The Wayside

  • Home
  • Posts tagged "sky"

The Wayside

Tags : 

 

We are in Osaka and this is the view from one of the hightest point of the city. I’m talking about another very tall building, the Umeda Sky Building located in the Kita-ku district, in Shin Umeda, an area that developed northwest of the Umeda commercial district

It is a building where there are mainly offices, together with an observation platform where you can admire a beautiful view of the city

The Umeda Sky Building has a bridge structure consists of two twin towers of forty floors connected to each other on the two highest floors; these last two floors house the structure called Floating Garden Observatory, one of the main attractions of the city

Also here like in Tokyo Tower and Tokyo Skytree I took the picture through a window so I had to be careful not to bring the lights inside the structure reflected on the glass

 

WORKFLOW EXPLANATION

Since I go upstairs the Umeda Sky Building with the sunlight, I took advantage of the twilight moment to capture the view of the city with the soft light. I blended my exposures into one image using TTS PRO , I fixed lights and contrasts using luminosity masks

I used dodge and burn and clone stamp to fix some lights relfections that escaped my sight, after this I increased details. I fixed the colors of the frame giving  a blue tone in the foreground but at the same time more warm to lights and skylight

I increased the glow effect using a soft orton effect  and glow painting over the buildings, with the same technique I created a manual vignette around the image

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 (-1; 0; +1)

ISO: 200 at f/9

Software: Photoshop CC2019

Plugin: TTS Pro

 

Towards the Sky

Tags : 

 

Another image from the Bamboo forest of Arashiyama, in my previous post I have spoken extensively about this forest, which is an unmissable destination for those who go to Japan, but I also talked about how difficult it is to take pictures inside it to stay quiet away from tourists… Well, the photo in question instead does not consider all this 😀

In fact in this incredible location just look up at the sky in some points of the forest to find shows of trees that are intertwined upwards, leaving just some glimmers in the light to enter and it is precisely these glimmers of light to create the magical atmosphere that reigns in the Bamboo forest of Arashiyama

I love the play of light that is created between the trunks of the bamboo, especially those that have formed on the left, illuminating some parts of the forest that are in the shadow areas. I made this shot handheld, without a tripod although in fact I used bracketing as I always do for habit at the end but I have only used one exposure of these, the reason? the wind and the leaves that moved made impossible any sort of alignment between the trees and the image will result blurry if I use digital blending

 

WORKFLOW EXPLANATION

As anticipated a moment ago this is a single shot, so I exploited the potential of luminosity masks to raise and lower the lights and shadows of the image. Although I intervened several times on the central light coming from the opening between the trees, I have also chosen to leave the light source strong, to give greater contrast to the image but also to increase the sense of illumination.

I increased details using my panel placing the effect with 50% opacity and than I launched the orton effect decreasing the opacity to 10%. After increasing the yellow tones of the image with two warm filters applied to highlights and shadows, with dodge and burn I made some adjustments on the top leaves and on the dark tree on the right

I tried as much as possible to keep an editing similar to the one in my previous photo since the same location I like the idea of having results in terms of color and lighting similar, although the subject and lighting in this case is completely different. For this reason also this time I used Color Efef Pro with Sunlight filter and reducing opacity to 35%, to increase the glow coming from the main light

Last passage was to create a dark vignette but this time without increasing the light in the center part of the frame, the light would have been really too much this time 🙂

As always I 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 (Shot at 14mm)

Single Shot

ISO: 100 at f/10

Software: Photoshop CC2018

Plugin: TTS Pro, Color Efex pro

 

A Night in the Village

Tags : 

 

Second image from Takayama village in Japan, I took this second picture a few minutes after that of my previous post going to photograph the bridge in his front view, the image so quiet in the village at sunset illuminated by these yellow lanterns was a very impressive element for me.

Even the contrast between the yellow lights and the blue twilight has greatly attracted my curiosity, I love the blue hour for these reasons. I captured this image with a very low light, so at ISO 100 the shutter speed was 30 seconds

 

WORKFLOW EXPLANATION

This is a single shot, so this time no blending was done for this picture. Anyway I always used luminosity masks  to fix the lights in the sky, over the lanterns and set the right contrast. I set the proportions and slightly straightened the photo, with the clone stamp I removed a spot at the top

With the glow tool  I made some lights adjustments on the bridge to increase the light and give more warm over the area under the lanters. I gave a soft orton effect and I added a warm filter to the foreground to give more the impression of  lighting coming from the lanterns. I raised up the shadows with luminosity masks and as a last touch I created a small vignette to increase the sense of darkness

