Over this summer I had the opportunity to hike up to Kehlsteinhaus, or Eagle’s Nest, a Nazi-era building associated with Adolf Hitler, although apparently he was afraid of heights and hated the place. Today it is a building you can tour and a restaurant. There are a couple different ways you can visit. We went early in the day and walked up. It’s tough if you decide to do it that way, wear hiking boots, monitor the weather, dress in layers, and bring food and water. I didn’t go into the building itself, I was there for the views:
ISO 250 f/11 18mm 1/320sec
I’ve edited this in Luminar. The edits I will discuss below are a few that I don’t often do as part of my workflow:
ISO 250 f/11 18mm 1/320sec
The first was a custom white balance. I used the little eyedropper to find a neutral grey and clicked. I struggle with white balance sometimes, mostly because I don’t work with it a lot. I think that my camera does a pretty decent job most of the time. The other two filters that I used here were the dehaze and the polarizing filters. A lot of times, if a scene is hazy, I let it stay that way. I think that is just a matter of personal preference, haze either bothers you or it doesn’t and generally speaking, I fall into that second category.
Even though I am posting this, I don’t really feel like I am finished with this photo. I’m not completely satisfied with the edit and think I may prefer the original to the edit. I’m going to let this sit, probably for months, then I’ll take another look and re-evaluate. That’s the beauty of digital, another version is always possible.
Feel free to leave a comment or question below.
Cheers!
Added to A Photo A Week Challenge, Opposite Weather, because man, is this photo the exact opposite of today’s very grey day!
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Eagles Nest sounds interesting, beautiful views. The changes are subtle and the original is probably my favourite version.
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Yes, as of this morning the original is my favorite, we will see how I feel in a few months.
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Beautiful view and awesome shot. I like the second picture. The first one looks a little dark on the foreground.
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It was completely worth the effort of walking to the top. Thanks very much for your thoughtful comment.
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Your photos bring back lovely memories of a long, hot summer at Königsee. I struggle a bit with the white balance as well, interesting to follow your workflow.
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Yes, white balance will probably be something I will revisit in a future edit.
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I like the edit. Either way, it is a beautiful photo. It is interesting to see what you do. I loved all of the photos I looked at today – a few of your other posts.
Editing can be challenging. With photos I posted today, I used preset edits in Google Photos, rather than mess with editing software. So easy 😄
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Thanks very much for your visit and kind comment.
Presets are something that keep getting better in my opinion. I’ve even made a few of my own, as the process of doing that has gotten easier as well.
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I haven’t tried to make my own presets, yet.
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It’s not terribly difficult but it was something that I hadn’t really dabbled with until now.
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I like the way removing most of the haze enlivens the distant wooded slope in the central area and the way the polarizing filter makes the sky more dramatic (and reminiscent of bokashi in Japanese prints). Full disclosure: when I took landscape photos in ancient times (with the filters on camera lenses before they migrated to software tabs), I nearly always wanted the haze and polarizing filters.
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And my guess would be that your experience actually using those filters on your camera has made you better at using the filters digitally. I don’t have that experience, so I feel like I am learning on the software, which is probably a less effective way to go about it.
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Given the way software supports Before/After comparisons, my guess is that learning with software is more effective (as well as much cheaper 🙂 ).
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Yes, cheaper by far I’d say 🙂
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