The Story Behind My Photos

Underground

2011-06-06T00:49:00.005+01:00

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

60 Seconds

2011-01-16T22:10:00.006Z

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

Palácio do Sola III

2010-10-10T15:25:00.005+01:00

The Story
September 2010. I had moved to the new house a couple months earlier and I remembered that, when I was considering buying this house, I went to google maps to check the surroundings. At that time I saw some abandoned houses nearby and I decided to check them out. I saw in the satellite pictures two candidates at a walking distance from home. I marked them in my photo map and decided to google for some more abandoned houses nearby. I found out that an old palace was in ruins and it was very near from home. This was a Friday evening and the weather forecast for the weekend had some cloudy skies. So I decided that I would go scout these places in the next day.
Saturday, I left home with the gear and walked to the first abandoned house in my list. It was a very small house in a place that had no interest whatsoever so I moved on to the next. The second one didn't inspired me any security: I wasn't even sure if it was abandoned, there were cars parked nearby and it was very isolated. I decided it wasn't worth the risk and walked on to the last one on the list: The Sola's Palace (Palácio do Sola).
When I got there, I saw a big open field adjacent to the main building and decided to walk across it to get some good perspectives on the house. Turned out that the house was on top of a small hill, the open field was over crowded with high weeds and there was no entrances there.
I turned back to the street and tried another entry that led directly to some secondary building of the complex. With all my senses in alert state (you never know what you are going to find in that kind of places) I proceeded to the first room. It had no ceiling, as almost every rooms in the entire complex. This was somehow good as the probability of running onto inhabitants was very low. In the entire complex I saw only about 2/3 rooms with ceiling (one of them had a mattress and that meant someone was living there).
I took a lot of pictures in the whole complex and called it a day.

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

Shutter Speed:1/125 second
Aperture:F/9.0
Focal Length:10 mm
ISO Speed:200

Original Photo

Post Processing
This photo was kinda cliche: the 10-20 deformation, the corner alignment, the surrounding trees, the great sky. Maybe that was the reason why it was the fourth to be chosen form that day. The treatment on this one was exactly the same as in the preceding two (Palácio do Sola I and II) and it was meant to be some sort of trilogy. Somehow, this one grew on me as the days went by.
I imported it into Lightroom, and applied the same processing used in Barri Gotic (I created at the time a preset called "JPN - Gothic") as a starting point. Then I adjusted the Vignetting to my like, decreased the Fill Light, increased the Exposure and convert it to Black & White (increased the Greens and the Yellows, decreased the Blues and the Aquas). To compensate the Exposure increment, I added a Graduated Filter to darken the sky a bit. Changed the Point Curve to Strong Contrast, slightly increased the Clarity and decreased the Temperature to 5000. To finalize it, I did some Color Noise Reduction. These were the adjustments made to the first one of the trilogy. For this specific one, I've also increased the Fill Light, the Green Gray Level and the Black Clipping.

Final Photo

Link to image
http://jpgmn.deviantart.com/art/Palacio-do-Sola-III-180600139

House Of Doom

2010-10-09T22:35:00.005+01:00

The Story
July, 2009. It was summer but it felt like it was Autumn. The weather was too bad for the beach so my wife suggested that we went to Palácio Nacional de Queluz (check the Palácio Nacional de Queluz photo story for more details)...
The sky was great that day, cloudy as I like it, so I started to try some different perspectives from the palace building. It didn't took me long to mount the ND Grad filters in the camera to enhance the sky even more.
I wasn't quite satisfied with the different perspectives and this one was my favorite... but it had a big problem. The big flower pots that were at the sides of the walkway weren't at symmetrical positions.
I took some more photos and then we went inside the palace.

Equipment / Technical Info
Nikon D80
Sigma 10-20mm F4-5.6 EX DC
Hitech 85 ND 0.9 GRAD SE filter

Shutter Speed:1/160 second
Aperture:F/9.0
Focal Length:12 mm
ISO Speed:100

Original Photo

Post Processing
This photo was one of my top candidates from the ones I took in that photo trip. But, as I suspected, the asymmetrical pots were completely ruining the photo. So it rested for 13 months in my hard drive waiting for the day I would decide to give it a chance.
In August 2010, with my photo trips cut very short, I decided to give it a try.
I imported it into Lightroom, slightly aligned it and started to try some of the presets. The one that shed some light was "Civil War 2" preset by Vidular (you can find it here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vidular/2456010834/). What if I dramatically increased the vignetting to hide the asymmetrical pots? That preset overexposed the center of the photo, so I reduced the Exposure by 1 EV. Then I also reduced the Sharpening and converted to Grayscale (increased the Greens and the Yellows). Then came the hard part: try to apply Vignetting that would hide the pots, but wouldn't ruin the photo. This was a long step with a lot of try and error until it eventually ended in a acceptable combination. Finally, I've applied my custom Split Tone setting (the one that I used in so many photos like: King of Darkness, Bridge To Neverland or Old Boat).
And that was it. Still not quite fun of the asymmetrical pots, but I think that, overall, it's a nice photo.

Final Photo

Link to image
http://jpgmn.deviantart.com/art/House-Of-Doom-174536519

Arco de S. Bento

2010-05-23T22:34:00.004+01:00

The Story
April 2009. Since some time I started to leave the car home and take the public transportation to go to work. I would pick the train to Sete Rios and there I took a company bus to work.
Sete Rios was an area of Lisboa that I never properly explored before, photographically speaking. So, one day I took an early train and scouted the area for some interest points. There we have the Twin Towers, an hotel and some other buildings that captured my interest.
In the next weekend after this scouting, I decided to grab the gear and head there. My wife went shop seeing at El Corte Inglés and I started discovering this area.
I started in the Twin Towers (next to Sete Rios train station) and then walked across the José Malhoa Avenue towards Praça de Espanha. A lot of interesting buildings exist in this avenue and in Praça de Espanha there is a Triumphal Arch. This arch was part of the Aguas Livres aqueduct and then it was dismantled and became a pile of rocks for some decades. Nowadays it is, re-assembled, in Praça de Espanha.
The sky that day wasn't overcast as I like it, but it had some high clouds to compose the scenario. I took some photos of this place and then head back to my wife.

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

Shutter Speed: 1/160 second
Aperture: F/9.0
Focal Length: 10 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Original Photo

Post Processing
This photo was my first choice from the ones I took that afternoon and it was published in the same day it was taken.
I imported the NEF file into Lightroom, cropped it to my like and removed some dust spots. Then I applied the Mike Lao's "300 V2" preset (you can find it here: http://inside-lightroom.com/?page_id=11) and started retouching some settings: Highlight Recovery to the maximum (the stone was too overexposed after the preset), reduced the Black Clipping and the Vignetting, increased the Sharpening and converted to Grayscale. In the Gray Levels, I slightly decreased the Blues, highly decreased the Reds and highly increased the Greens. Finally I increased Clarity to 30.
In CS4, I've converted to Black & White (Red Filter preset), applied some Shadows/Highlights (0%/20%), added some extra Vignetting (I preferred to do it here rather than in Lightroom because of the significant crop the original image took) and finally: Auto Tone, Auto Contrast, Auto Color and Auto Levels.

Final Photo

Link to image
http://jpgmn.deviantart.com/art/Arco-de-S-Bento-118119110

Old Boat

2010-05-20T21:53:00.004+01:00

The Story
May, 2010. Almost 5 months after my last photo trip, I finally managed to get out of the house. It is true what they say that us, photographers, have the need to shoot frequently, or else we develop some sort of hangover, like a deprived addict:) All this time my shooting sessions had resumed to one subject: my daughter Lara. And don't get me wrong, she is a fantastic model, but portrait just isn't my favorite photographic style. Maybe with time and with the dramatic skies gone for the next months I would dedicate myself more to portrait.
I was in my final working leave of absence for parenthood and a few days previously I had passed this spot (on the way for Lara's doctor :)). It is in Arrentela's part of the Seixal Bay, a place I passed by a few times before. There, there is an old boat abandoned in front of some restaurant in the bay.
So, as the weather was good for photography (i.e. cloudy as I like it) I picked up the gear, including the tripod and the ND filters, and headed there. On arrival I noticed that there was a high tide, what was a bit disappointing because it meant that the boat was inside the water. I parked nearby and headed to what was left of the shore to get some good perspective. I tried quite a few shots, with the tripod and the ND filters, only with the ND Grads, without anything... Not quite satisfied I decided to take a walk along the bay to see what else I could find.
I stopped near some sewer pipes and tried some long exposures for a while. After that I returned back to the boat and got somehow lucky: the tide had started to get lower and I could get to the boat. That was the good part. The bad part was that the sun was now much lower and in the back of the boat. I tried a couple shots with the ND Grad filter hand held in front of the lens, covering the flare with one of the free fingers I got left, and then called it a day.

Equipment / Technical Info
Nikon D80
Sigma 10-20mm F4-5.6 EX DC
Hitech 85 ND 0.9 GRAD SE filter

Shutter Speed: 1/160 second
Aperture: F/9.0
Focal Length: 13 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Original Photo

Post Processing
Back home, this photo was one of the few selected. I liked the perspective and it was one of the few that hadn't massive lens flare caused by the Sun in the upper left corner.
I had mixed feelings with this photo has I had with Palafitico. Because of the hard light and the muddy nature of the ground, it was too dirty for my taste. But I quite liked the perspective (if the sky was covered with clouds it would be perfect) so I decided to give it a chance.
I imported the NEF into Lightroom, slightly aligned it and cropped it to my like. Then I changed the Point Curve to Strong Contrast and started playing around with the usual presets. This time, none of the ones I already had used satisfied me. There was another one thou, that could be a good base for further work: COL Hamburg's Funky Twist (you can get it here: http://inside-lightroom.com/?page_id=11).
After the preset, I converted to Grayscale, added some Vignetting and applied my usual Split Tone preset (Highlights: H55, S31; Balance: 53; Shadows: H55, S0). Then, I slightly increased the Exposure and decreased the Blacks.
There was one thing that I didn't liked: the ground was too sharp and dirty. I need to do something to minimize this situation and a Graduated Filter was the answer. I added one to the bottom of the image with -100 in Contrast, Clarity and Sharpness. I also added another with -0,3 in Exposure in the same place. After this, I brushed the boat with an Exposure of 0,4 to light it a bit. To finalize the retouches, I messed with the Grey Levels and decrease the Blues, Magentas and Purples.
In CS4, I just increased the Contrast a little bit. And that was it!
As I said before I had mixed feelings with this one, but I think it turned out OK.

