Cambridge Morning

While autumn can often be rainy and overcast here in England, it can also be brilliant like it was recently on a morning while I was walking in Cambridge:

ISO 200 4.3mm f/2.7 1/320sec

That original file was taken with my point and shoot. My first edit is below:

ISO 200 4.3mm f/2.7 1/320sec

The image has been cropped a bit and I’ve used a foliage enhancer slider to give the colors a bit of a boost.  I liked but didn’t love the result. One of the problems is that part of the sky has been blown out completely. There is no information there, so “fixing” it becomes a bit tricky. The two options that came to mind were sky replacement or a more radical crop.  I went with the latter:

ISO 200 4.3mm f/2.7 1/320sec

I went that direction for compositional reasons. The photo is now much more about the boats, which looked beautiful in the morning light. I also really liked the various reflections in the water and this crop accentuates them. From there I boosted the various golden tones in the image, giving it a bit of a jeweled looked.

While it took a few edits and some time and thought to get to the final edit, I was happy with the edit. What do you think of the final version? Do you like the final composition or do you prefer the original? The crop really does change the image quite a bit. Feel free to leave a comment below.

Cheers!

Picfair version here.

Added to Tuesday Photo Challenge, Reflection, Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge, Places People Visit and Lens Artists Photo Challenge, Changeable.

 

A Floral Surprise

It wasn’t just that these flowers were so pretty:

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It was that they were on the grounds of St. Paul’s Catacombs in Malta that made them a bit of a surprise. This photo was shot with my iPhone and has had very little editing.

Here is the Instagram version:

View this post on Instagram

#Flowers at the #catacombs #Malta

A post shared by Amy Maranto (@marantophotography) on Sep 27, 2018 at 1:26am PDT

Do you have simple but lovely photos like that existing in your archives? Your thoughts are welcome below.

Cheers!

Added to Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge, Pastel Colors, and Flower of the Day.

 

It’s a Tourist Trap, Not Going Back

Still stopped to take the snap:

Lennon Wall, Prague

Cheers!

Added to Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge, Vibrant Colors and Travel With Intent, Six-Word Saturday.

Touch of Red

When I sit down to edit an image it’s true to say that I’m not always sure what I will do with my final version.  Here is the original file of such an image:

ISO 1250 15mm f/11 1/40sec

Editing this image started with a crop. Since it was the little red ribbons that caught my attention on site, my next edit was to give them a saturation boost. I’ve desaturated some of the colors in this image. I then put a radial filter around the angel and sheep and made the rest of the image softer by moving the dehaze slider into negative numbers in the area outside of the filter. Here is the final image:

ISO 1250 15mm f/11 1/40sec

Like several images from my time in Prague, I don’t have a real use for it so to speak. However, I really like many of my images. They are a reminder of how much I enjoyed looking around the city. Prague is beautiful in my opinion. I will keep this image, as I have kept others, just because they make me happy. Sometimes, it’s the little things, like little red ribbons, that catch my eye. It appeared that someone had taken the time to hand tie them in, and that lovely small detail really what made this display beautiful.  Do you often keep images for no other reason than they make you happy? Do you like the edits I have done here?  Feel free to leave a comment below.

Cheers!

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge, Red, and Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, Small is Beautiful.

Malta Evening

Plenty of things have happened in my life that I didn’t really see coming. This scene is one of them:

ISO 1250 22mm f/16 1/60sec

It’s an evening shot of Valletta, Malta. If you had said a few years ago that I would visit I wouldn’t have argued with you exactly, as I do love to visit new places, it’s just that Malta wasn’t on my list of trips that I was planning. Upon reflection, it’s a little odd that I hadn’t been planning. A warm summer destination just steeped in history? A bit of a no-brainer for someone like me.

ISO 1250 22mm f/16 1/60sec

I’ve taken quite a few liberties with my edit here. I love the blue tones of the image, but in the edit, I wanted the warm night to feel a bit more distant and remote, like an older photograph you might find in an attic.  I was inspired to think this way by the history of the island itself. People have been coming and going through the area for a long time. Before them, all types of flora and fauna, and the land itself was very different.

For this particular edit, I changed the temperature, boosted the yellows, added grain, and desaturated the image a bit, a slight crop was also in order. The two images really do have a different feel.  Do you have a preference? Feel free to leave a comment below.

Cheers!

Added to Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge, Shades of Blue and Live Laugh RV, Reflections

From Phone Line to Life Line

I have seen a few of these now in my various travels, and I just think they are a very good idea, a nice use of the iconic phonebox no longer in use:

ISO 25 4.15mm f/2/2 1/230sec

For my edit, I wanted to take out some of the distracting elements and create a more vintage looking photo.  To create the crop I used the line of bricks on the left, which was enough to remove the black street poles and the partial window above the defibrillator. I used a vintage preset for the vintage look but then added back in the hue and saturation of the reds because I didn’t want to lose that iconic red completely in the interpretation. I also put some clarity back into the edit and darkened the corners more than the preset had. Here is the result:

ISO 25 4.15mm f/2/2 1/230sec

What do you think of my interpretation? Do you also use presets as a starting point for editing? Feel free to leave a comment below.

Here was my slightly different take posted on Instagram:

View this post on Instagram

Just thought this was a cool repurpose of a #phonebooth #defibrillator

A post shared by Amy Maranto (@marantophotography) on Jun 11, 2018 at 6:48am PDT

Cheers!

Added in a bit of a cheeky way to Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Power Lines.

 

Silent Sunday: A Natural Arch

View this post on Instagram

Natural beauty #thingsiseeonmyrun #flowers #naturephotography

A post shared by Amy Maranto (@marantophotography) on Jun 8, 2018 at 1:48am PDT

Part of Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge.