go there. Anyway I decided to give it a try. The security personnel was not too fond of people photographing inside the station so I made it fast. I was in and out in less than 5 minutes and only took about 10 photos.

Equipment / Technical Info
Nikon D80
Sigma 10-20mm F4-5.6 EX DC

Shutter Speed:1/25 second
Aperture:F/5.6
Focal Length:20 mm
ISO Speed:200

Original Photo


Post Processing
This photo was my first choice from that day. I imported it into Lightroom, slightly aligned it and increased the Exposure a lot. I had a problem that I noticed right in sight: the light was too uneven. The left side was properly illuminated whilst the right side was almost pitch black. This was due to the natural lightning of the place and the position of the sun on the left of the image. To compensate this issue, I applied a Graduated Filter until the image become as even as possible. Then I, increased the Fill Light, reduced a bit the Exposure, increased the Contrast and changed the Point Curve to Strong Contrast. Added a lot of Vignetting, converted to Black and White and added some Brush Strokes to the skylights in the upper left side to make them as darker as the ones in the right. Finally, I removed the paper on the ground as it was too distracting and applied my custom Split Tone.
I was very pleased with the result, specially because the woman on the left added so much value to the photo.

Final Photo


Link to image
http://jpgmn.deviantart.com/art/Underground-203613588

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60 Seconds

The Story
January 2011. After a lousy 2010 in what photo trips concerned, I decided that 2011 would be a return to normality. Nothing better than an one week holiday to get the year started. I had discovered a promising spot in the Seixal Bay, called Ponta dos Corvos. This spot had an abandoned factory and an abandoned shipyard that I decided to explore that day. I packed the gear and, after a quick lunch, I went there. It was an overcast day and when I approached Ponta dos Corvos I soon discovered that the road there was a perfect adventure: more holes than road and all of them filled with water. If I only had an 4x4 :) That, the almost raining weather and the insecurity of the spot cut my trip short.
Still it was very early in the afternoon and I couldn't throw that sky away that easily. After a short thinking, I decided to head to Cacilhas and try some long exposures in broad daylight.
I parked in the Cais do Ginjal and started to re-explore the place. After some photos, I decided to try this one. I mounted the tripod and the ND filter and gave it a try. I took half a dozen shots and the afternoon was already over - that's something typical when I do long exposures.

Equipment / Technical Info
Nikon D80
Sigma 10-20mm F4-5.6 EX DC
Hitech 85 ND 3.0 filter

Shutter Speed:60/1 second
Aperture:F/9.0
Focal Length:13 mm
ISO Speed:100

Original Photo


Post Processing
This photo was my first choice from that day. I imported it into Lightroom, removed some dust spots and then applied the automatic Lens Correction for the Sigma 10-20 lens. Then I slightly increased the Exposure, the Black Clipping and duplicated the Contrast. As the river was too dark, I applied an inverted Graduated Filter to the bottom and the reduced the Exposure again. Pushed the Contrast even upper, increased the Clarity to 60 and Converted to Black And White. There I increased the Blue Gray Level - at the moment, my idea was to apply a similar treatment to the one used in 233 seconds. But then I decided to try to decrease the Exposure a lot to have the opposite effect - a very dark look, instead of the brighter one in the other photo - I preferred the way the photo looked that way . I increased the Sharpening and the Black Clipping and then re-adjusted the Brightness - it was too dark. As the vignetting created by the filter holder started to show in the upper left corner, I Cropped it out. The I added another Graduated Filter, this time to darken the sky a little, made small adjustments to the Exposure and Brightness and applied my custom Split Tone preset.
It was ready. I published the photo to the usual sites and after some critiques that mentioned lack of contrast and that the photo was too dark, I decided to fix that issues. I changed the Point Curve to Strong Contrast and increased the Exposure a little.

Final Photo


Link to image
http://jpgmn.deviantart.com/art/60-Seconds-192438666

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