Final Photo

Link to image
http://jpgmn.deviantart.com/art/Old-Boat-163841443

Torre de Monsanto I

2010-05-08T19:30:00.003+01:00

The Story
April, 2009. Every day on my way to work I take this highway and pass by this tower. It is an office building in Miraflores, near Lisboa and it's particular shape always fascinated me. In Portugal we don't have too many high buildings and this is one of the few.
I work in a financial group and, as a benefit, we have the Thursday's afternoon off in the day before Holy Friday. In that Thursday, the sky was promising so I took the gear to work in hope of some good shots after.
In those days, a highway high pass was being built and it was still closed to traffic, so that spot was perfect for the perspective I wanted.
I parked near the construction site and walked across the high pass to be exactly above the highway. I took some shots and then headed to the belly of the beast (the tower itself).

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

Shutter Speed: 1/160 second
Aperture: F/9.0
Focal Length: 10 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Original Photo

Post Processing
This photo was my first choice from the ones I took in that afternoon. As soon I arrived home I started to pick a few to post process.
This one, with the black street and the white lines in the pavement had "Black & White" written all over :)
So I imported the NEF into Lightroom, aligned and cropped it to my like and the head straight to my favorite preset - the one that have all the treatment I applied in King of Darkness and that is the base for some other photos of mine.
Then I reduced the Vignetting, increased the Sharpening and adjusted the Grey Levels (upped the Oranges and Greens a bit).
Finally, I've added a Graduated Filter to even the Vignetting in the top left side.
In CS4, I've adjusted the Levels and added some Contrast.

Final Photo

Link to image
http://jpgmn.deviantart.com/art/Torre-de-Monsanto-I-118657544

Barri Gotic

2010-03-24T22:33:00.004Z

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

Shutter Speed: 1/30 second
Aperture: F/3.5
Focal Length: 18 mm
ISO Speed: 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

233 seconds

2010-02-13T19:15:00.006Z

The Story
December, 2009. The year was coming to an end and our life was about to get a U-turn very soon with the birth of our daughter. The photo trips were very few in that time and this one was to be the last one, for some time. I've already had been to Cais do Ginjal in Cacilhas and had taken some good photos there (like: The Pier and Cais do Ginjal II). This time I was about to try to capture a long exposure of the Tagus River during day time.
I picked the gear plus the tripod and we headed to Cacilhas. I miscalculated the hour and the remaining daylight available. This kind of photos take some time to capture: with preparing time and Long Exposure NR after, a 4 minutes exposure (like this one) takes about 10 minutes.
My wife stayed in the car while I went to the piers to get a good perspective. I knew that the Sun was setting too fast and I would only have a couple tries, at most. This photo was my first one. I picked a pier that would give me a good view over Lisboa, prepared the tripod and took a test run shot. This test run shot is useful to check the perspective and the exposure variables, and to later on compare with the long exposure shot. A couple test shots later I got a good perspective and calculated the exposure time, considering the 10 stops (as I mentioned previously in Rossio photo story, I multiply the exposure time by 1000 and round it upper).
With almost everything in place, I placed carefully the filter holder with the ND filter on it. Now it was time to a very important step: cover the filter holder so no light would come into the lens from anywhere else than the filter itself. For this I used the upper side of a black sock. I cut the elastic area of it, what gave me a dark tissue ring that fits perfectly in the filter holder.
With all set, I used the IR remote to start the exposure in bulb mode and counted 3 minutes. As the night was coming fast and my last tries at this hour of the day went not that good, I decided to increase one more minute to the calculated time. So, almost 4 minutes exposure would be enough, but I would have to wait another 4 to check the result (tip: in long exposure shots, almost every camera have a setting turned on by default - and should remain that way 99% of the times - to reduce the noise produced by the overheating of some pixels in the camera sensor. What the camera does is, after taking the photo, it closes the shutter and takes another shot with the same duration. The point is that the pixels that overheated the first time, will overheat in this second time. Then, the camera processor can compare both shots and remove this "hot" pixels.).
After this shot, I tried another one, 10 minutes long, that didn't came out very good because it was already dark. So, it was a small photo trip that took about 45 minutes and only gave me time to take two photos :)

Equipment / Technical Info
Nikon D80
Sigma 10-20mm F4-5.6 EX DC
Hitech 85 ND 3.0 filter
Slik Pro 340DX tripod

Shutter Speed: 233/1 second
Aperture: F/9.0
Focal Length: 13 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Original Photo

Post Processing
Back home, I went to inspect the two photos taken that late afternoon. The second one was too dark and I tried to get some of it in post processing because it was my favorite in terms of perspective. I failed to "fix" it so I would had to return there another day.
In this one, I first tried to fix the colors to see if it would surprise me but ended up with the black and white. What I've done was the following.
I imported the NEF into Lightroom and started by aligning the horizon and cropping it to my like. Then applied some Highlight Recovery and added a Graduated Filter to darken the sky. Increased the Exposure by one stop, reduced the Vignetting that resulted from the filter holder and converted to Grayscale. Then I adjusted the Gray levels on the Blues (up), Purples (down), Aquas (up) and Yellows (down); boosted the Clarity to 100%, re-increased the Exposure by half a stop and increased the Blacks to 35%. Finally, I updated the Graduated Filter exposure to darken the sky even more and increased the Fill Light.
In CS4, I've simply reduced the noise and applied an Auto Levels.
I kinda liked the result but knew that there were a long road ahead in this kind of photography.

Final Photo

Link to image
http://jpgmn.deviantart.com/art/233-seconds-148090938

Backsided

2010-02-06T16:26:00.005Z

The Story
January 2009. About one month after my last visit to this place, I returned to this abandoned ship yard near the Quinta da Atalaia, Seixal (check Abandonado photo story for more details on this spot). This time, I went in a more proper hour, where I would have some more day light, and with the motivation of exploring even further. Each time I go there, I get more confident (read: less afraid to explore) and I explore a bit deeper into the ship yard.
In this mini photo trip, I took an additional accessory: a grad neutral density filter to darken the sky. The sky was great in that day: very cloudy as I like it.
I explored the same spots that I had explored in the previous trip but in more detail and discovered another interesting spots there. I took plenty of photos this time and stayed there for almost one hour. As in the last trip, I went there alone.
This photo was taken over some very muddy ground, almost in the bay, and it captured this ship, in the rails that would lead it back to water (that never happened, thou :)).

Equipment / Technical Info
Nikon D80
Sigma 10-20mm F4-5.6 EX DC
Hitech 85 ND 0.9 GRAD SE filter

Shutter Speed: 1/15 second
Aperture: F/5.6
Focal Length: 13 mm
ISO Speed: 200

Original Photo

Post Processing
This photo was one of my three choices from the ones I took that afternoon and it was published in the same day it was taken. The other two photos that I published were, one of them in black and white and the other trying to keep the original colors. In this one I decided to apply a different look.
I imported the NEF file into Lightroom, aligned and cropped it to my like. Then I applyied the Mike Lao's "300 V1" preset (you can find it here: http://inside-lightroom.com/?page_id=11) and simply reduced the Vignetting.
It was just that. I really liked the result and decided to don't change anything else.

Final Photo

Link to image
http://jpgmn.deviantart.com/art/Backsided-108437783

The Hill

2010-01-30T21:31:00.004Z

The Story
April, 2008. After New York, the second part in our US trip was Washington DC. I never thought of visiting DC. New York was always the idea, but after one evening at the movies (I can't remember which movie it was, but the story was in DC) I decided that, if we were to cross the Atlantic to see New York, it would be a waste not to go to DC. So we stayed 4 days in NY and the headed to DC for 3 more days (check the NYC - Times Square photo story for more details on the NY trip).
DC is almost the opposite of NY: it's a very clean, organized, low buildings city. It remembered me of European cities like Paris. It has plenty green spaces, the buildings are monumental and it was kinda hot (in opposition to NY where we freezed) when we were there. It has lots of monuments and we tried to see the most of them.
We traveled by train to DC and it was a very enlightening trip. We passed across Philadelphia and Baltimore on our way to DC. There was one thing that surprised us a lot. If we forget all the glamour of the great cities, the rest of the country is very poor. The suburbs are something unthinkable in European standards: very poor, very dirty, like nothing I can find here in Portugal (which is one of the poorer countries in Europe) except in slums. As the most powerful and most advanced nation in the planet, that kinda shocked me a bit.
Back to DC, we stayed in a very trendy (and noisy, as we found out later) hotel near the center and we mainly walked across the city. One of the spots to see was The Capitol, which, unfortunately, we weren't able to visit inside because all the tickets had been given when we got there. I took some photos there and then we continued our DC visit.

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

Shutter Speed: 1/200 second
Aperture: F/9.0
Focal Length: 20 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Original Photo

Post Processing
January 2010. My daughter was born in the 5th of this month and I was home almost one month now. In a few days I was to return back to work and try to return to my normal life after 4 intense weeks of parenting (it was my first kid). As the work home never stopped (with some 2/3 hours exceptions every now and then) the opportunity to grab the camera and get out was a mirage. So I decided to check some old photos to see if there was any worthy of a second chance. This photo seamed appealing so I decided to give it a shot.
I imported the NEF into Lightroom and started playing around with presets (as usual) and noticed one that I never had tried before: "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, reduced the Vignetting, increased the Contrast, the Exposure, the Brightness and the Clarity.
In CS4, I've simply increased the Brightness and the Contrast even more. I tried to increase these settings in Lightroom but, for some reason I can't explain, I didn't managed to get the same satisfactory result there.
And that was it. Basically it's the synaestheta preset with a (small) twist.

Final Photo

Link to image
http://jpgmn.deviantart.com/art/The-Hill-152324661

The Watch

2010-01-30T17:16:00.007Z

The Story
February, 2009. My new acquisition, the 10 stop filter from Hitech, had arrived a few days ago. I was looking to buy an extreme Neutral Density filter since the first time I had seen photos with long exposures during the day. Now that I already had the filter, I started searching for potential spots. They had to be near a water scape. After some search I decided to go to Cabo Raso, near Cascais, about 35 Km from Lisboa. This is a very common spot for long exposure shots near Lisboa.
In this day the sky was cloudy and that would add some extra interest to the scenery: moving clouds :) So I talked with my wife and she agreed to take a small trip there. I packed the usual gear plus the tripod and we headed to Cabo Raso. When we arrived, we parked the car near the lighthouse and my wife stayed inside reading while I went exploring.
First I went towards the rocky beach that's near the lighthouse. I tried some classical perspectives with the rocks in the sand in the foreground and the sea in the background. I had lots of problems with these shots: it was windy, the wide angle lens made me approach the sea and the spray kept the filter dirty all the time. The few shots I managed to take without spray were full of noise from the filter holder light (Later on I discovered a good technique to get around this issue: use part of a sock around the filter holder).
For some tips on how to proper use these kind of filters, please check the Rossio photo story.
Next stop: the lighthouse. This time, from an upper level, I had all the conditions to get away from the spray and try the filter. I took some photos with the lighthouse in the frame. From this same spot, I noticed some abandoned watches that were part of an old fortification that existed there. I took a couple pictures of these watches and get back to the car. The Sun had already set and it was too dark to continue. For the first experiment I was satisfied.

Equipment / Technical Info
Nikon D80
Sigma 10-20mm F4-5.6 EX DC
Hitech 85 ND 3.0 filter
Slik Pro 340DX tripod

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

Original Photo

Post Processing
When I reviewed the few photos taken this day, I came to a conclusion: almost all of them were rubbish. They were too dirty and too dark. Even this one, if you look at it, it's badly exposed (note: if you take this kind of photos very near the sunset, it's hard to get the exposure right because the light is fading rapidly. You need to increase the exposure time quite a lot than the calculated one) and the colors are all wrong. This last problem was a non issue because the idea was to convert it to Black and White.
I imported the NEF into Lightroom and started by removing some dust spots (they were more visible because I used a very small aperture) and then adjusted the White Balance and the Blue Hue (I always try to get the colors right before converting to Black and White, who knows if the real colors surprise me). Then I added some Fill Light and increased the Blacks, added a Graduated Filter to darken the sky a bit just before I increase the Exposure. Then I started playing around with presets and ended up using the "Matt's Classic Split Tone" preset (you can find it here: http://www.lightroomkillertips.com/2007/monday-preset-my-favorite-split-tone/), followed by some high Vignetting increase and by another preset: "Civil War 2" preset by Vidular (you can find it here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vidular/2456010834/). Finally, I adjusted the Vignetting to my like.
In CS4, I've converted to Black and White (Maximum White preset), increased the Contrast and applied the "Warm (26)" action (you can find this and other actions to simulate the effect of Gradient filters here: http://www.thelightsrightstudio.com). 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/The-Watch-114546227

Mosteiro da Batalha I

2010-01-19T15:43:00.009Z

The Story
November 2009. My wife was now a little more than a month away from the scheduled date for the birth of our daughter. Her mother's birthday was a few days before this day so we went to Marinha Grande in the weekend for her to be with them.
It was a rainy day and I had been googling for some interesting places nearby for some photo trip. I identified two places: Batalha and Nazaré. We had lunch with her folks and then I drove to Batalha. The idea was to take some photos of the Monastery and then go to Nazaré.
When I arrived at Batalha, it was raining quite a bit. I waited a couple minutes in the car to see if it would stop, but it didn't. Tired of waiting, I picked up the gear and the umbrella and went for a look around. Maybe the rain would stop meanwhile... It didn't. I started with the Unfinished Chapels, where I took some photos and them started to go around the monument to search for another interesting spots. In the opposite side of the monastery, there is the entry to the church itself, so I went in.
This church is quite different from the usual churches: it has no statues, almost nothing to remind us that it is a church. The day was very dark because of the clouds and the inside of the church was lit only by chandeliers light which created a very interesting atmosphere. I started experimenting different perspectives and this one was the classic one: a symmetrical view of the main hall, with one chandelier on each side. I took some other photos in different perspectives in the, almost one hour that I've been there. I was fascinated with the lightning and the low light on the outside allowed me to capture the stained windows perfectly, without underexposing the inside of the church.
I was looking for some good church interior photos for some time now, but never got satisfied with the result... until this day.
Of course that Nazaré trip was canceled. When I left Batalha it was already nighttime.

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

Shutter Speed: 1/3 second
Aperture: F/4.0
Focal Length: 10 mm
ISO Speed: 800

Original Photo

Post Processing
This was my first choice from the dozens of photos I took that afternoon. At first I thought of converting it to Black & White, but quickly gave up that idea. The colored stained windows deserved to be left untouched.
So I imported the NEF file into Lightroom and done minor adjustments: corrected the White Balance, slightly increased the Blacks, boosted the Clarity to 50%, increased the Vibrance, reduced the Saturation and added some Sharpening.
In CS4, I've: reduced the Noise, adjusted the Levels ("Increased Contrast 1" preset), reduced the Saturation and adjusted the Midtone Levels in Color Balance.
That was it, just minor adjustments as you can check in the final image.

Final Photo

Link to image
http://jpgmn.deviantart.com/art/Mosteiro-da-Batalha-I-144401972

Abandonado

2010-01-15T22:21:00.011Z

The Story
December 2008. It has been over a month that I had discovered a very interesting spot. Near the Quinta da Atalaia, Seixal (where the PCP's Avante festival is held) there are a few abandoned ship yards in the Seixal bay. I discovered this spot almost by accident in a Portuguese photography forum's member site.
The first time I've been there, I was with my wife and I was simply scouting the place, finding how to get there, and having a feel of the area itself. These abandoned places are usually hangout places for homeless and junkies, so caution is advised. So that day I just looked at the outside of the place, took a couple pictures, and rescheduled a more detailed visit.
It happened in December of 2008 and this time I went alone. I parked the car near the bay and waited for the people that were there to left before I went in. I didn't know how abandoned this place really was so I went in with eyes on my back, listening to every possible noise that could alert me for some sort of danger.
There are quite a few abandoned ships (and buildings) in this place and I started taking some pictures of them. As the ships are abandoned in the bay, the ground is all muddy (and who knows what else) so there is an amount of risk involved. This ship wreck immediately caught my attention. The ship was broken in two pieces and the front piece is very small but with the wide angle it looks bigger. I took some shots of it and moved on to some other ship wrecks.
The evening was coming very fast and the light became too low. As I didn't took a tripod, the trip was over. "I will return another day", I was sure.

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

Shutter Speed: 1/15 second
Aperture: F/4.0
Focal Length: 10 mm
ISO Speed: 250

Original Photo

Post Processing
This photo was my only choice from the ones I took that late afternoon. The idea was to convert it to black and white or sepia.
I imported the NEF file into Lightroom, aligned and cropped it to my like. Then I increased the Blacks and the Saturation on the Reds, Greens, Yellows and Oranges. Added some Fill Light, reduced the Luminance on the Blues to darken the sky a little and adjusted the White Balance to make it look more warm. Finally, I corrected the Purple Fringing by increasing the Blue Chromatic Aberration.
In CS3 I've done some Shadows & Highlights (10%/50%), reduced the Saturation by 5%, and done Auto Tone, Auto Contrast and Auto Colors. Then I converted it to Black & White with an Action from Manyk "Manyk's B&W Conversion" (you can find it here: http://manyk.deviantart.com/art/Manyk-BW-Conversion-29977377) and then applied the "Warm (27)" action (you can find this and other actions to simulate the effect of Gradient filters here: http://www.thelightsrightstudio.com). Finally, I added some strong Vignetting.
The choice of the Vignetting was made to compensate for the fact that the sky was completely "naked" (i.e. without any clouds) and the Sun had set behind the ship wreck.

Final Photo

Link to image
http://jpgmn.deviantart.com/art/Abandonado-105150842

Misty River I

2010-01-13T18:14:00.004Z

The Story
It was a Sunday afternoon in the end of 2008's summer. I had finished lunch and was in my kitchen in Corroios (near Almada, Portugal) doing the dishes (check the Bridge To Neverland photo story for more details)...
I arrived at the monument and sometimes I couldn't even see the bridge because of the fog. I took some photos from ground level and head straight to the top. From there the view was breathtaking. I took plenty of shots from the top and then returned back to the ground. In ground level I took a few more and this one was my favorite. I loved the amount of detail in it, the BUS crossing the bridge was great.

Equipment / Technical Info
Nikon D80
AF-S NIKKOR 18-70mm 1:3.5-4.5G ED

Shutter Speed: 1/320 second
Aperture: F/8.0
Focal Length: 48 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Original Photo

Post Processing
This photo was my first choice from the ones I took that afternoon. There was very little to do, basically it needed more contrast (typical in photos taken in fog situations) .
I imported the NEF file into Lightroom and done some Highlight Recovery and increased the Sharpening and the Blacks.
Looking to it now, the difference isn't that much. The issue was that, in the moment I processed it, I was still importing the NEF files directly into Lightroom and, as I mentioned before, Adobe software can't reproduce correctly the NEF files. This original version you see here (as all the original versions in my posts) is the result of a conversion to TIFF in ViewNX and it has the correct info from the original file.

