Meteora III

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

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Meteora II

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

Read more