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A whisper in the breath of the universe

Hi my friends, I have (more or less) succeeded in processing a new bracketing from the last Summer. It is part of a small series I have rather hurriedly (and breathlessly) taken at sunset by pure chance - it involved running with all my equipment up a trail in the woods to reach the Laral pastures, where the woods leave room to sweet rolling fields and the sky opens wide upon you.

I have tried to get the best from this bracketing, but I have mixed feelings about it. From a technical point of view it has a lot of drawbacks - maybe because of my slightly hypoxic brain at the time of shooting. But I loved the moment so, after having edited and re-edited, and re-edited again from scratch the whole scene, I have decided to give it a chance.

I cannot tell in any intelliglble way the emotional side of that fleeting moment (just the afterglow of a marvelous sunset), but I felt that the universe was embracing me. I was a leaf in the stream of creation* - a whisper in the breath of the universe.

 

* Courtesy of the gentle friend of mine, Dirk Gently (Doug, we miss you!)

 

I have obtained this picture by blending an exposure bracketing [-1.3/0/+1.3 EV] by luminosity masks in the Gimp (EXIF data, as usual, refer to the "normal exposure" shot), then I added some final touches with Nik Color Efex Pro 4. Raw files has been processed with Darktable.

Since I wanted to render much better those delicate streaks of clouds, I used a little trick involving a very contrasted bw version of the scene ;-)

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Uploaded on December 15, 2019
Taken on August 16, 2019