Final Photo

Link to image
http://jpgmn.deviantart.com/art/Misty-River-I-98580228

Misty River II

2010-01-11T22:21:00.005Z

The Story
It was a Sunday afternoon in the end of 2008's summer. I had finished lunch and was in my kitchen in Corroios (near Almada, Portugal) doing the dishes (check the Bridge To Neverland photo story for more details)...
I arrived at the monument and sometimes I couldn't even see the bridge because of the fog. I took some photos from ground level and head straight to the top. From there the view was breathtaking. I mainly used the Sigma 10-20 to capture the scene but as I was in higher ground I also tried some shots with the 18-70. This photo was one of them. I tried to align the bridge towers to the thirds of the image to guide the eyes from the closer tower to the remainder of the bridge, ending in the fog. What I liked more about this shot was the amount of detail that was possible to capture, even in the fog.

Equipment / Technical Info
Nikon D80
AF-S NIKKOR 18-70mm 1:3.5-4.5G ED

Shutter Speed: 1/320 second
Aperture: F/8.0
Focal Length: 35 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Original Photo

Post Processing
This photo was my second choice from the ones I took that afternoon. There was very little to do, basically it needed more contrast (typical in photos taken in fog situations) .
I imported the NEF file into Lightroom and slightly straightened it. Then I've done some Highlight Recovery and increased the Sharpening and the Blacks.
That was it! Some times, all it takes is a minor adjustment.

Final Photo

Link to image
http://jpgmn.deviantart.com/art/Misty-River-II-98584720

Ascensor da Bica

2010-01-04T15:59:00.006Z

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

Shutter Speed: 1/250 second
Aperture: F/9.0
Focal Length: 70 mm
ISO Speed: 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

Navegadores

2010-01-01T18:53:00.007Z

The Story
June, 2009. In this day my wife felt like going for a walk in Belém (check the Museu de Marinha photo story for more details)...
We started by visiting the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos and then moved on to Padrão dos Descobrimentos. Padrão dos Descobrimentos (Monument to the Discoveries) is a monument that celebrates the Portuguese who took part in the Age of Discovery, or the Age of Exploration, of the 15th and 16th centuries. It is located on the estuary of the Tagus river in the Belém parish of Lisbon, Portugal, where ships departed to their often unknown destinations.
I started trying some angles that could take advantage of the beautiful skies that were that afternoon. First, I tried to get the lines in the pavement to guide the eyes to the monument and from there to the clouds. I took some photos with this perspective and then approached the monument and started exploring uncommon perspectives. As almost all the times I went there, there were a lot of tourists around the monument what make me point upper to crop them off. It was then that I realized this uncommon angle. The clouds appear to be an extension of the monument itself and gives us the idea that the navigators are contemplating (or fearing) them.

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

Shutter Speed: 1/160 second
Aperture: F/9.0
Focal Length: 10 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Original Photo

Post Processing
This one was an almost ready photo as it came out of the camera.
There were two little details to address: that little bit of land in the lower right corner had to go and the colors would need a more cold and contrasted feel.
I imported the photo into Lightroom, cropped the right corner and applied an Auto Tone. It was better, but I needed to bring that sky even more. So I applied the Mike Lao's "300 V1" preset (you can find it here: http://inside-lightroom.com/?page_id=11) and the result was what I was looking for. In CS4 I've simply done: Auto Tone, Auto Contrast, Auto Color and Auto Levels.
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
I was quite satisfied with the result, which is a rare thing. :)

Final Photo

Link to image
http://jpgmn.deviantart.com/art/Navegadores-124771032

Cais do Ginjal II

2009-12-31T18:29:00.007Z

The Story
June, 2009. It was summer time but it didn't felt like it (check The Pier photo story for more details)...
One of the perspectives that I was looking for was this one: the deck in the left, the 25 de Abril bridge in the back and Lisboa on the right. In the middle, the pier, like a serpent in the river.

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

Shutter Speed: 1/100 second
Aperture: F/8.0
Focal Length: 10 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Original Photo

Post Processing
This photo was one of my first choices. Later back home I regret that I didn't took the tripod and the 10 stop filter, it was the ideal shot.
So I imported the photo into Lightroom and started playing around with the filters. Honestly, I didn't know how to process this one. My first reaction was: let's convert it to B&W. But I didn't liked the result so I started messing around with the settings to get something out of it.
So, I started by adding a Gradient Filter to the sky to darken it a bit. Then, I increased the Vibrance, the Fill Light, the Contrast and the Exposure. Next step was the White Balance. I wanted to get a more warm feeling, but not too warm because the pier itself was becoming too orange and the river too green. So I reduced the Saturation on the Oranges and on the Greens to compensate the WB adjustment. That was it for Lightroom. Let me stress that I was completely playing around with the settings, not knowing where I was going to. I was just looking for something that would catch my attention.
In CS4 I've done: Auto Tone, Auto Contrast, Auto Color and Auto Levels, then reduced the Vibrance and 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). 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
I was not quite satisfied with the final result: it was a bit too unreal for what I was looking for. But after some time it started to grab my attention so I decided to publish it.

Final Photo

Link to image
http://jpgmn.deviantart.com/art/Cais-do-Ginjal-II-127703569

Meteora III

2009-12-30T21:51:00.007Z

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

Shutter Speed: 1/50 second
Aperture: F/8.0
Focal Length: 40 mm
ISO Speed: 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

BUS

2009-12-27T16:38:00.003Z

The Story
December, 2008. It was Christmas time and my wife, who likes this season (in contrast with me that couldn't care less), convinced me to go to downtown Lisboa to see the Christmas lights. In this time of the year Lisboa is fully decorated with lights on the streets, some say it's the spirit of the season, other would say that it's another way of drawing consumers away from the shopping centers. Anyway, we went to Lisboa. I took the usual gear: the D80 and the Sigma 10-20.
This Sigma lens allows me to shoot with significant lower shutter speed than any other lens that I own (Tip: the common rule is that you can shoot in the inverse proportion of the focal length. With this 10mm lens it means that you can shoot with 1/10 seconds speed and have a good possibility that the photo wouldn't get blurred).
We parked in the Restauradores square and then went thru' Rossio, Rua Augusta and Comércio square. Near Comércio square you have a smaller square that is where the city hall is: Município square. I took some shots of the city hall and then, when we were heading back to Comércio, I've noticed the BUS letters on the pavement. I was, at the time, exploring the lines in the photos and also the Dutch Tilt perspectives. Without too much preparation, always on the move (my wife was getting kinda bored of my photographic stops all along the way) I tried to get a good perspective on this street.
It was already nighttime and the lightning on this street wasn't that generous, so I raised the ISO to 400 and took advantage of the 10mm to capture the low light street. I only took this photo of this spot.

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

Shutter Speed: 1/13 second
Aperture: F/4.0
Focal Length: 10 mm
ISO Speed: 400

Original Photo

Post Processing
This photo walk gave me some good photos and this particular photo was in the lower half of that list. It had almost every reason to get rejected: it was too dark and it was to noisy from the low light and high ISO. I really don't like photos with low detail, I prefer when I look at a photo a can see all the details on it. But this photo was the best one from the ones that had lines and the BUS word on it (I took some others in Rossio). I decided to give it a shot anyway, if it was a bad call I would loose €1.
Let me explain this €1 stuff... Since I entered the digital photography world that I stopped printing photos. With the exception of some vacations photos that my wife would print, I never had printed some of my photos before. One day, after buying the Nikon D80 (I had a Sony DSC-V3 compact camera before), I decided to print some of the Nikon photos because we were preparing to go on holidays and I didn't wanted to have any bad surprise afterward. So I selected a few photos and had them printed in several formats. One of the formats was Mate 20x30 (cm). I was amazed with the result. From that point on, I decided that I would print on that format all the photos that I would publish. Each print costs about €1 :) This way I could feel the photos in my hands and also would make me (at least most of the times) be more selective of what I publish.
Well, back to post processing, I imported the file into Lightroom and first of all I cropped it to my like. Then I increased the Exposure, the Blacks and the Contrast. The sky was still a bit electric blue so I reduced the Saturation and the Luminance of the Blues to the minimum.
It was still with low contrast so I started to try some presets. I ended up choosing "Matt's Sin City - Light Red" preset (you can get it here: http://www.lightroomkillertips.com/2008/presets-sin-city-look-sort-of/). That was it for Lightroom, so I moved on to CS3 and there I've: converted to Black & White (Red Filter preset) and done some Auto Tone, Auto Contrast and Auto Color.
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/BUS-106221441

Flatiron, NYC

2009-12-25T17:08:00.006Z

The Story
April, 2008. After more than a year after the original planned date for visiting New York, we finally managed to go there (check the NYC - Times Square photo story for more details)...
In our second day in New York we still had a lot of places to visit. The Flatiron Building was one of them. This peculiar building is one of the first skyscrapers ever built and it is more than 100 years old. It was finished in 1902 and it is a landmark in New York City. From this perspective, we can see that it is very thin in the front, clothing iron shaped (hence it's name).
I took some photos of it and moved on to the next spot.

Equipment / Technical Info
Nikon D80
AF-S NIKKOR 18-70mm 1:3.5-4.5G ED

Shutter Speed: 1/250 second
Aperture: F/3.5
Focal Length: 18 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Original Photo

Post Processing
This photo rested over 20 months in my hard drive, waiting for it's turn. Well, Christmas day, 2009 was the day.
I had imported this photo into my Lightroom catalog a few days after our arrival from NY, back in 2008. I had tried almost all of my presets in this one, but never got quite satisfied with the result. In this day, I decided to let the presets aside and do it manually from scratch.
First I straighten it and applied the proper crop. Then I increased the Sharpening and reduced 1 stop to the Exposure to darken the sky a bit. This left the photo too dark and brought me to the next step: increase the Fill Light. Then I increased the Blacks, the Clarity and the Contrast; reduced the Exposure another stop and increased the Brightness to compensate. To darken the sky even more, I reduced the Luminance of the Blues to the minimum. Now it was ready for the Black & White conversion. I prefer to do this step in CS4, so I imported the photo there.
In CS4, I've done Auto Levels, Auto Contrast and Auto Colors, and converted to Black & White (Infrared preset). I then added some Vignetting, increased the Contrast and the Brightness and had some noise reduction (the clouds part was a bit noisy). And that was it.
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/Flatiron-NYC-147974783

Olympic Sunset

2009-12-23T23:45:00.006Z

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)...
After spending a couple days sightseeing the historical places in Athens, we decided (as advised by our guide, i.e, my sister) to check the Olympic Complex. The Olympic Complex was built for the 2004 Summer Olympic Games, held in Athens, the birthplace of the Olympic Games.
The weather was kinda cloudy, almost rainy, but we decided to go anyway. After all, there isn't as much places to see in Athens as I thought. We picked the subway and when we got there, the first thing that captured my attention was the metallic structures. The main entrance of the Olympic Complex has a big metal structure with fountains around it. We started our visit there. I picked the camera and tried several perspectives with the fountains and the metal structure.
After a few shots, I noticed that the sun was setting in behind one of the pavilions. The sun, the clouds, the water mirror, the trees and the pavilion combined into this picture. I also find the line formed by the lake shore, combined with the lines of the pavilion, quite interesting.

