Made with Luminar: St. Peter’s Basilica

Yesterday I posted this photo:

ISO 250 f/0 1/400sec 16mm

As a companion photo, I have this image:

ISO 1250 f/9 1/100sec 22mm

Both photos were edited in Luminar 3. The first photo has the look, Dreamy Film, applied at 65%. The second photo has the look, Documentary Film, applied at 100%.

The first photo was shot from the top of St. Peter’s Basilica and the second from the ground looking up to the Basilica in the skyline. Not only does where you chose to shoot your photo change perspective of the subject but it is my opinion that how you choose to edit it does as well.

Your thoughts on either image are welcome below. This post is a response to Lens-Artist Photo Challenge, Change Your Perspective.

Cheers!

The Made with Luminar Series

This image is part of a project I am calling Made with Luminar. What the images in this series have in common is the software used to edit them, Luminar 3. As with my usual blog posts particulars of the camera settings can be found in the caption below the image. I’ll then explain what other filters and edits have been applied, often mentioning what layer and therefore order that they were applied. The text of these posts includes any Luminar “Looks” that have been applied to the photo. Each look is a series of presets that are applied to the photo. Where applicable I will mention what changes I have made to any of the looks. A full explanation of looks is available here on their website, https://skylum.com/luminar/user-guides/chapter-14-working-with-luminar-looks

You can assume basic edits have been applied. My most common edits are cropping, detail enhancement, and vignette. Specific questions or thoughts on the image are welcome in the comment section below.

Wordless Wednesday: The View from St. Peter’s Basilica

ISO 250 f/0 1/400sec 16mm

Cheers!

 

Made with Luminar: Fountain on a Hill

The Fontana dell’Acqua Paolo is sometimes just called “the big fountain” with good reason. It’s pretty big. That creates a photography challenge.  It’s also built on a hill which can make it a challenge to get a photo that looks straight. My original file looks like this:

ISO 640 f/9 1/1250sec 13mm

I’ve used the straighten function within the crop tool and the lens distortion feature in Luminar 3 to deal with that issue:

ISO 640 f/9 1/1250sec 13mm

From there I went to some more creative edits. The Luminar Look applied here is Analog Film. That made for a nice starting point, but it was a dramatic filter, too dramatic for this photo so I’ve made several changes most of which involved moving sliders down. I then added a layer with the filters golden hour, accent ai, and vignette. I’ve used all the filters sparingly. I was looking to boost the natural drama of the fountain in the late afternoon light. Feel free to let me know what you think of the outcome in the comment section below.

The Made with Luminar Series

This image is part of a project I am calling Made with Luminar. What the images in this series have in common is the software used to edit them, Luminar 3. As with my usual blog posts particulars of the camera settings can be found in the caption below the image. The text of these posts include the Luminar “Looks” that have been applied to the photo. Each look is a series of presets that are applied to the photo. Where applicable I will mention what changes I have made to any of the looks. A full explanation of looks is available here on their website, https://skylum.com/luminar/user-guides/chapter-14-working-with-luminar-looks

You can assume other edits have been applied. My most common edits are cropping, detail enhancement, and vignette. Specific questions or thoughts on the image are welcome in the comment section below.

Cheers!

Added to Tuesday Photo Challenge, Slope.

 

 

Wordless Wednesday: Vatican Museum Interior

ISO 1000 f/10 1/40 sec 11mm

Also added to One Word Sunday, Light.

Cheers!

 

Wordless Wednesday, Triumphant Indeed

Arch of Titus, Rome:

ISO 640 f/10 1/640sec 11mm

Chilling Out in Rome

When you are in Rome, you have to go to the Trevi Fountain. That’s what all the books and the internet says. So, I did what I was told:

ISO 640 17mm f/11 1/80sec

There’s the photo to prove it.  Here’s the thing. Everyone goes to the Trevi Fountain. Even on a day where rain was threatening and it was the middle of the week and it was October. It makes getting a photo without at least fifty people in it difficult.  So, with that shot above, I just went with as much fountain and as few people as possible. One person’s forehead isn’t too bad considering the crowd. A quick crop removed the forehead and the building next to the fountain. As much as I liked the blue of the water of the fountain, standing there, taking the photo, I was thinking black and white.

I’ve sharpened to photo a bit and then worked with the tone curve a bit to make the darks just a touch darker and the whites just a touch whiter.

ISO 640 17mm f/11 1/80sec

I wasn’t feeling like this photo need a whole lot. There is a reason why everyone visits, it’s a beautiful fountain and doesn’t really need a whole lot more embellishment than it already has.

Have you ever stood in front of a scene in full color and thought, “yup, black and white it is”? Have you been to the Trevi Fountain? if not, you should when you go to Rome, the internet says you should, and the internet isn’t wrong 🙂 Feel free to leave a comment below!

Cheers!

Added to Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, Cooling and Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge, Fountains.

Making an Impression

This is the Fontana dell’Acqua Paola:

ISO 640 14mm f/9.0 1/1000sec

Like many things in Rome, it is both beautiful and imposing.  It was evening time when we were walking past it, so the light was lovely.  Here is the original photo:

ISO 640 14mm f/9.0 1/1000sec

Nice, but it needed a bit of a punch. But first things first, this isn’t the only shot I took of the fountain. In fact, when I was shooting I managed to get a few shots that didn’t have any people in them. I thought that one of those images would be the one I like the best. Nope, as I looked through my photos this one became my favorite, in part because there were people in it. They give a good sense of the scale of this fountain. So in my edit, I made sure that the man’s white shirt had a bit of pop.

I used my wide angle lens to get this shot, and in Lightroom, I used the Lens Correction feature to take care of some of the distortion.  I also cropped the image a bit using the straighten tool within the crop tool.

