Romantic Rome

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Romantic Rome

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I love photographing Rome from the bridges of the river. This is a shot that I cyclically go to take because it’s a beautiful spot and every time it changes in something

No doubt, this spot is one of the most classic in Rome and if you have seen my recent instagram / facebook stories you realized how many people had crowded it in a street corner just to take this picture

Unfortunately some locations in Rome are recently becoming impractical for the crowds around these photo spots and this is becoming one of them

However the view from here is magnificent, Castel Sant’Angelo on the right (remains covered by the trees but it is still visible between), at the bottom the San Pietro basilica and all the beauty reflections and water games that this postcard offers

The only disturbing element is unfortunately that horrendous billboard that has been there for a long time now, besides being huge it is also illuminated and impacts a lot in the picture. I could not remove it in post because I would have compromised the photo, but I had a strong temptation to do it

WORKFLOW EXPLANATION

I wait until the complete dusk to make this shot, this is from the late blue hour. I captured 5 bracketed shots and I blended all the exposures using TTS PRO 

With the blended image I fixed the light and darkness using curves tool and luminosity masks, than I straightened the horizon using ruler tool on the bridge and I launched high details filters of my panel

I applied a cold filter to the image, first applying it on the highlights and then on the shadows, to give a greater nocturnal and a “elegance” touch to the frame

I fixed some colors that appears too bright, for this I used hue / saturation filter applied selectively thank I increased the vividness of the sky

In closing I applied a slight orton effect and increased the sharpen reducing the opacity to 20%

I hope you will find this informations usefull. I’m always happy to ear this from you!

TECNHNICAL STUFF

Camera: Nikon D-800

Nikon 14-24 f/2,8 (used at 14mm)

Five Exposures (-2;-1; 0; +1; +2)

ISO: 100 at f/16

Software: Photoshop CC2019

Plugin: TTS Pro

The Underbelly

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One of the most significative spot of Rome is the view of Castel Sant’Angelo with his bridge, this is one of my favourite spots in my city

The beauty of the castle and the reflections on the river during dusk are make this place one of the most famous locations in Rome

I usually take my shots the other side of the bridge but this time cause to a dry river this time I preferred the view from the west side

That day I stayed in the place from the sunset to the end of the blue hour, just before dark the sky take a tone of a beautiful purple

Although I was satisfied with my previous shots taken, the latest photos with this shade of purple became my main choices 🙂

WORKFLOW EXPLANATION

I take 5 exposure brackets for this frame, I blended the shots using
TTS PRO with the function auto blend darks, I started from the darker shots to the brighter

With the use of luminosity masks I ligthened some parts under the bridge, to decrease the darks than with dodge and burn I pushed up the lights in the areas of main view of the frame

I increased details and contrast, with a curve tool I also increased the luminosity of the sky and applied a soft warm filter to the higlights to mitigate the blue/purple effect and better mix it with golden hour colours

I added a vignette to increase the sense of darkness of this image and with the glow tool I increased the luminosity of reflections and water

Last passage is to use color efex pro filter to use “glamour glow” filter to add a smooth look to the image, I love the glow generated by this filter

I really hope you will find this usefull. I’m always happy to ear this words!

TECNHNICAL STUFF

Camera: Nikon D-800

Nikon 14-24 f/2,8 (used at 14mm)

Five Exposures (-2; -1; 0; +1; +2)

ISO: 100 at f/13

Software: Photoshop CC2019

Plugin: TTS Pro, Color Efex Pro

Waiting for the Night

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Here is a new autumnal image from my series of photos taken in Friuli. During my tour I also included a series of local lakes that had caught my attention over my research of some spot to photograph

It often happened that I had to deal with the rain during those days but the autumn atmosphere and the mist that rose on the horizon made special any corner of nature that caught my attention

I’ts for the same reason that towards evening, I stopped on the banks of a lake to take this picture where I tried to portray the dark but at the same time colorful armosphere that could be admired in those places

At that moment there was a pretty strong rain, luckily I always carry an umbrella with me that allowed me to cover the camera and to take the shots without wetting the lens, the image is realized with a 3 shots brackets

WORKFLOW EXPLANATION

I combined the shots using digital blending between the darkest photo and the central shot, I used the most exposed shot to lighten some areas of the photo (such as puddles) using a brush applied to luminosity masks

Using TTS PRO, I launched autumn colours to increase the red look of the autumn foliage, than I increased the blue colours applying a cold filters to the shadows.