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

Shutter Speed: 1/125 second
Aperture: F/5.6
Focal Length: 20 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Original Photo

Post Processing
I liked this photo almost as it came out of the camera.
A few things were to be corrected, though: the colors were a bit dull and the sky was burn (white, without any color information).
I imported it into Lightroom and applied the Highlight Recovery to the maximum. I then, increased the Contrast and the Vibrance, added some Vignetting and reduced the Luminance for the Oranges, Yellows and Reds. In CS4, I've just increased the Contrast a bit more. That was it.
I should have been more careful in the location and prevented the sky from being burned out. Somethings can't really be recovered in post processing and this is one of them (tip: always expose the photo to prevent the highlights burn out. It's easier to recover the shadows than the highlights).
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/Olympic-Sunset-110254658

Rua Augusta

2009-12-21T21:54:00.006Z

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

Shutter Speed: 30/1 second
Aperture: F/16.0
Focal Length: 12 mm
ISO Speed: 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

The Pier

2009-12-20T17:33:00.004Z

The Story
June, 2009. It was summer time but it didn't felt like it. The day was very cloudy, almost rainy. A few days before I've been scouting a spot near my home that I thought would give a good photo: the former Lisnave shipyards, in Cacilhas, Almada on the south bank of Tagus river. In the day I went there for the first time, I found a good place to shoot the Lisnave site, from a higher ground, but the day was sunny, so I left it for another proper day. That proper day had arrived: the sky was covered with clouds.
I picked the gear and went to Cacilhas take the shot. After a couple shots there I remembered that I hadn't properly explored the Ginjal pier in Cacilhas. So I parked in the pier and started exploring the site. This pier is next to the ferry that connects to Lisboa and it is about 2500 feet (750m) long. It is filled with abandoned houses and warehouses and some not abandoned ones. I took plenty of shots, trying to get new perspectives, and this one was one of my last photos there. Less than five minutes after this shot, it started to rain a lot so this photo trip was over.
A few perspectives were missing, so I'll return there someday.

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

Shutter Speed: 1/100 second
Aperture: F/8.0
Focal Length: 10 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Original Photo

Post Processing
Back home, this photo wasn't, surprise, surprise, one of my first choices :) Only almost one week after, I decided to give this photo a chance. My first thought was to find a way to darken the clouds and give it a more dramatic look.
I imported it into Lightroom and adjusted the perspective with a proper Crop. I've added a Graduated Filter to darken the sky and lighten the river. Then, I've increased the Exposure, the Contrast, the Fill Light, the Clarity and the Sharpening. I wasn't fully satisfied so I started playing around with the presets. I ended up choosing the "Civil War 2" preset by Vidular (you can find it here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vidular/2456010834/). After the preset, I've lightened the pier base with a brush so that it would show more detail.
In CS4, I've done: Auto Tone, Auto Contrast, Auto Color and Auto Levels. Then I converted to Black and White (Green Filter preset) and increased the Vignetting to the maximum. Finally, I've warmed the photo a little with the "Warm (26)" action from TLR (you can find this and other actions to simulate the effect of Gradient filters here: http://www.thelightsrightstudio.com).
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/The-Pier-128186829

Rossio

2009-12-19T17:55:00.007Z

The Story
April, 2009. My wife's parents came to visit us and we had lunch at our place. After lunch my wife thought of taking them for a walk in downtown Lisboa.
A few weeks before, I've bought a new filter and I was eager to try it in a urban scenario. This filter was a 10 stop ND (neutral density) filter. With it I could do some long exposures in broad daylight. This kind of exposures would allow me to, for example, capture the clouds movement.
So I packed the material (camera, lenses, filters, filter holder, tripod) and we headed to Lisboa. 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.
The 10 stop filter is a bit tricky to use and I can't really say that I've already managed to use it properly. I will share with you some guidelines on how to use this filter:
- You need a tripod. This filter will cut 10 stops of light and what this means is that, if in a regular photo you will shoot at 1/100 seconds shutter speed, with this filter the same shot (without changing any other setting) will require a 10 seconds exposure (give or take).
- You must mount the camera on the tripod without the filter on and first choose the angle. After you choose the angle you must memorize the settings (Aperture, Shutter Speed) and move the camera into Manual mode (I usually shoot in Aperture mode). After the angle is chosen, you also need to change the focus to Manual.
- So, you got the camera on the tripod, without the filter, in Manual Focus mode. Now you must do some math :) I've simplified it: I simply multiply the Shutter Speed that the camera calculated in Aperture Mode for 1000. In doubt, I will chose the higher speed interval (the math may not give you an available speed interval).
- After the settings in Manual mode are set, I gently put the filter on the camera, taking extra care to not touch the zoom ring, nor the focus ring.
- Now all is set. I use the remote control (if you don't have it, just use the timer) to take the photo.
- Another word of advice: with this high exposures during the day, the slightest amount of light that reaches the sensor from anywhere else than the filter itself will ruin the photo. You must take vary care with the viewfinder (cover it with the appropriate cap) and the space around the filter holder (this one I didn't managed to do it very well - my last idea was to use the upper side of a sock - the elastic part - cut off from the rest of it, until I get a fabric ring that will, hopefully, prevent any light from reaching the lens. I hadn't tried it yet).
So, I took a couple shots (they require some time of preparing) and moved on to another spot.

Equipment / Technical Info
Nikon D80
Sigma 10-20mm F4-5.6 EX DC
Hitech 85 ND 3.0 filter
Slik Pro 340DX tripod

Shutter Speed: 30/1 second
Aperture: F/22.0
Focal Length: 12 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Original Photo

Post Processing
When I reviewed the few photos taken this day, I came to a conclusion: almost all of them were rubbish. They were too dirty. Even this one, if you look at it, it's badly exposed and has lots of flare from the light that come from the filter holder holes. Also the colors are quite strange, with the Magentas very high. The latest is a characteristic of this filters: don't care too much with the White Balance or the colors when you are taking the shot. They will never be closer to the real ones. So, I had two alternatives: I could try to fix the colors or I would convert the photo to Black & White. Usually the later is the preferred for it's simplicity. In this photo I went that path.
I imported the NEF into Lightroom and started by removing some dust spots (they were more visible because I used a very small aperture) and then increased the Highlight Recovery and the Contrast. Then I applied the "Matt's 300 Look - Strong" preset (you can find it here: http://www.lightroomkillertips.com/2008/monday-presets-the-300-look) and converted the resulting image to Grayscale. Finally I've increased the Contrast a bit more and moved on to CS4.
In CS4, I've done: Auto Tone, Auto Contrast, Auto Color and Auto Levels. Then I converted to Black and White (Red Filter preset) and increased the Contrast again. 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
I'm not that happy with result to be honest, but for some reason (probably the impact of it) this photo is very popular among my viewers.

Final Photo

Link to image
http://jpgmn.deviantart.com/art/Rossio-118904515

Estrela

2009-12-17T20:55:00.004Z

The Story
November, 2008. I was home with nothing to do in that Sunday afternoon and wanted to get into the car and go somewhere to take some photos. I went to flickr to search for spots nearby that could be interesting. After some search I remembered the Portuguese parliament area in Lisboa. It was near and I've never been to that area (with my camera, I mean), so it was a good candidate. I searched for interesting spots around this area and noticed that, from there to the Estrela area it was very near. So I had found an itinerary: I would go to the parliament area, then go to Estrela and end the day in Belém.
We drove to Lisboa and parked near the Estrela basilica. First we went to the parliament and I took some photos. After that, we walked back to Estrela and while my wife went to a small fair that was in the Estrela garden that day, I stayed near the basilica trying to get some new angles.
I was, at the time, becoming somewhat interested in finding some spots where I could capture the pavement lines to guide the eyes into the photo. Before I left home, I scanned the area in google earth to see if the tram rails in the area could fit that purpose. In location I've started to get in the middle of the street (between cars, of course :)) trying to use that rails. They weren't in a great place that would allow me to compose the photo as I wanted to. But the lines in the pavement were. Another interest of mine at the time was the Dutch Tilt style of photos.
So, with both these styles in mind, I took some photos of the area and went to the next stop: Belém.

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

Shutter Speed: 1/25 second
Aperture: F/8.0
Focal Length: 10 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Original Photo

Post Processing
Went I got home from this small trip, I scanned some photo candidates and selected a few. This was one of my selections, and probably the strongest for the Estrela area. But it was too dark and without color.
So, I imported the NEF into Lightroom and done the following:
- Highlight Recovery
- Added some Fill Light
- Increased Contrast
- Applied the "Matt's 300 Look - Strong" preset (you can find it here: http://www.lightroomkillertips.com/2008/monday-presets-the-300-look)
- Darkened the Oranges, Blues and Greens to the maximum
- Reduced the Vignetting (the 300 preset has very strong Vignetting)
- Increased the Saturation on Yellows, Oranges, Reds, Blues, Greens, Purples and Magentas to the maximum
- Increased the Sharpening, the Exposure, the Contrast and the Vibrance
- Compensated the Blue Chromatic Aberration
- Reduced some Color Noise
It was a very complete processing in Lightroom and the CS3 was ready to get in and do it's part.
In CS3 I've used the Virtual Photographer plug-in (you can find it here: http://www.optikvervelabs.com) with the setting "Fall Colors" and increased the Brightness.
And that was it. I think the result speaks for itself.