I like the tones and light in the original photo, but I did want to boost and clarify them, it was my thought that this should be a bit of an aggressive color image, and it was a bit tame as shot. I put a neutral density filter on the image and then boosted the luminance of the various blue tones to get what I was after. I then sharpened the image a bit, but honestly, the other edits had already made the image appear sharper, so I didn’t go nuts with that.

So do you like the edits? Did this image pop out to you and was that a good thing?  Feel free to leave a comment below.

Cheers!

Added to Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Columns and Vertical Lines.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Weathered

The Colosseum in Rome is beautiful.  We walked through it, admiring it, amazed at how well it has weathered the years considering how long it has been a part of the landscape.  But it was a bit tough to photograph.  Of the photos I have edited so far, my favorite view is one that I got from the nearby Palatine Hill:

ISO 640 22mm f/10 1/800

This version, actually an HDR version, three exposures of the same photograph blended into one in Photoshop.  I wasn’t crazy about the way it turned out. Particularly the sky.  So, I created a black and white version:

ISO 640 22mm f/10 1/800

It’s ok, but still not crazy about the sky.  One of the reasons I thought to edit it into black and white is that a lot of times a very vivid color photo makes for a nice black and white version. In this case, it falls a bit flat I think. So I created another version:

ISO 640 22mm f/10 1/800

To create this version I opened both the color and black and white version in Photoshop as individual layers.  I put the black and white on top, then I lowered the opacity of that layer so that some of the colors would show through.  It’s this version that I ended up liking best and it went into my Picfair portfolio.

Do you like the combination image that I created, or do you prefer just the color or black and white version?  Feel free to leave a comment below.

Cheers!

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Experimental

Sometimes it’s fun to experiment, try something new.  I gave a few tools in Photoshop a spin and here is the result:

ISO 1250 22mm f/9.0 1/40

Not everything I did to get this final result was new to me, but because certain steps were, this photo took some time to produce. A typical learning curve with any thing that is new.  I started with this photo, shot in the early morning. The sun was up the sky was beautiful, but the streetlights were still on and even the traffic had a sleepy feel to it.

ISO 1250 22mm f/9.0 1/40

The first few edits were pretty basic. I cropped and straightened the photo. Then I removed the wire you can see in the sky with the healing tool.  Then I sharpened the photo. This is the color version that contains the sky that is in the final version:

ISO 1250 22mm f/9.0 1/40

From here I wanted to make a black and white version.  I find that sometimes if you boost things like saturation and vibrance in a color version it ends up being over the top in color:

ISO 1250 22mm f/9.0 1/40

But quite nice in black and white:

ISO 1250 22mm f/9.0 1/40

I then put my nice color version and the black and white version in Photoshop. At this point the photograph was two layers, black and white on top and color underneath.

With the selection tool, I picked out the area of the sky in the top layer, made a mask, then inverted the mask.  This had the effect of revealing the color sky underneath.  This was by far the longest step in the process.  I don’t have a whole lot of experience with the selection tool, it can be a bit stubborn and add in things you don’t want in your selection. I’m not a patient person. I would like everything to work correctly the first time, thank you very much.  I will say that this tool is one that has improved over the years. When I got that part of the effect to where I wanted it, I then dropped the opacity of the black and white layer to 95%. This brings in just a hint of the warmth of the color version that is on the second layer.  It also the same tone as the sky, so it makes the two layers clash less and work more as a single image.

What do you think of my final image? Do you have an image editing tool that you avoid because it drive you crazy?  Feel free to leave a comment below.

Cheers!

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Peek

Last week I showed you photos taken at the top of St. Peter’s Basilica from the outside viewing area.  This week I’ll show you a few details of the interior of the dome. These are shots I took on the walk up, just a few details from a place that is a grand and beautiful. I’m a bit leery of heights. Sometimes, that fear inspires me to take a photo.  Here I am taking a peek into St. Peter’s:

ISO 320 4.15 f/2.2 1/17

To get this photo, I focused on the grid and allowed the background to blur. Even with the blur, it’s pretty easy to see how ornate St. Peter’s is.  A photo like this also expresses my fear of heights, I often feel that I can’t focus correctly, so I have directed the camera lens to do the same. I was using my iPhone, which likes to self-correct things it feels the photographer is getting “wrong”, so it took a few shots to get the photo I wanted. In this case, I knew I wanted the shot to be in its finished form without any further editing.

In some ways, it was much easier to get this shot:

ISO 500 4.15mm f/2.2 1/17

Close up detail of the eye of an angel, part of one of the many mosaics that ring the walkway of the landing.  Close-up, in focus shots, are the kind of photos that I think my phone generally handles pretty well. Again though, the camera defaults to catching what it thinks is correct; while the details are correct, the color is not.  The original file looks like this:

ISO 500 4.15mm f/2.2 1/17

I edited the photo in Lightroom.  I warmed the overall temperature, giving it a bit more of a golden glow.  A warmth not captured in the photograph, but that I felt was there at the time.  I’ve also sharpened it a bit and darkened the corners, to draw your eye to the eye in the photo.

I knew there were steps and a climb involved at St. Peter’s.  It would have never occurred to me though not to bring both of my cameras.  This is one of those times that people sometimes make the argument that it is better not to bring a camera, to just be in the moment. I can respect that line of thought, but for me this is a time of compromise.  I took out my camera, got the shots I wanted, then put my camera away and just spent some time looking around.  I’m that person in my family, the one that always gets to the top last.  How do you handle times like these? do you ever go without your camera?  How do you like my glimpse inside St. Peter’s?  Feel free to leave a comment below.

Cheers!