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

 

TECNHNICAL STUFF

Camera: Nikon D-800

Lens: Nikon 14-24mm f/2,8 (Shot at 14mm)

Single shot for 30′

ISO: 100 at f/10

Software: Photoshop CC2018

Plugin: TTS Pro

 

By the Way

Tags : 

 

Tokyo Skytree from the nearest bridge. In my previous photos I posted some images taken from the the top of this tower, since it is a fairly impressive structure is seen from the main points of the city and so I took advantage in the evening to do some shots  in the around areas. With a easy google maps research I found this bridge that had a great view in perspective of the Tokyo Skytree, exactly what I was looking for for this shot!

I started shooting at sunset so as to “freeze” the moment of the sunset sky and some elements like the trees, then I waited for it to get darker to start taking the light trails that I added to the final image. During this photo I realized another element to keep in mind when making the photos from the bridges… vibrations due to the passage of heavy vehicles, I noticed a strong vibration when someone of this passed, for safety I preferred redo some of my shots taken in those passages

 

WORKFLOW EXPLANATION

I selected a shot for the correct sky at dusk and others images to select light trails, I selected from this images 2 exposures that I used to add the light trails you see. Iresized the image, I re-adjusted the perspective, than I launched  my panel to add details and to fix the color cast. I fixed the colors adding some cold filters (one for the highlights and one for the shadows). After adding a soft contrast, I fixed the lights of the trails, using glow brush tool included in TTS PRO.

I made som adjustments at the colors, increasing the lights of red and yellows and decreasing the light of blue. With luminosity masks applied to lights 1 and to curves tool I darkened the light of the sky, I finally applied a soft sharpen to light trails and added a small vignette to better give the sense of dark mood

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

 

TECNHNICAL STUFF

Camera: Nikon D-800

Lens: Nikon 14-24mm f/2,8 (Shot at 14mm)

Multiple shots

ISO: 100 at f/22

Software: Photoshop CC2018

Plugin: TTS Pro

 

Sensō-ji

Tags : 

 

During my stay in Tokyo I could not miss the most famous temple in the city, I am talking about the Sensō-ji temple. That is a Buddhist temple complex located in the Asakusa district of Tokyo. It is the oldest temple in the city, and one of the most important. I take this photo to the  imposing five-storey pagoda that you can find near the temple

The entrance to the temple is marked by the famous “door of thunder”. It houses a huge paper lantern, painted red with black characters. In the nearbyes there’s a busy shopping street, that leads to the main entrance of the Sensō-ji temple

The Sensō-ji is a popular tourist destinations.  In the shopping street you can find a high number of stores specializing in the sale of traditional Japanese items have emerged in its surroundings, as well as restaurants offering traditional Japanese food (ramen, sushi, tempura, etc.). Many of these shops are run by the heirs of former owners, who started their business thanks to the economic income secured by the great flow of pilgrims to the temple

I really enjoyed the visit to Sensō-ji and among good food, photos and shops the visit to this traditional Tokyo place is very pleasant 🙂

Here you are some shots taken in the temple area:

 

 

WORKFLOW EXPLANATION

The main picture of pagoda is a result of a digital blending made from 3 exposures brackets. I used my panel to stack the images and to blend them using luminosity masks blending funcions inside TTS PRO

I increased details and I launched dodge and burn applied to luminosity masks to avoid to affect the unwanted part of the picture, in particular I lightened the darker areas near the door. I also applied a warmer filter to the highlights and shadows to emphatyze the yellow lights and I added some glow effect to the sky

After a fix on the sky colours I added a soft contrast using midtones. As final touch I added a small vignette to increase emphatyze the center of the image

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

 

TECNHNICAL STUFF

Camera: Nikon D-800

Lens: Nikon 14-24mm f/2,8 (Shot at 15mm)

Three Exposures

ISO: 100 at f/9

Software: Photoshop CC2018

Plugin: TTS Pro

 

The Wanderluster

Tags : 

 

I absolutely love to photograph the night sky and every summer I try to find the right time to dedicate to the milky way and night shots. What you see is a shot taken in Abruzzo, an Italian region where nature is the main element and for me it is one of the main spots for landscapes and the night shots

This area is located in an ancient, uninhabited medieval village, very suggestive but above all ideal for taking shots and the milky way. At regard if you have not yet read it I recommend this article where I wrote how to plan and shot the milky way where you can find usefull information about the dark skies and how to take this kind of shots

