On the road

August 12th, 2008 | landscapes |

There’s something mystical about an empty road…

On the road

On the road

Which one do you like best? Both shots taken in Germany at our last trip. The second one is taken in Rudesheim, the first somewhere between the Rhein and the Mosel where there are brilliant landscapes.

Techs and postprocessing after the jump.

Basically, both shots were taken while we were moving. The first one is taken in the car, so a very short shutter speed was needed. I took 1/1000 at 400 ISO in shutter priority which gave me a nice aperture of f9.

The second one is taken from some sort of ski lift. We weren’t travelling that fast so using aperture priority at f11 was ok.

Postprocessing is done in Lightroom 2.0 and I love its new features so much! Both pics have a gradient filter to darken the sky and to give it some color (they were plain boring when they came out of the camera). Putting the gradient perfectly on the horizon line is impossible, so I did the following trick. Put the gradient a little bit above the horizon and save its adjustmens (exposure, brightness, color, contrast, etc) as a preset. Then take your brush and finish the sky off by painting between the gradient and the horizon line with the preset you just saved. Take a low flow and go over it more a couple of times. It might also be possible that you first need to paint a bit before you can select the preset. It’s something weird I encountered last night. But other than this little bug, the gradient and the brush are great!

12 Comments on “On the road”

  1. 1 Flickr: KarolusLinus said at 2:27 on August 12th, 2008:

    Wat een donkere lucht!

  2. 2 Flickr: Dikkie.net said at 2:29 on August 12th, 2008:

    Dankzij de gradient filter die nu in LR2 zit :)

  3. 3 Flickr: wouterh said at 5:11 on August 12th, 2008:

    Ik vind de lijnen van de eerste vrij intrigerend. Knap gedaan!

  4. 4 Flickr: Dikkie.net said at 5:22 on August 12th, 2008:

    Merci wouter! Ik vind die eigenlijk veel leuker dan die zandweg, hoewel die blijkbaar meer commentaren krijgt op Flickr.

  5. 5 Depechie said at 8:39 on August 13th, 2008:

    Dikkie, dit zijn echt wonderbaarlijke foto’s !!

  6. 6 smiley said at 9:11 on August 13th, 2008:

    De eerste spreekt me toch meer aan. Leuk om zo de horizon scheef te leggen waardoor de weg wel leuk uitkomt.

  7. 7 Flickr: -k. said at 9:34 on August 13th, 2008:

    De eerste is ook mijn favoriet.

  8. 8 Dikkie said at 9:50 on August 13th, 2008:

    @Depechie: Thx man! :)
    @smiley, -k: Vind ik ook.

  9. 9 Wim said at 4:12 on August 15th, 2008:

    Fantastische foto’s.
    Ik ben een beetje jaloers.

  10. 10 Dikkie said at 23:21 on August 20th, 2008:

    Danku Wim :)

  11. 11 Goya said at 11:28 on August 22nd, 2008:

    Die eerste is knap gedaan. Vergeet niet af en toe over uw schouder te kijken of de weg achter je nog steeds even leeg is als voor je ;)

  12. 12 Rulan Kurek said at 19:38 on September 1st, 2008:

    Mooie dieptewerking in deze foto’s!
    Knap gedaan!

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