Wipe away your tears...
… And now (drum roll… ) Yes, another sunrise from my Umbrian archives from Summer 2018 (for details about Umbria and that beautiful location you could explore my album aptly named Umbria.
I explored that sunrise as much as possible, shooting from as many points of view as I was able to. A convenient approach, you could say – yet there is a drawback. There was a strange light that morning – the air was heavy, thick, damp: it seemed to resist the pouring, silky sunlight. Maybe because of this the photos taken from some points of view are almost intractable. This photo is one of them: processing it has been a long struggle, and the final result has been uncertain up to almost the end of the journey. I am not completely satisfied with this image, yet I feel that it is not utterly devoid of merits and hope that it can convey good emotions and thoughts to somebody.
This reminds me of a scene I witnessed many years ago – one of those scenes one cannot forget.
I was on the underground: the archetypal train crowded with commuters going back home after work. I could hear the faint, distant sound of a guitar and a voice singing - a street musician trying to top up his daily earnings. A girl was sitting in front of me, her head lowered. It took some time for me to realise that she was quietly crying.
The music was louder now: I could see the tall, blond young man getting nearer and nearer. When he reached us he hesitated a bit and then he positioned himself just in front of the girl and started swinging as he kept playing his guitar and singing a song I cannot remember. He was definitely not a talented guitar player - even less a good singer - but his overall attitude was very lively, energetic, uplifting. The whole scene lasted more or less one minute. At last the girl slowly lifted her head, looked at the musician, wiped away her tears and… well, she smiled. A shy, hesitant smile – but it radiated an aura of delicate light all around her.
I hope that this photo, its flaws notwithstanding, can gift some of you with a little miracle like this. After all, one can never say when a miracle will happen, nor whence it will come – yet it happens.
I wish you all a happy (if locked down) Easter!
A hug from Italy!
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.
A very selective contribution to the final effect came from the inverted RGB blue channel technique described by Boris Hajdukovic. While this technique (which, its imposing name notwithstanding, is pretty simple to implement) often holds interesting results in full daylight landscapes, its effects on a low-light capture (e.g. a sunrise) are utterly unpredictable, so at the end of my workflow I often give it a try to ascertain its possibilities. In this picture I have exploited this technique in a very frugal, yet effective, way – just some touches where needed.
RAW files has been processed with Darktable. Denoising with DFine 2 and the Gimp (denoised and original images blended by lightness).
Wipe away your tears...
… And now (drum roll… ) Yes, another sunrise from my Umbrian archives from Summer 2018 (for details about Umbria and that beautiful location you could explore my album aptly named Umbria.
I explored that sunrise as much as possible, shooting from as many points of view as I was able to. A convenient approach, you could say – yet there is a drawback. There was a strange light that morning – the air was heavy, thick, damp: it seemed to resist the pouring, silky sunlight. Maybe because of this the photos taken from some points of view are almost intractable. This photo is one of them: processing it has been a long struggle, and the final result has been uncertain up to almost the end of the journey. I am not completely satisfied with this image, yet I feel that it is not utterly devoid of merits and hope that it can convey good emotions and thoughts to somebody.
This reminds me of a scene I witnessed many years ago – one of those scenes one cannot forget.
I was on the underground: the archetypal train crowded with commuters going back home after work. I could hear the faint, distant sound of a guitar and a voice singing - a street musician trying to top up his daily earnings. A girl was sitting in front of me, her head lowered. It took some time for me to realise that she was quietly crying.
The music was louder now: I could see the tall, blond young man getting nearer and nearer. When he reached us he hesitated a bit and then he positioned himself just in front of the girl and started swinging as he kept playing his guitar and singing a song I cannot remember. He was definitely not a talented guitar player - even less a good singer - but his overall attitude was very lively, energetic, uplifting. The whole scene lasted more or less one minute. At last the girl slowly lifted her head, looked at the musician, wiped away her tears and… well, she smiled. A shy, hesitant smile – but it radiated an aura of delicate light all around her.
I hope that this photo, its flaws notwithstanding, can gift some of you with a little miracle like this. After all, one can never say when a miracle will happen, nor whence it will come – yet it happens.
I wish you all a happy (if locked down) Easter!
A hug from Italy!
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.
A very selective contribution to the final effect came from the inverted RGB blue channel technique described by Boris Hajdukovic. While this technique (which, its imposing name notwithstanding, is pretty simple to implement) often holds interesting results in full daylight landscapes, its effects on a low-light capture (e.g. a sunrise) are utterly unpredictable, so at the end of my workflow I often give it a try to ascertain its possibilities. In this picture I have exploited this technique in a very frugal, yet effective, way – just some touches where needed.
RAW files has been processed with Darktable. Denoising with DFine 2 and the Gimp (denoised and original images blended by lightness).