This image is the result of a photomerge. I took a series of shots where I went to compose the frame by taking the whole milky way moving to the shots gradually down to including more foreground, I inserted the subject later with a mask from one shot taken separately to avoid the light disturb the visibility of the milky way

 

WORKFLOW EXPLANATION

Before open the images in Photoshop I make some edits on camera raw, especially for the colors and the lights, I saved the results and I opened the images as photomerge that composed my based frame, I adjusted the frame using the free transform tool, than I started using camera raw again with TTS PRO where I made the major adjustments for the contrast, highlighs, white and black points for the milky way

Using curves I increased the lights on the foreground helping myself with a brush. With dodge and burn I fixed the lights over the underexposed areas and I added more colors in the sky and on the ruins. Always using my panel I applied the warm highlights fiter that increased the yellow part of the highlights, than I decreased the opacity to 10% to softener the effect

Also made some adjustments at the colors where I fixed the main chromatic tone of the sky. With the clone stamp tool I removed some unwanted spots and some light pollution coming from the nearest city. As last touch I added a soft orton effect to make all more dreamy

You can find all the effects mentioned above in my custom panel TTS PRO, a very useful tool for any type of editing that I recommend to download to speed up and improve your workflow. I also want to recommend to subscribe to my newsletter to have news and updates from me and to receive a welcome gift as well as monthly tutorials about travel and landscape photography

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

 

TECNHNICAL STUFF

Camera: Nikon D-800

Lens: Nikon 14-24mm f/2,8 (Shot at 14mm)

Three Exposures

ISO: 3200 at f/2,8

Software: Photoshop CC2018

Plugin: TTS Pro

 

Dreaming Riomaggiore

Tags : 

Second post in the beautiful village of Riomaggiore, the view of the small port is a view that strikes and captures. I dedicated an entire shooting session at sunset in this location and did not betray my expectations

Those days were very hot days with a clear sky but during the evening  luckily  🙂 it often happened that the sky was covered always leaving clouds interesting in the sky

Also here I captured a long exposure,  like so much the movement of the boats on the flat sea, I captured several shots to have different exposures to stack images into layers and be able to do a controlled blending on the frame

 

WORKFLOW EXPLANATION

I take two exposures of the port of Riomaggiore, I made a blend using luminosity masks only in some part of the image, after this the first thing I do is to clone stamp some spot and a half boat that was on the bottom. The first thing done was to increase the yellow lights using a warm filter and dodge and burning the light over the leafs and main building

Using my panel I increased details and I applied contrast using curves adjustment layers applied to luminosity masks, always using curves I fixed lights in the sky and I recovered some shadows too darks.

I applied light bleeding to the left part of the sky and over the building reducing the effect decreasing the opacity. As final step I fixed colors using hue/saturation over the sea and I added a soft glow effect using color efex pro filters

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

 

TECNHNICAL STUFF

Camera: Nikon D-800

Lens: Nikon 14-24mm f/2,8 (Shot at 17mm)

Long Exposure for 91′

ISO: 100 at f/13

Software: Photoshop CC2018

Plugin: TTS Fast Panel – Colo Efex Pro

 

Coast to Coast

Tags : 

With this post I connect last week image, Nightlight to show you another picture from the beautiful Amalfi coast, in particular this was taken the following day on the road that leads  Amalfi to Atrani town. The colors and the landscape that you can admire in this spot is very interesting and I never lose the opportunity to take this picture every time I’m here, the most attentive of you will in fact know that I took the same picture in the past 🙂

Even here the road certainly does not give easy moments to take pictures, being a very tight road you must always pay attention to cars moving on the road (especially buses).  Is a very nice place but not really quiet to stand in the middle of the road with the tripod. Fortunately, the road is always very busy and cars are often in traffic, this not allows to the cars to go faster

In this Amalfi spot I captured several long exposures, I wanted to have the effect of movement of the sky and the sea, I did some test shots before without filter to set the values and to save the leaves in the lower left corner, the strong wind of this spot moved them all the time and I wanted to make sure I could intervene later

 

WORKFLOW EXPLANATION

I blended the long exposure with the normal exposure to save the leafs on the left. The wind moved the leaves and in the long exposure them results blurry, with this method I have limited the damages, not easy to edit because on the back there was the smooth sea but I managed something. Anyway I used luminosity masks to fix the lights and darks, I reduce the strong highlights on the back of the mountain and I pushed up the darkness of the foreground rocks

