April Squares: Top Shots, Dieppe Canadian War Cemetery

ISO 25 f/2.2 1/651 sec 4.2mm

Day 16, find other responses here.

Date and Location of Photo: May 28, 2018. Dieppe Canadian War Cemetery. I have published several photos from my time along the Normandy Coast. This one is a detail shot from the Dieppe Canadian War Cemetery, which is a bit off the beaten path on a small, quiet road that has several fields nearby. A spot worth seeking out. The Cemetery is well cared for, beautiful and sad.

Thoughts on the Edit: I wasn’t sure if the square format was going to work with this particular file, so that was a bit of an experiment. Once I decided on the crop, I then boosted the details and luminance before adding the Luminar Look, Expired L11, which is an expired film look. The look has a texture overlay which is a bit too strong in my opinion so I edited that part of the look.

April Squares, an Explanation:

When Becky announced that the April Squares theme was going to be “top”, I thought it over and then sent her a message, then pitched my idea. She was open to my theme within the theme and the result is my response to the April Squares challenge.

I move a lot and I have a move pending. I’ve lived here in England for about four years and will be heading to the United States. Exact dates to be determined, given the current world situation, details have yet to be worked out. My April Squares is a “top shots” reflection on the last four years. Each square represents some moment or place that was meaningful to me. They are in chronological order moving forward in time. I’m attempting to post every day. All photos will be edited in Luminar 3. I hope you enjoy following along, I’ve enjoyed the process of creating. Your comments and thoughts are welcome below.

Cheers!

April Squares: Top Shots, Prague

ISO 125 f/2.2 1/33sec 4.2mm

Day 13, find other responses here.

Date and Location of Photo: December 18, 2017. Pinkas Synagogue in Prague, built in 1535. Currently its walls have the names of 80,000 Jewish victims of the Holocaust from Czech lands. It’s beautiful and sad this memorial, but I was so grateful to be able to visit. Over the last four years I have had the opportunity to visit many sites related to WWII and it has helped inform my view of the war in a way that reading history books has not, reading and seeing are two different things certainty. Speaking of reading, I just finished and would highly recommend, When Time Stopped by Ariana Neumann, it’s a family memoir of the war years and makes mention of this particular synagogue in an unexpected way.

Thoughts on the Edit: I kept this edit simple. It is a custom vintage edit.

April Squares, an Explanation:

When Becky announced that the April Squares theme was going to be “top”, I thought it over and then sent her a message, then pitched my idea. She was open to my theme within the theme and the result is my response to the April Squares challenge.

I move a lot and I have a move pending. I’ve lived here in England for about four years and will be heading to the United States. Exact dates to be determined, given the current world situation, details have yet to be worked out. My April Squares is a “top shots” reflection on the last four years. Each square represents some moment or place that was meaningful to me. They are in chronological order moving forward in time. I’m attempting to post every day. All photos will be edited in Luminar 3. I hope you enjoy following along, I’ve enjoyed the process of creating. Your comments and thoughts are welcome below.

Cheers!

What I Am Working On: Two Tools, One Task

I was working on this file:

ISO 320 f/11 1/320sec 24mm

I had done a few steps of basic editing when I saw the flag peeking out from behind the grave marker. Interesting how sometimes details like this can be missed at first. I wanted to remove it from my final edit. The really good news is that removing objects from photos has gotten easier and much more natural-looking over the years. In this case, I used both the erase and clone and stamp tools in Luminar. I find the erase tool is good for removal and clone and stamp works well for the clean up of any mess the eraser leaves behind. I would also suggest that you do work like this on the biggest screen you have and make use of the zoom tool as well so that you can get a really good look at what you are doing. The final edit is this one:

ISO 320 f/11 1/320sec 24mm

This final edit has the Luminar Look, Camden Fade, applied to it. The photo was shot at Luxembourg American Cemetery. It is a beautiful spot, a good place to reflect on the sacrifices of those who fought in World War II. Your thoughts on the edit are welcome below. This post was inspired by the Lens-Artist Photo Challenge, Reflections.

Cheers!

January Squares: A Light for Your Path

This photo was taken on a visit to the Luxembourg American Cemetery:

ISO 320 f/11 18mm 1/1250sec

I liked this image as a color image, but I was interested in making alterations to the color as a way of making the photo more impactful. This photo was shot with my Canon 80D which means that there is a lot of data there to work with. The edits I did are in Luminar:

ISO 320 f/11 18mm 1/1250sec

I started with the crop. This took a bit of fiddling, there were several decisions to be made in terms of what to include or exclude from this edit. I’ve then applied a look called Blue Sky, which is mostly black and white except for muted blue tones. In order to bring the gold back into the photo, I applied a mask and painted just the front of the grave marker. I’ll also mention that I did not apply a vignette to this particular edit which is unusual for me.