I adjusted the contrast and brightness then started using dodge and burn over the puddles, around the tree and on the mist to stand them more to the viewer’s eye

After this I created a strong orton effect to increase the dark mood and to give a more dreamy look to the frame

I gave to the highlights a greater warmth filter in order to create a warm tone that highlights the colors of autumn, at the same time I launched color lookup filter using “Midnight” (opacity 10) to restore the same level of brightness and leave the colors of the sky unaltered

I hope you will find this usefull. I’m happy to ear this from you!

TECNHNICAL STUFF

Camera: Nikon D-800

Nikon 14-24 f/2,8 (used at 14mm)

Single Shot

ISO: 100 at f/9

Software: Photoshop CC2019

Plugin: TTS Pro

The Autumn Path

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This is a photo taken last autumn during my tour along the Friuli Venezia Giulia, were days of heavy rain and very adverse weather but during those days I could admire beautiful autumn landscapes

It often happened that I stopped with the car along the routes to get off to take pictures. Among these landscapes that have impressed me there is certainly this view of the valley of Raccolana wrapped in the fog and the colors of autumn, down the walking path through the woods

What struck me was the mix of colors not only present in the valley between the green and the red that blend the leaves and the trees but also the perfect meeting between the warm and the cold light at the end of the day

WORKFLOW EXPLANATION

I take this as single shot, so I edited the image by using luminosity masks applied to curves adjustment layer, without any blend

Using my panel TTS PRO, I launched autumn colours to increase the red look of the autumn foliage, with the same tool I launched high details to increase the details over the frame

My next step was to give more warm look to the photo so I applied a warm filter to the highlights, after this I launched orton effect  to give a more soft look to the landscape

Using dodge and burn applied to luminosity masks I give more lights over the fog, after this I fixed contrast between highlighs and darks

Latest steps was to decrease the general lights and to add a soft sharpen to the final frame

I always hope you will find this usefull. I’m happy to ear this from you!

TECNHNICAL STUFF

Camera: Nikon D-800

Sigma 24-70 f/2,8 (used at 31mm)

Single Shot

ISO: 100 at f/6,3

Software: Photoshop CC2019

Plugin: TTS Pro

Iced Bulwark

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I always liked to photograph the frozen lakes and when I find one I never stop circling around looking for some rift or some interesting spot to shot 🙂

This is exactly what happened in this lake, where in my previous post, I talked about this represents one of my favorite photography locations

The surface of the lake was covered with transparent ice and below it you could see the vegetation, in some parts it emerged from the ice

I made this photo lying on the ice with the technique of focus stacking with bracketing to capture the two different points of focus, in this way I got 5 shots of different exposure per point

WORKFLOW EXPLANATION

I selected 2 shos to focus stack than with luminosity masks : I launched curves tool to fix lights around foreground and sky

I launched luminosity mask contrast using TTS PRO, after a color fix I pushed up the blues and yellow colors increasing in this way the violet tones

The next step was to increase detais, especially over the mountain, than with dodge and burn I give more prominence to the cracks on the ice

I reduced the exposure of the image and as final step I increased the highlights to give more enery to the sky

I always hope you will find this usefull. Love to ear this from you!

TECNHNICAL STUFF

Camera: Nikon D-800

Lens: Nikon 14-24mm f/2,8

Three Exposures Focus Stacked (–1; 0; +1)

ISO: 100 at f/10

Software: Photoshop CC2019

Plugin: TTS PRO

Mirror Hole

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During my visit to Lake Braies, I took a short ride along the lakeside looking for some interesting spots until I found this hole in the ice on the left side of the path

What struck me most about this spot was not so much finding an interesting composition, but to see how the trees and the mountain reflected in the hole in front of me. On the right side, the mountain reflects itself on the thin layer of existing ice

I took a series of 7 exposures brackting since the area where I was shooting was quite dark I wanted to have the full dynamic range available to intervene later with the digital blending

I take my shots a distance using my 14-24 lens set to 20 to not get too close to the hole where all around the ice was very thin, it was a little risky 🙂

WORKFLOW EXPLANATION

I opened all my shots inside Photoshop and I blended the exposures using TTS PRO with the use of luminosity masks I set the highlights and shadows to fix the sky and lighten the trees that was too dark

I increased details in the whole frame mitigating the effect by inserting a slight orton effect, which as you know I love to insert in almost all my images at low opacity

With dodge and burn I increased the lights over the ice and the reflections around the hole, giving more energy to the reflections and to that glow of light that is near the ice

I increased the purple colors a bit using camera raw filters and I put less blues using hue/saturation hand tool

I hope you will find this usefull. I’m happy to ear this from you!