Final Photo

Link to image
http://jpgmn.deviantart.com/art/Estrela-102476272

1889

2009-12-16T21:17:00.005Z

The Story
This was my third time in Paris (check this story to get more details). The Eiffel Tower was my main goal in this photo trip. After the great result in shooting "Cristo Rei" (see the King of Darkness photo story) I was looking forward to get a similar shot with one of the greatest monuments in history.
When we arrived at the Eiffel Tower, I started to try some different angles and I quickly discovered that the tower is too big, even for my 10-20, to fit in one photo. At least the way I had imagined it. I took several photos from below, from the street between the tower and Trocadero, and even from across the bridge over the Seine that connects this two places. It was from this last place that I took this photo. My idea was to capture the lines in the pavement, guiding the eyes to the tower which was backed by a great sky.

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

Shutter Speed: 1/50 second
Aperture: F/7.1
Focal Length: 10 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Original Photo

Post Processing
This photo was my first choice from the Paris trip. My original intention was to apply the same treatment as in King of Darkness. After a couple tries I concluded that it wasn't the best treatment for this photo (tip: each photo is one of a kind, rarely you can apply the same exact treatment to two different photos).
So I just added some Contrast and Vignetting in Lightroom and moved on to CS3.
In CS3 I used the Virtual Photographer plug-in (you can find it here: http://www.optikvervelabs.com) with the setting "Sepia" but changed the Effect to "Colorize". I liked this effect because it gave an old look to the photo (hence the title: 1889 - the year of the completion of the monument). After the plug-in, I increased the Brightness, Contrast and Vignetting, applied Auto Tone and Auto Contrast, and added some Shadows/Highlights to reduce some of the highlights (I didn't touched the shadows part).
And that was it.

Final Photo

Link to image
http://jpgmn.deviantart.com/art/1889-89435942

Royal View

2009-12-13T16:39:00.004Z

The Story
March, 2009. My wife was born in Paris but lived the most of her life in Marinha Grande which is a city near Leiria, about 140km north of Lisboa. She only left Marinha Grande when we moved in together and since that time that we frequently go there for her to be with her parents. This day was one of those days. We left home in the morning to be there at lunch time. The trip from Corroios to Marinha Grande is quite quick: it's about 160km, almost all in the highway, so we usually take one hour and a half, two hours top, to get there. We arrived and had some lunch. After that I left them catching up and drove to Leiria to take some photos.
I walked the most of the city center, trying to get some good photos and eventually stopped by the Leiria Castle. This photo was taken from inside of the Leiria's Castle, looking at the city.
As usually, I didn't took my tripod (I rarely take it with me, I haven't got used to carry it all the time yet), so this photo was taken, hand held, in a bracketing sequence, with the intent of trying some HDR processing afterward. In the end, I've preferred to don't go to HDR, but to a Black and White photo.

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

Shutter Speed: 1/125 second
Aperture: F/9.0
Focal Length: 10 mm
ISO Speed: 400

Original Photo

Post Processing
This photo processing was a mess :)
Originally I intended to do some HDR processing with this one. I tried to do it but, as the visibility was very low (it was almost raining and it was very humidity in the air) the result was disastrous.
So I imported the photo into Lightroom and started playing around with the presets. I've applied the "Matt's 300 Look - Strong" preset (you can find it here: http://www.lightroomkillertips.com/2008/monday-presets-the-300-look), followed by 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) and finally the COL Polarizer (can't remember where I got it from).
After this, I've increased the Exposure and decreased the Fill Light, darkened the Blue levels, increased the Contrast and the Sharpening and reduced the color noise. That was it for Lightroom.
I then exported it as a PSD file and opened it in CS4. In CS4, I've done: Auto Tone, Auto Contrast and Auto Color and converted to Black and White. Then, I selected the sky only and applied the "Gray Grad (121)" action to the sky (you can find this and other actions to simulate the effect of Gradient filters here: http://www.thelightsrightstudio.com). Finally I increased again the Contrast. 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/Royal-View-117105040

Museu de Marinha

2009-12-12T23:20:00.007Z

The Story
June, 2009. I was in a two weeks vacation but this time we stayed home. We had been to Athens and Barcelona earlier this year so we thought that these two weeks would be a good time to stay home and catch some beach time. In this day my wife felt like going for a walk in Belém (it's a place in Lisboa that has lots of discoveries related monuments) and then go and eat some "Pasteis de Belém". The "Pasteis de Belém" is a creamy dessert that's typical in Portugal, specially in this zone of Lisboa. There is a big cake shop, that is named after this dessert and was founded in 1837, that sells almost only this (it's their main product). You wouldn't believe this shop: it has capacity for hundreds of people that only go there to eat this dessert. It's always packed. And you can't eat only one, you order them in boxes :) If you ever go to Lisboa you probably will end up there.
So, back to this day in June, as I said, my wife wanted to go for a walk in Belém because of this shop, all the rest was just a pretext :). And that was fine for me. I would take some photos of the area and end the afternoon eating Pasteis.
We drove to Trafaria (a small village in the south bank of Tagus river - we live in the south bank and Lisboa is on the north bank) to pick the boat to Belém. It's a nice ride in the Tagus river and you can appreciate the quiet waters and the view, and you don't need to worry finding a parking spot in Belém ;)
We started our visit with the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos. In the left hand side of the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos you have the Museu de Marinha (Maritime Museum). In front of the main entrance of the museum I idealized this photo: the typical Portuguese Pavement guiding our eyes to the main entrance of the museum. Then the two towers of the museum with a complimentary sky. This had "Black and White" written all over it.

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

Shutter Speed: 1/160 second
Aperture: F/9.0
Focal Length: 10 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Original Photo

Post Processing
As I had idealized this photo before the click moment, it was a clean post processing.
I imported the photo into Lightroom, aligned it and applied the "Matt's 300 Look - Strong" preset (you can find it here: http://www.lightroomkillertips.com/2008/monday-presets-the-300-look) from Matt Kloskowski. And that was it for Lightroom. I then exported it as a PSD file and opened it in CS4. In CS4, I've done: Auto Tone, Auto Contrast and Auto Color. Converted to Black and White and added a strong 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/Museu-de-Marinha-124763713

Palácio Nacional de Queluz

2009-12-11T22:14:00.005Z

The Story
July, 2009. It was summer but it felt like it was Autumn. The weather was too bad for the beach so my wife suggested that we went to Palácio Nacional de Queluz (Queluz National Palace). Queluz is a location in the suburbs of Lisboa on the way to Sintra. The Lisboa area (as other parts of Portugal) is filled with palaces and I'd never went to this one so the idea seamed fine. I thought that I probably would get some good photos of the outside of the palace because the inside (I thought) would probably like any other palace that I've visited before. So I packed the gear and we went to Queluz to take a visit.
When we arrived at the palace there was very few visitors and we get in. First we visited the gardens (that were a bit of a disappointment because they were in need of a little care) and the outside of the palace from the gardens. I took some photos and then we went inside. (The gardens are on the back of the palace so to get there you must go through the palace).
Back inside, after a couple "usual" rooms, we get to a room called "Hall of Ambassadors". This room was very different from all the others: the floor was in black and white tiles, like a chess board. That immediately got my attention. I was looking forward to do a B&W photo with a floor like that one. So I rushed in before any humans would "pollute" the room and started taking some photos in different angles.
I became fascinated with this room. Later on I found out that there are comparisons to Versailles Palace. Queluz is nice, but the comparison to Versailles is a bit exaggerated.

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

Shutter Speed: 1/20 second
Aperture: F/4.0
Focal Length: 10 mm
ISO Speed: 200

Original Photo

Post Processing
This photo was one of my top candidates from the ones I took in this great room. I imported it into Lightroom and started playing around with the presets, as usual. The one I liked best was 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). The idea was to make the photo show the colors I had seen on location. As I was very focused on black and white photos in the past months, I never took too much care with the actual colors when the photos were imported into Lightroom. But in this case I wanted to get the real colors and this preset was the better adjustment I found to this photo.
Note for Nikon users: both Lightroom and CS4 have lots of problems trying to reproduce the real colors from the NEF files (I red somewhere that Nikon didn't provided to Adobe the full algorithm that's used in NEF. That's why Adobe's software can't really reproduce the real colors of NEF files). Later on I discovered a turn around for this issue: instead of importing the NEF files into Lightroom, I convert the NEF files in ViewNX to TIFF and then import the TIFF into Lightroom (or CS4) . Back to post processing...
In this objective of trying to "fix" the photo colors I've adjusted almost everything: Vibrance, Saturation, Clarity, White Balance, Contrast, ... When I got the colors that I liked, I've also added some Fill Light and some brush strokes in the left hand side back corner of the room to remove a disturbing shadow that was in that area and was drawing to much attention there.
Finally, I added a graduated filter to lighten the ceiling and added some Vignetting.
In CS4, I've just done Auto Tone, Auto Contrast and Auto Color. Finally, I've increased the Contrast a bit.
The original idea was to convert it to black and white, but after some experiences, I preferred the colored version.
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/Palacio-Nacional-de-Queluz-128370680

