An ominous glow from the forge of Ephaestus
For those who are new to this series, here is some context.
I was in Messina, Sicily, for a convention - Messina, the city of the Strait. The city of the two seas, the Tyrrhenian and the Ionian - not two whichever seas, but the very stuff of myths and epics. Scylla and Charybdis haunted these narrow, deep, perilous waters.
As you would expect, I had tried to leave my camera at home (it was work, after all...), but it sneaked into my backpack anyway, along with my Samyang wide angle lens and my tripod. Unfortunately neither of them told the remote shutter, so it stayed safe and cozy within my gear bag at home. Oh my gosh! What was the use of having a tripod while lacking a remote shutter? I just hoped that enabling the Delay exposure Mode would be sufficient to compensate for my awkward finger actually pressing the shutter release button.
So I began my Sicilian days with just as many sunrise sessions. Wow.
The weather was consistently unstable - an ever changing sky enlivened by an endless turmoil of clouds (sometimes benign, sometimes threatening and ominous), sudden showers followed by warm sun, and then again. There was at first a peculiar ambiance - a stormy mood, I would say - an epic character reminiscent of remote ages, when the gods and Cyclops trod these lands and monsters haunted these waters. I could understand the sense of awe the ancient dwellers of these places felt while contemplating such views. I could feel the presence of the gods of old just before me. Just all around me.
This shot is from my second Sicilian sunrise, a drastically two-faced one (read the text accompanying my Cyclops' sunrise for detail). I was looking Southeastwards, at the soft, soothing tones and colours of that gentle sky, when suddenly a fiery glow appeared, putting the clouds in fire. It was the ominous glow of the Eye of the Cyclops propagating all through the sky, but in that momentous, fleeting instant I thought of Ephaestus and his smithy. Ephaestus was one of the 12 Olympian gods. He served as the blacksmith of the gods, who made all their weapons and equipments and every kind of metallurgical wonder, including Achilles' armour and the girdle of Aphrodite, and even automatons that worked for him. In some traditions he had Cyclopes as his apprentices. Ephaestus was lame and traditionally portrayed as a bearded, rather ugly - although vigorous - man (a beard was not exactly the first choice in the Greek canon of beauty). Rather surprisingly, he was Aphrodite's husband - and, rather unsurprisingly, she cheated on him with a wide variety of gods, semi-gods, and mortals - most famously with Ares, the god of war, thus compensating his effects on the mortals. Ephaestus, on his part, was not a model husband and had his own share of extramarital affairs. As you may have noticed, the Olympian gods, with all their might, were not immune from the vices and weaknesses of the mortals - they actually amplified and sublimated them!
Ephaestus' workshop was situated inside his Olympian palace, but he was widely identified with many local fire gods, especially those living on volcanoes. More specifically, the Greek colonists settling in Southern Italy identified him with the ancient fire god Adranus, who was widely worshipped in Sicily, and especially associated to the volcano mount Etna. As I watched (and hurriedly photographed) that fiery glow leaking from the clouds I could almost hear thuds and hisses coming from the colossal forge of Ephaestus.
I have processed this picture by blending an exposure bracketing [-2.0/-1.0/0/+1.0/+2.0 EV] by luminosity masks with the Gimp (EXIF data, as usual, refer to the "normal" exposure shot).
Along the journey - post-processing always is a journey of discovery to me - I tried the inverted RGB blue channel technique described by Boris Hajdukovic to give a slight tonal boost to several parts of the scene. As usual, I gave the finishing touches with Nik Color Efex Pro 4 and played a bit with dodging and burning.
Raw files processed with Darktable.
An ominous glow from the forge of Ephaestus
For those who are new to this series, here is some context.
I was in Messina, Sicily, for a convention - Messina, the city of the Strait. The city of the two seas, the Tyrrhenian and the Ionian - not two whichever seas, but the very stuff of myths and epics. Scylla and Charybdis haunted these narrow, deep, perilous waters.
As you would expect, I had tried to leave my camera at home (it was work, after all...), but it sneaked into my backpack anyway, along with my Samyang wide angle lens and my tripod. Unfortunately neither of them told the remote shutter, so it stayed safe and cozy within my gear bag at home. Oh my gosh! What was the use of having a tripod while lacking a remote shutter? I just hoped that enabling the Delay exposure Mode would be sufficient to compensate for my awkward finger actually pressing the shutter release button.
So I began my Sicilian days with just as many sunrise sessions. Wow.
The weather was consistently unstable - an ever changing sky enlivened by an endless turmoil of clouds (sometimes benign, sometimes threatening and ominous), sudden showers followed by warm sun, and then again. There was at first a peculiar ambiance - a stormy mood, I would say - an epic character reminiscent of remote ages, when the gods and Cyclops trod these lands and monsters haunted these waters. I could understand the sense of awe the ancient dwellers of these places felt while contemplating such views. I could feel the presence of the gods of old just before me. Just all around me.
This shot is from my second Sicilian sunrise, a drastically two-faced one (read the text accompanying my Cyclops' sunrise for detail). I was looking Southeastwards, at the soft, soothing tones and colours of that gentle sky, when suddenly a fiery glow appeared, putting the clouds in fire. It was the ominous glow of the Eye of the Cyclops propagating all through the sky, but in that momentous, fleeting instant I thought of Ephaestus and his smithy. Ephaestus was one of the 12 Olympian gods. He served as the blacksmith of the gods, who made all their weapons and equipments and every kind of metallurgical wonder, including Achilles' armour and the girdle of Aphrodite, and even automatons that worked for him. In some traditions he had Cyclopes as his apprentices. Ephaestus was lame and traditionally portrayed as a bearded, rather ugly - although vigorous - man (a beard was not exactly the first choice in the Greek canon of beauty). Rather surprisingly, he was Aphrodite's husband - and, rather unsurprisingly, she cheated on him with a wide variety of gods, semi-gods, and mortals - most famously with Ares, the god of war, thus compensating his effects on the mortals. Ephaestus, on his part, was not a model husband and had his own share of extramarital affairs. As you may have noticed, the Olympian gods, with all their might, were not immune from the vices and weaknesses of the mortals - they actually amplified and sublimated them!
Ephaestus' workshop was situated inside his Olympian palace, but he was widely identified with many local fire gods, especially those living on volcanoes. More specifically, the Greek colonists settling in Southern Italy identified him with the ancient fire god Adranus, who was widely worshipped in Sicily, and especially associated to the volcano mount Etna. As I watched (and hurriedly photographed) that fiery glow leaking from the clouds I could almost hear thuds and hisses coming from the colossal forge of Ephaestus.
I have processed this picture by blending an exposure bracketing [-2.0/-1.0/0/+1.0/+2.0 EV] by luminosity masks with the Gimp (EXIF data, as usual, refer to the "normal" exposure shot).
Along the journey - post-processing always is a journey of discovery to me - I tried the inverted RGB blue channel technique described by Boris Hajdukovic to give a slight tonal boost to several parts of the scene. As usual, I gave the finishing touches with Nik Color Efex Pro 4 and played a bit with dodging and burning.
Raw files processed with Darktable.