TECNHNICAL STUFF

Camera: Nikon D-800

Lens: Nikon 14-24mm f/2,8

Three Exposures Focus Stacked (-3 ; -2; –1; 0; +1; +2; +3)

ISO: 50 at f/9

Software: Photoshop CC2019

Plugin: TTS Pro


Bubble Crack

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Visiting Lake Braies is always beautiful, since I’ve been here other times, on my last visit I wanted to see it in winter. Usually in winter the frozen lakes lose part of their fascination, especially due to the absence of reflections, but in my opinion they gain on the colors and the pov where it is possible to take some pictures and Braies is one of the best on this

I found a very interesting point under the famous pier overlooking the mountain, under the snow could not settle and so remained only the ice, here the view towards the mountain in the background was perfect and the ice with all its variations did the rest

Photo aside this pov was definitely very uncomfortable, I had to shoot quickly because the place was very slippery and my tripod keep slipping away 🙂

I captured the images with two different focus points for focus stacking in order to obtain a unique focused picture of lake Braies 

 

WORKFLOW EXPLANATION

As I mentioned above, I captured all my bracketing exposures first focusing on the ice below and then focusing to the mountain.  Once at the computer I uploaded all the photos between them and started this process to have 3 final images focused near and to infinite

At this point I started using my TTS PRO panel, to make a digital blending between images using auto blend functions. I started removing some people in the scene with clone stamp tool, than I raised the detail levels and adjusted the contrast with the luminosity masks

I used the dodge and burn to give more impact to the bubbles below, then adjusted the colors by increasing the purple and applying a colder filter to the frame. With the glow tool I adjusted the light intensity of the sky and lightened some points of the photo.

Finally I launched a slight orton effect and created a vignette effect to emphasize the central scene

As always I hope you will find this usefull. I love to ear this from you!

 

TECNHNICAL STUFF

Camera: Nikon D-800

Lens: Nikon 14-24mm f/2,8

Three Exposures Focus Stacked (-1; 0; +1;)

ISO: 50 at f/6,3

Software: Photoshop CC2019

Plugin: TTS Pro

King of Snow

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Also this year I decide to spend a some days on the Italian Alps, these places are always beautiful and I really appreciate them also in winter, here we have Lake Carezza or rather the Latemar massif considering that the lake below is completely submerged in the snow

After the recent heavy rains in the autumn that caused extensive damage in many regions of northern Italy, this area has suffered too, on the road that leads to the lake I found hundreds of trees felled and collapsed due to bad weather and even the long lake Carezza not it was accessible

Despite this condition from the road it was possible the same to admire the lake Carezza and the Latemar massif due to the absence of trees that usually cover the view from the street. To have a greater width and depth of the scene I decided to photograph the lake through a photomerge, so I photographed the lake according to 3 sections, taking care not to exclude any element between one photo and the other, with bracketing mode to 3 shots

 

WORKFLOW EXPLANATION

I’m not a great fan of Photomerge because it increases the work in Photoshop, but I must admit that it is of great help when you want to give a greater photographic composition, to do this work I captured three bracketing images per horizontal group, respectively the mountain, the central body of the photo and the foreground

I discarded the darker ones and I worked exclusively on the middle shot and the brightest shot of the bracketing series, so I created two photomerges which I then used for digital blending. With the full image avaiable I started working on it to intensify the colors, here I used the Color efex pro plugin to boost up of the golden hour tones

Then I increased the contrast and details with the help of my TTS PRO panel. I used the dodge and burn applied to the luminosity masks darks to lighten the trees under the latemar massif and to darken and then bring out the details of the mountain, with the colors I intensified the yellow levels and slightly lowered the blue ones

I intensified the highlights and applied a slight orton effect to increase the photo’s glow level, as a final step I again adjusted the contrast of the photo and the brightness through the layers adjustment layers