I incrased contrasts and I used dodge and burn to darken the middle rock and to lighten the sea breaking on the coast. With TTS Fast Panel I launched high details and orton effect to smooth the effect and to create a soft dreamy look. To begin edit the colors I started fixing color cast reducing the opacity on the result, than I increased the yellow colors using this techniques, reducing again the highlights in the sky. Latest passages was to darken a bit the whole frame and add a small purple look using camera raw

I always 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 (Shot at 24mm)

Long Exposure for 30′

ISO: 100 at f/13

Software: Photoshop CC2018

Plugin: TTS Fast Panel

 

 

 

Nightlight

Tags : 

 

I founded an exciting twilight light that day in Amalfi, together with a very strong wind on the cliff where I was to photograph the city. Amalfi coast view is one of the most beautiful in Italy and the city is located in the heart of this location, although it is not easy to move and walk along a very narrow road crammed with vehicles of all kinds (it is the only way to get there) with patience and paying max attention you can walk some paths in the rocks or on the coast that allow you to find beautiful views to admire

The whole area of ​​the Amalfi coast is subject to many sudden changes of the weather, probably due to the fact that the mountains above the coast are very close to the sea, the currents are often strong and sun and clouds and rains are very easily alternated, but it is easy to find very interesting skies like this

About this picture I take some long exposure shots, to try to have the sea softer but at the same time I did not want to lose the sky of that color so dark and mysterious. I shot several long exposures with various time from shorter to longer exposures, although I had taken all kinds of precautions I could not avoid that some photos being moved… anyway I stayed a while and in the end I managed to capture several shots that I could use for what I had in mind

 

WORKFLOW EXPLANATION

Since I use the digital blending on my photos I have combined the exposures of the sky with those of the sea, in order to obtain from that images what I needed. I applied contrast to luminosity masks to control midtones, darks and light contrast individually. All my use of luminosity masks here was applied to curves to fix lights and darks around the sky and sea

I applied details using TTS Fast Panel and with the same plugin I launched  dodge and burn to increase luminosity on the darker parts of the rocks. I launched  a slightly orton effect with a low percentile opacity is an effect that I always like to put in my images when I can. I also use sharpening tool in my panel this time because I wanted to notice the edges on the mountain and best details on the houses. As final passages I darkened the image a bit on the sea adding a small vignette to the frame.

I always 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 (Shot at 16mm)

2 Long exposure shots

ISO: 100 at f/8

Software: Photoshop CC2018

Plugin: TTS Fast Panel

 

Little Amalfi

Tags : 

Also this year I decided to return to this beautiful Italian town and admire the beauties of the Amalfi coast. In this area I love the magnificent view of the cliff, the scent of lemons, the sea and the good cuisine of the area. This is absolutely one of my favourite places ever visited among beautiful panoramas, place to visit, architecture, culture and food i never get bored here

Amalfi and the Amalfi Coast offer numerous photographic spots and also the conditions for shooting are often optimal thanks to the alternation between rain and sun that often insists in the area

Coming to the photo I moved away from the center of Amalfi to take a postcard of the city, that day it was raining but I managed to find a way to protect the camera, what I have done is a long exposure using a ND64 and a ND8 filters both mounted, where I included the mobility of boats, sky and sea with the staticity of the coast

 

WORKFLOW EXPLANATION

I edited this long exposure as a single shot, but as usual I used luminosity masks to edit lights, darks and midtones. I fixed the color cast in the image giving a more blue look, using a cold filter applied to the highlights and to the shadows. With dodge and burn I fixed some part of the frame hard to edit even with luminosity masks

With TTS Fast Panel  I launched details and orton effect , than I fixed contrast using midtones applied to darks masks. With lights masks I increased the highlights in the sky and lightened the houses, I also increased the colors of the houses using LAB Color and hue/saturation tool. The final steps was fixing the perspective of the frame and cutting the image that included an additional piece of foreground

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

 

TECNHNICAL STUFF

Camera: Nikon D-800

Lens: Nikon 14-24mm f/2,8 (Shot at 18mm)

Single Shot for 91′ sec

ISO: 100 at f/9

Software: Photoshop CC2018

 

Pagina successiva »

Site Founder

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)

Instagram Feed

Newsletter Signup

Discount Coupon Codes

Flickr PhotoStream

Other info

About
Contact
Privacy Policy

Facebook Page

Facebook

Newsletter Signup

© 2011 - 2018 Giuseppe Sapori - All Rights Reserved