Meteora II

2009-12-10T21:44:00.005Z

The Story
January, 2009. My sister was at the time working in Athens and invited us to go there for a week. It was a great idea: we could spend some time with her and have a guided tour of Athens by someone that was there for some months. One month before we went to Greece, big social disorder erupted in Athens: the anarchist groups of Athens rebelled against the police after some kid being shot and set the city on fire. The epicenter of this "war" was the neighbor were my sister was living in. She wasn't there at the moment (she was traveling in the States) and the situation was so bad that she had to stay in a friends house in the suburbs when she returned from the States. A few days before we went there, we were making the trip plans and she suggested that we could rent a car and go to a place called Meteora (about 360km north of Athens). Her idea was to get away for a couple days from the touristic guide function that she had done dozens of times before (every time some one went there to visit her). She had gone to the Parthenon more times than most Athenians :) I've had never heard of Meteora before but went googling and after a few pictures I was sold.
We had a flight from Lisboa to Madrid and there we would get a new one to Athens. When we landed on Madrid it was snowing. Some guy the seat next to mine (I think he probably was English or American) woke up when we were landing and was very confused (we were landing in southern Europe and it wasn't supposed to be that white) :) The feeling was nice. Everything was white, we took some pictures and rushed to the terminal to get the next flight (our Lisboa flight was already late and the interval between flights was of less than an hour). When we got there it was a mess. To abbreviate this sad story: almost all flights were grounded and the costumer support was packed. We had to stay one full day (and night) in Madrid and picked a new flight to Athens in the next morning. Well, we picked the flight, our bags didn't. We were left without bags for two days after arrival in Athens. Our luck was that we were staying in my sister's house.
All this trouble left my wife very disturbed and the trip to Meteora was in risk. We decided to go there any way :) So we rented a car, booked an hotel, and get to the road.
It was raining almost all the way and when we get to Meteora it was already night. Even so, we took a glimpse of what was waiting for us the next morning: big big rocks in an outstanding scenario.
In the morning we took some breakfast and get back in the car. 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
Sigma 10-20mm F4-5.6 EX DC

Shutter Speed: 1/200 second
Aperture: F/8.0
Focal Length: 20 mm
ISO Speed: 200

Original Photo

Post Processing
As usually, this wasn't my first choice (hence the name ;)). But this time, it got published in the same day that the first choice was :)
In Lightroom I've fixed the White Balance to a more warm one, increased the Vibrance, the Sharpening, the Contrast and the Saturation. I've also added a graduated filter to balance the sky, giving more light to the rest of the photo.
In CS4, I've just done Auto Tone, Auto Contrast and Auto Color.
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-II-110017976

NYC - Times Square

2009-12-09T20:41:00.000Z

The Story
April, 2008. After more than a year after the original planned date for visiting New York, we finally managed to go there. One year before we had to abort the trip for professional reasons, but this time all was set and we did went there. New York was the first stop of our trip. We stayed there for 4 days and the headed to DC for 3 more days.
Before we go, I've visited the B&H Photo website and made a shopping list. In this list was a lens that I was flirting for some time: the Sigma 10-20. I had seen beautiful photos taken with it and decided that the Sigma would be my next buy. At this time the dollar / euro exchange rate was very good to the euro side so, even being aware of the potential problems I could face with Portuguese customs when landing back in Lisboa, I decided that I would by the lens in the States. Even with the potential tax that I could pay in Lisboa, it was still worthy. So I visited B&H Photo (note for photo freaks: this IS The Photography Shop. It's large as a supermarket, has dozens of employees and a big queue on the door before it opens in the morning. And no, there were no promotions on that day :)), Adorama and a handful of small stores all around Manhattan. For my big disappointment, the Sigma 10-20 for the Nikon mount was sold out everywhere. In the third day of our stay in New York, by accident, I found a small store that had one copy of it. I couldn't believe! It was a bit pricey, comparing to the values I've seen on the net, but I couldn't care less. I was in NY and I needed that lens (I could have bought it before going to the States, but I preferred to save some money and buy it there).
So, with my new toy mounted on the D80, I walked the streets, fascinated with all that could fit inside it :)
The sun was setting and that night we had planned going to Times Square. We headed there and I was distracted looking through the 10-20 all the way when we arrived. I started taking photos in all directions and after a couple minutes I decided to look back. The main screen of the square had been all the time in my back. I can't put to works the feeling I had that moment. This place must be one of the greatest places I've ever been to. New York itself is a old, dirty, ugly city, but it has some places that make the trip worthwhile. This is one of them (another one is the view from the Top Of The Rock or from the Empire State Building at night).
This was the first photo, taken with the 10-20, that I published.
To finish, let me just say that this photo was taken hand held (no tripod whatsoever).

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

Shutter Speed: 1/25 second
Aperture: F/4.0
Focal Length: 10 mm
ISO Speed: 400

Original Photo

Post Processing
As you can figure out, there was almost no post processing on this one.
I just imported it into Lightroom and slightly increased the Exposure, Recovery, Clarity and Sharpening.
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/NYC-Times-Square-82858284

The Eiffel Tower

2009-12-08T20:41:00.000Z

The Story
This was my third time in Paris... After the leaving Notre Dame we've walked to the Louvre and finally to the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower was my main goal in this photo trip. After the great result in shooting "Cristo Rei" (see the King of Darkness photo story) I was looking forward to get a similar shot with one of the greatest monuments in history.
The distance between the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower is quite a bit but as we wanted to get the most of our short stay in Paris, we decided to leave the public transports and walk across the streets. Maybe I would have some other photo opportunities this way.
When we arrived at the Eiffel Tower, I started to try some different angles and I quickly discovered that the tower is too big, even for my 10-20, to fit in one photo. At least the way I had imagined it. I took several photos from below, from the street between the tower and Trocadero, and even from across the bridge over the Seine that connects this two places. I didn't went to the Champs de Mars because the sun was setting in Trocadero so I would be with the sun in front of the camera (one tip: light is everything, don't try to take photos against the light if the objective is to capture, not the sunset itself, but what's between it and the camera).
With this limitation on mind, I explored the most I could and took about 20 photos of the tower. It was time to return home and rest for the next morning baptism.

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

Shutter Speed: 1/125 second
Aperture: F/5.0
Focal Length: 10 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Original Photo

Post Processing
As happened with Notre Dame de Paris photo, this one was left in the archive until that standby night almost a year after.
This one was in the queue that night and had exactly the same post processing as the previous. I've only imported it into Lightroom and copied the Notre Dame settings into this one. In CS4, the post processing was also the same.
If interested, please check the Notre Dame de Paris photo story.

Final Photo

Link to image
http://jpgmn.deviantart.com/art/The-Eiffel-Tower-114689127

The Hero

2009-12-08T14:57:00.001Z

The Story
September of 2009, my wife was pregnant and this was probably our last trip for some months. I took 2 weeks off that month and we decided to go and explore another part of our (small) country. We've only passed through the northern region of Minho once before but we've never stayed there. So we decided to head to Braga, where we booked an hotel for a few days, and from there, explore a little of the neighbor places.
In our second day we headed to a nearby town called Barcelos. This town is quite famous because of it's symbol - the "Galo de Barcelos" (Barcelos' cock) - that sometimes is considered a symbol of Portugal. Honestly, Barcelos wasn't on my original plan, but my wife wanted to see the "Galo" so we went there. When we arrived we started to see a lot of cock's spread across the town in the likes of the Cowparade event (but with cocks :)).
In the previous day in Braga the weather was "bad": blue sky (I can't take outside photos with a blue sky! I need some clouds to give the photos some impact), but in this day some clouds started to appear in the sky.
After wandering around a bit in the streets of Barcelos (and just to make it clear: go to Barcelos! It's a small town but it's very nice), my wife went to a kid's store and I headed to a small square that had a small statue in the middle. The statue was a monument to the volunteer firefighters. I approached the statue and started to try some angles, trying to maximize the 10-20 distortion effect. My idea was to give the impression that the firefighter was a giant, returning from the blaze (look at the background clouds) with a child in his arms. I knew in that moment that this photo, if ever published, would be a B&W photo, in the likes of Bridge to Neverland or so.
I took a few photos, with different angles, and continued my way.

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

Shutter Speed: 1/160 second
Aperture: F/9.0
Focal Length: 10 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Original Photo

Post Processing
After returning from our Minho trip, I went to the computer to check all the photos taken. As usual I've selected a few as publishing candidates and this one was included. But it turned out that I had another photo from Barcelos that I liked more, so this one was put aside for a couple days. My thought was that, in this one I would repeat the same 300 preset treatment that I've done over and over again and it was starting to sound cliche. Well, a couple days later I've done it :)
I imported the photo into Lightroom, head straight to my usual custom preset (which, by the way, was the customization that I've made for King of Darkness that got saved as a preset), based on Mike Lao's "300 V1" preset (you can find it here: http://inside-lightroom.com/?page_id=11). I usually start from this custom preset (in some photos) and then make some adjustments (all the photos are different, we can't have a preset "size fits all").
In this photo I then reduced the Vignetting, increased the Fill Light and the Clarity, reduced the Exposure and the Brightness. I also added a graduated filter to the top right corner to lighten it a bit.
And that was it for Lightroom. I then exported it as a PSD file and opened it in CS4. In CS4, I've just adjusted the Levels a bit.
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/The-Hero-137217428

King of Darkness

2009-12-07T21:01:00.001Z

The Story
June, 13th of 2008, regional holiday in Lisboa. I've returned from New York a month before with my long waited Sigma 10-20 lens. I didn't had the chance to try it on architecture photos back home yet and in this afternoon I had a scheduled hair cut in Almada (about 10km from home). I was home alone because my wife was working and I got up kinda late (I usually wake up around 1 p.m. in the holidays and weekends to recover from the workdays) so I was a bit lazy. I didn't feel like having to get out to do the hair cut but it was due for a few weeks so I dressed up and thought: well, I will just go there and get back home after. The thought of taking the camera crossed my mind but I didn't feel like it. Where would I go? At the last moment I remembered: well, I'll take it anyway, maybe when I finish the hair cut, I'll feel like going somewhere. I had the hair cut and when I got back to the car I remembered that the "Cristo Rei" monument was very near, so I headed right there.
When I arrived at the monument, the sky was amazing! I picked up the gear and started to walk around the monument to get the best angle. I took less than 10 photos and get back home.