 

TECNHNICAL STUFF

Camera: Nikon D-800

Lens: Nikon 14-24mm f/2,8

Three Exposures (-1; 0; +1;)

ISO: 50 at f/10

Software: Photoshop CC2019

Plugin: TTS Pro, Color Efex Pro

Civita

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Here we are with the first post of this 2019, what you see is the now famous Civita di Bagnoregio, a location that is not far from Rome and which is in my opinion one of the most beautiful photo spots in central Italy

It is located downstream of the gullies, originally these valleys around had to be sweeter and more accessible and were crossed by an ancient road that connected the valley of the river Tevere to the lake of Bolsena

The morphology of the territory has been strongly influenced by erosion by atmospheric agents, by streams but also by deforestation, for this reason Civita di Bagnoregio is also famous for being nicknamed the “city that dies”

Now the town is offcially unhabited but during the day many activity of restaurants and local shops opens in it for tourism. Civita can only be reached through a reinforced concrete pedestrian bridge built in 1965

Coming to the photo the best position to photograph it is from the hill in front of it where you can see very well the city and the whole valley around, I made a series of shots during sunset, moving between the various areas

 

WORKFLOW EXPLANATION

I take 3 exposure brackets over the hill in front of Civita and I used the brighter exposure to lighten some part of the hill and of the town. I increased details using TTS PRO, I decreased the blue colours to the horizon with the mountain at the bottom and darken the light tones.

I launched a soft orton effect and fixed contrast and I applied two color lookup effects with opacity to 15%. As a last steps I launched the sharpen  and used a small vignette to darken the edges always using my panel

I hope you will find this usefull. I’m happy to ear this from you!

 

TECNHNICAL STUFF

Camera: Nikon D-800

Lens: Sigma 24mm f/2,8

Three Exposures (-1; 0; +1;)

ISO: 100 at f/8

Software: Photoshop CC2019

Plugin: TTS Pro

 

Cave In

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Back from Japan, on my lastest trip I visited Friuli region in Italy, during the course of my itinerary I have marked many photographic spots and this is precisely one of those. This famous waterfall in this area is named Fontanon di Goriuda that faces to a mountain recess inside a wood. It’s amazing to be near and feel the loud noise of water coming from it, in the area that is exactly behind there is a flow of air that brings a lot of water so the wash is assured 🙂

During my days in those areas I found a really bad weather, the rain was strong beating most of the day, many roads were closed for collapsed trees and even the day I went to visit the Fontanon di Goriuda it was raining heavily, fortunately the recess in the rock allowed me to take pictures in complete calm sheltered from the rain

Finding the exact position to make this shot was not easy considering the too much water  coming under the waterfall and on the other side the ground was sloping with mud … at the end with a little patience and getting muddy 🙂 I could find this point of view, my intention was to portray an overview of what I was facing: the beautiful Friulian landscape with the Fontanon di Goriuda on the left

 

WORKFLOW EXPLANATION

I captured 5 exposure brackets to make this but I don’t used all the shots for blending because the tree on the right moved too much from one pictures to another, so I just used one darker and one brighter exposure to fix the main darkness inside the cave and to decrease the lights in the sky

I launched  luminosity masks to made the main adjustments using contrasts and curves to lights and darkness, with the use of TTS PRO  I increased details and I launched orton effect to smooth the effect and to create a soft dreamy look around the waterfall. After this I used a white brush applied to a layer with soft light to intensify th glow effect selectively, you can see more of it here.

I little intensified the yellow look of the frame by applying a warm filter to the luminosity masks and then I stepped up the full color scale through the LAB Coloring

I also used dodge and burn around some areas that I wanted to lighten, as a final touch I lowered the brightness a little while preserving the light on the waterfall

As always I hope you will find this usefull. I love to ear that from you!

 

TECNHNICAL STUFF

Camera: Nikon D-800

Lens: Nikon 14-24mm f/2,8

Three Exposures (-2 ;-1; 0; +1; +2)

ISO: 100 at f/10

Software: Photoshop CC2019

Plugin: TTS Pro

 

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Hi, my name is Giuseppe Sapori, a professional photographer and author of this website, created by yours truly to show my work and share with you the techniques I use. My expertise is in the field of Landscape Photography... (Read More)

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