The Instagram version is here:

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For those who light the path for others by their example. #medalofhonor #wwii #lestweforget #luxembourg

A post shared by Amy Maranto (@marantophotography) on Jan 19, 2020 at 10:33pm PST

Added to January Squares, Day 20. I’ve also chosen the American holiday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, to post this photo as a nod to choosing to do the right thing and to stand for others even at great personal cost.

Cheers!

 

What I Am Working On: A Continuation

The file I chose to work on this past week was a continuation of and a revisit of work I have done in the past. The file under construction is this one:

ISO 250 F/9 22mm 1/500 sec

An older edit can be found here. Recently, I posted about using sliders that I don’t often use and this edit is a continuation of me working on using them. The resulting edit is this one:

ISO 250 F/9 22mm 1/500 sec

Prior to conversion to black and white, I used the custom white balance, luminance, dehaze, and polarize filters. It’s then converted to black and white with a red filter. The matte look and Orton effect filters have been applied and it has two vignettes applied to it.

A lot of filters but I am pleased with this edit, for now. The photo was taken a few years ago from the grounds of the Monte Cassino Polish war cemetery and is a shot of the nearby Monte Cassino Abbey  It was a day trip from Rome, and a memorable day from a fabulous holiday.

Your comments or questions are most welcome below. This post was inspired by the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge which has the theme Special Spots Shots for this week.

Cheers!

What I Am Working On: Little Used Sliders

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!

52 Week Smartphone Challenge: Week 2

The challenge for this week was to use the rule of thirds. As I was working on this, it seemed to me that my use of the rule was maybe a bit subtle, so I took a screenshot with the rule of thirds grid showing on the photo:

ISO 25 f/2.2 4.15mm 1/100sec

That lower left point is where I am focusing the visual interest of the image.  Here is the final edit:

ISO 25 f/2.2 4.15mm 1/100sec

I took this image just a few days ago. I was out on a walk and happened across a few WWII pillboxes, including this one on the path that went through the middle of a field. A bit of an unexpected find. The edits, done in Luminar, are mostly for clarity.

Cheers!

Added to 52 Week Smartphone Challenge.

Veterans Day

In July I was working on a photography project at Cambridge American Cemetery. My shooting week was documented in this post. I was photographing the grave marker of Finis E. Harris Jr. His family lives in the United States, but right now I am living not far from the cemetery, so I made these images for them:

ISO 500 f/11 1/500sec 18mm

ISO 500 f/11 1/500sec 55mm

ISO 500 f/11 1/500sec 30mm

ISO 500 f/11 1/500sec 20mm

ISO 25 f/2.4 1/590sec 3.3mm

When it came to editing, these photos have had very minimal edits applied. The idea was to show the marker as it is. The cemetery here is a really nice one, beautiful and peaceful. The American Battle Monuments Commission manages this and several other overseas military burial sites. I’ve had the opportunity to visit a few of them. They are all really well run. If you happen to have a family member buried or memorialized at one of these sites, know that they do have a lovely final resting spot.

I was back at the Cambridge site this morning for a Veterans Day service:

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Thanks to all veterans, past and present. #veteransday #armisticeday

A post shared by Amy Maranto (@marantophotography) on Nov 11, 2019 at 4:54am PST

Added to A Photo a Week Photo Challenge, In the Neighborhood.

Cheers!

Walls of the Missing

I am planning to visit the Cambridge American Cemetery again soon and as part of that, I was looking through some photo files that I shot this past winter. One of the features in the cemetery is its Walls of the Missing that have 5,127 names on it. It’s an interesting structure in that there are places where you can walk through and it operates as both a barrier to the outside, but also an entrance and exit between the cemetery and it’s exterior. So it’s both a wall and a door. It’s imposing, yet delicate; Both personal and impersonal. During this particular photo editing session, I was working with images that included the Wall:

Hipstamatic, shot with iPhone

Hipstamatic, shot with iPhone

Hipstamatic, shot with iPhone.

These first images are ones that I shot on my iPhone using the app Hipstamatic. One of the features of that app is “randomize” which means you shake your phone, take your photo, and the app applies a random selection of filters. I created a series of those over the course of my visit.

I also brought my Canon 80D:

ISO 400 24mm f/11 1/250sec

 

ISO 400 24mm f/11 1/640

These two photos I edited in Luminar 3 with an eye to accentuating the warm but quickly fading light of a February afternoon.

It was an interesting work session, and I was giving some thought to how different the lighting conditions will be since my next visit will be in July. In that vein, I think it is nice as a photographer to have the experience of shooting the same place at different times of the year. It’s a good exercise in thinking through things like light. It’s also interesting to then have the time of year be part of the narrative of the image.

Do you have a place like this, that you visit regularly over the year in part just to see the changes? What do you think of my various photos, is there a particular one that speaks to you? Feel free to comment below.

Cheers!

Added to Tuesday Photo Challenge, Wall and Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge, 5+ Items.

 

Wordless Wednesday, Utah Beach

ISO 400 13mm f/16 1/800sec

Picfair version here.

Cheers!