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

Shutter Speed: 1/250 second
Aperture: F/8.0
Focal Length: 10 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Original Photo

Post Processing
When I got home, I went to the computer to check the results. Almost all the photos were very distorted from the wide angle lens so only a couple were OK. I picked this one up and opened it in Lightroom.
I have a friend who is also a amateur photographer that, all the times I showed him one of my photos his reaction was: well this one would look much better in black and white. He is a B&W freak :) At the time I only tried B&W photos one or twice, but as I had found a lot of Lightroom presets I decided to play around with them. One of the presets instantly had an strange effect on me: the photo looked great. It was my first time trying the Mike Lao's "300 V1" preset (you can find it here: http://inside-lightroom.com/?page_id=11). This preset (kinda) gives the 300 Movie look to the photos. But the photo was still in colors, so I converted it to Grayscale. It blew my mind! It was great! I played around with the Gray Levels to darken the blue of the sky and give some other minor adjustments.
And that was it for Lightroom. I then exported it as a PSD file and opened it in CS3. In CS3, I've just reduced the noise.
This gave me the full size (10Mp) final image.
This photo actually changed all my photography style. After this one, I started to look to B&W, and to photography in general, with new eyes. Now, most of the times, my first step is to convert the photo to B&W to see how it looks.
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/King-of-Darkness-88583055

Notre Dame de Paris

2009-12-05T18:49:00.001Z

The Story
This was my third time in Paris. I've had been there in the summer of 1996 with my father and in March of 2004 with my girlfriend (my wife now). This time (June, 2008) I went there with my wife because it was the baptism of her cousin. We went just for a weekend and stayed in her's aunt's house in Paris. I was lucky, because the original plan was to stay at another aunt's house in the suburbs. I was a bit disappointed with this plan because it was kinda sad going to Paris and don't seeing Paris, but only the suburbs. It turned out that we could stay in the aunt's house in Paris, instead.
I knew that it wouldn't be too much time to wander around in Paris. So the only opportunity that I probably would have it will be the day of the arrival. When we landed in Paris, it was raining and I once again felt that I would miss the chance. But it turned out that the rain stopped and we went home to leave the bags. I had about 4, maybe 5 hours top to rush to the main places and try to get some photos. I didn't wanted to spend those few hours running around because in the next day I had to get up very early to go to the baptism and then we would head back to Lisboa. So I decided that I would only go to a few places: The Notre Dame, The Louvre (outside only, of course:)) and The Eiffel Tower.
To this short trip I decided to take only the essential gear: the D80, two lenses: the 10-20 and the 50 and the SB600 flash. The 10-20 was to the outside photos, the 50 and the flash for the inside church and portrait photos. Just an outside note: beware of using flashes inside a church in a country you can't really speak the language :).
So the tour started in the Notre Dame where I took a few photos (I never got closer to the cathedral than this photo shows), then the Louvre (where I missed the flexibility of the 18-70 lens) and finally the Eiffel Tower. I've walked all this path and skipped all the public transports to get the most of it.

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

Shutter Speed: 1/160 second
Aperture: F/9.0
Focal Length: 10 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Original Photo

Post Processing
When I returned from Paris, I went to the computer to check the results and pick some photos to publish. I took few photos of this trip, the most of them were from the baptism, but there were some from the walk in the streets of Paris. At the time my choice was a photo of the Eiffel Tower that got published and I forgot about the others. Remember this was June of 2008.
In March of 2009, some technical procedure was being made in my workplace and I was asked to be in standby mode to do some remote testing. I have a problem. I really need to sleep at least 7 hours in the workdays and this standby meant that I would have to stay up 2 or 3 hours more than usual. So, with a lot of waiting time on my hands, I decided to look to my photo archive to see if there was any photo that it was worth processing.
Since June of 2008 that this photo was waiting for a chance and this was the night.
I started, as usual, playing around with the Lightroom presets and tried the "Matt's 300 Look - Strong" preset (you can find it here: http://www.lightroomkillertips.com/2008/monday-presets-the-300-look) from Matt Kloskowski. I then decreased the Vignetting, converted to Grayscale, increased the Sharpening and the Contrast, and played around a bit with the Gray levels (nothing fancy, but essential: I increased the green and orange to lighten the trees and the cathedral).
And that was it for Lightroom. I then exported it as a PSD file and opened it in CS4.
In CS4, I've done: Auto Tone, Auto Contrast and Auto Color. Converted to Black and White and cropped part of it to my like.
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/Notre-Dame-de-Paris-114681316

Palafitico

2009-12-05T17:12:00.002Z

The Story
For some time I've seen great photos of a place where we can see wooden piers and small fishing boats lost in a maze of walkways. I've never tried to discover where this place was because I always assumed that it wasn't in Portugal, or if it was, it should be very far away.
One day I was chatting with a friend that also is a photographer about a spot I found very near my home. This spot is an old boat shipyard turned into a boat cemetery. In the middle of the conversation he asked me if I knew a place called Carrasqueira do Sado. I've never heard anything about it but went googling for it. For my surprise this place was the place where all those great photos were taken. Better yet, that place wasn't that far away from my home, it was possible to go there some weekend.
Carrasqueira do Sado is a small place near the touristic spot of Troia, in the Sado river delta. The trip there is a bit lengthy (about 100 Km - 62 miles - from my home) so I left it to a better time (we were somewhere around January and the days were still a bit short).
In the beginning of March, 2009 I talked with my wife and convinced her to go there one Sunday. We get to the car, head straight to Alcácer do Sal (a town nearby) to have lunch. After lunch we stopped by Carrasqueira do Sado in our way to Troia.
In Carrasqueira do Sado we found the Cais Palafítico directions and when we got there it seamed to be just another fishing dock... but in the middle of the mainland. We parked, I picked up the gear and went discovering the place.
It really is a wooden walkways maze, with small wooden houses on the sides, lots of fishing nets and boats laying there. In that day there was a low tide and a strong sun (it was about 3 pm - a terrible photo hour). The idea was just to explore the place and get back more in the afternoon to get the sunset, but I started to try some shots and we took a little longer than I expected. I was also a bit uncomfortable with the fisherman's looking at us, invading they're place. So I decided to just take the photos in that moment and leave to another day, perhaps with another company, to return to capture the sunset.

Equipment / Technical Info
Nikon D80
Sigma 10-20mm F4-5.6 EX DC
Hitech 85 ND 0.9 GRAD SE filter

Shutter Speed: 1/80 second
Aperture: F/9.0
Focal Length: 12 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Original Photo

Post Processing
As always, when I got home from this trip, I went straight to the computer to check the results and pick some photos to publish. I took few photos there and wasn't too much satisfied with them. I picked a few, this one included, and this was probably my first choice.
I started playing around with the Lightroom presets I have and ended using a custom preset from some other photo of mine that was itself already based on another preset from Mike Lao (you can find it here: http://inside-lightroom.com/?page_id=11) - 300 V1.
After applying the 300 preset, I've converted to grayscale and played around with gray levels. I mainly darkened the blues, but also made slight adjustments to the other levels.
Then I decreased the Fill Light and the Vignetting, added some Graduated Filter, increased the Exposure, Recovery and Clarity.
And that was it for Lightroom. I then exported it as a PSD file and opened it in CS3.
In CS3, I've just saved it as JPEG. 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
My first impression of the finished photo was: I don't like it, it is too "dirty" (I can't find another word for it - it looks weird, with low resolution and a high contrast). But I had just made over 200 km and couldn't accept that there wasn't one single photo to show. I called my wife and showed her the photo. She loved it! I couldn't understand it... I don't like the photo and she loves it?
Well, it was a very sad world if everyone liked the same :)

Final Photo

Link to image
http://jpgmn.deviantart.com/art/Palafitico-115298876

Bridge To Neverland

2009-12-04T22:11:00.001Z

The Story
It was a Sunday afternoon in the end of 2008's summer. I had finished lunch and was in my kitchen in Corroios (near Almada, Portugal) doing the dishes. I live in an 8th floor of a building that is on a top of a small hill and I have a great view that reaches the "25 de Abril" bridge (that connects Lisboa to Almada over the Tejo river) and the "Cristo-Rei" sanctuary. I was looking at the window and one time I noticed that I stopped seeing the bridge. I looked carefully and I realized that the Tejo river was covered with a thick fog that was hidding the bridge. I quickly finished what I was doing and said to myself: "I must pick the gear and head straight to Cristo-Rei! It's today!"
The "Cristo-Rei" is a religious monument, similar to "Cristo Redendor" in Rio de Janeiro, that has an observatory deck in the top at an altitude of 184 m (604 ft). From this place we can see the Tejo river and Lisboa. We can also see the "25 de Abril" bridge that is very near. I remember that I went there when I was a child but never had returned.
I arrived at the monument and sometimes I couldn't even see the bridge because of the fog. I took some photos from ground level and head straight to the top. From there the view was breathtaking.
In the hour that I've been there, I took over 100 photos.

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

Shutter Speed: 1/320 second
Aperture: F/8.0
Focal Length: 11 mm
ISO Speed: 100

Original Photo

Post Processing
Funny enough, this photo was my third choice from the ones I've published from that afternoon.
Although it was taken on Sep 21, 2008, I just decided to give it a chance 3 months later.
This situation happens me a lot. I go to some place, take some photos, rush to the computer to choose some to publish and the ones I choose some months later are the best.
Back to post processing, I imported the NEF file into Lightroom and started to play around with some presets I found on the net. In this one I ended using a custom preset from some other photo of mine that was itself already based on another preset from Mike Lao (you can find it here: http://inside-lightroom.com/?page_id=11) - 300 V1.
After applying the 300 preset, I've converted to grayscale and played around with gray levels. I mainly darkened the blues, but also made slight adjustments to the other levels.
Then I decreased the Exposure, increased the Recovery and the Sharpening.
And that was it for Lightroom. I then exported it as a PSD file and opened it in CS3.
In CS3, I've done an Auto Levels and an Auto Contrast, inserted a Gradient (90º, reflected, B&W) in Multiply mode and adjusted the opacity to 15%.
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/Bridge-To-Neverland-107002536

Life In B&W

2009-12-04T21:27:00.001Z

Life in B&W by João Pedro Neves