Day 64 - Scalinata di Trinità dei Monti

This is, of course, the Spanish Steps, designed by the architects Francesco de Sanctis and Alessandro Specchi. In Italian they're called Scalinata di Trinità dei Monti meaning the steps to the church Trinità dei Monti. The building of the 174 steps were funded by the French diplomat Étienne Gueffier between 1723-1725, linking the Spanish embassy to the church, that was under the patronage of the Bourbon French kings at the time. They have been sung about in many songs, and they have appeared in both tv-series and movies, and no wonder - it's a beautiful place. They had even put a bunch of flowerpots in the middle of them when we were there to make them look even lovelier.

As you can see, we visited the steps on two different occasions - I had the wrong lens (too heavy zoom) with me the first time and the lighting wasn't entirely to my satisfaction either, so, since the place was not far from where we stayed, we popped by a second time to snap a few quick pictures. I much prefer the lighting in the pictures to the right (that were taken on that second visit) to the one on the left. The blue sky was lovely but not as interesting as the cloudy drama in the other shots that were taken later in the day when the stairs were sunny - if you go too early they will be shaded by the surrounding buildings. That's the stuff you figure out as you explore a city. It's a good thing to think about which direction the sites are facing and when the best time to shoot them should be.

/MrsHjort

Day 20 - Sensory Overload

Here is a good example of what I meant a couple of days ago when I said that you easily get lost in all the things there are to look at in the Vatican Museum. There are several rooms like this where art is all around you - the floors, the walls and the ceilings - and very rich at that.

This corridor is called the Gallery of Maps. The maps, 40 of them in total, were painted between 1580-1583 by Ignazio Danti, a famous geographer of the time. Danti wasn't only a cartographer though, he was a man of many talents and was also a priest (a bishop in fact), a mathematics professor and an astronomer.

As you can see the maps are quite large - 15 by 16 feet in size - and quite detailed. They're all of regions of Italy. The towns, villages (and even hamlets) are painted with great accuracy and upon close inspection you can even see historical incidents occurring in each area, or find important characters like Christopher Columbus.

/MrsHjort

Day 17 - Serenity

This is that same dome - the St Peter's Dome - that I shot yesterday, but this is shot from inside the Vatican. The dome was designed my Michelangelo himself who started the project when he was 71 years old. After he died, his student completed the work and it was finished in 26 years later, in 1590. The dome is 136 m high and 42 m in diameter. If you want to climb to the top, it's a whopping 491 steps to the top. Sadly, we didn't do that though. We ended up going the other way, climbing down to the tombs of the popes beneath the cathedral, and after that we were utterly famished, so we left the country to go get a bite to eat... 

What a strange thing to say eh? Leaving a country to go eat something... There are actually a few restaurants inside, but we're a picky couple when it gets to food. We travel as much for the food as for anything else and we carefully pick the restaurants we go to beforehand to avoid tourist traps and mediocre places. Apps like TripAdvisor is a great way to achieve that - it helped turn our trip into a wonderful food experience :)

/MrsHjort

Day 16 - The Vatican

The Vatican... the world's smallest country... does it need an introduction? Not really I'd say. We went here on our second day. We had planned for it in advance and bought tickets to skip the long waiting lines and get a guided tour to the highlights of the Vatican Museum - a thing I highly recommend if you plan on going there (the lines were looooooong). You can get them on the official homepage for a modest fee, or buy them for considerably more from people who make a living off selling them on the street outside. If I had a nickel for every time someone tried their routine on us I'd afford a whole bundle of tickets. Must have been something I carried with me... hehe... my bulky DSLR wasn't exactly screaming local signorina. I'd never trade it for a compact camera though, but sometimes I wish it was more discreet.

/MrsHjort

Day 14 - Manarola

Cinque Terre is an absolutely gorgeous area, and Manarola is one of its jewels. As we looked at photos on the internet when we were planning this trip, I knew I just had to go there.

It did not disappoint! The town is nothing like anything I've been to before. The streets are narrow and the buildings are quite close together, built higher and higher on the steep cliff sides. I overheard a guide say that they build the city this way to hide it from pirates. Their hope was that the narrow valley would make it less visible from the sea. I don't know whether it worked or not but the way it's built is very unique. It's like a small town with very tall buildings, except they're not that tall at all, it only feels that way. Very cool!

There's only one small road leading to Manarola. It runs through the mountains and getting there took us longer than you'd think. It wasn't that far from the city we stayed in after all, but the winding roads meant the travel distance was longer. That didn't deter the tourists though. The place was packed and I hadn't seen so many people at one place in a long time. So, if you're planning on going here, set out early and you'll get a much better parking spot :).

/MrsHjort

Day 12 - Hear Ye

"Who is this?" You may wonder. Well, it's the announcer of the knights' duel I wrote about yesterday, clad in beautiful green and gesturing powerfully as he captivated the crowd between the clashes :)

This might possibly be the last of the portraits I'll show you from the that wonderful day at the Medieval market (which doesn't mean there isn't more to come). This shot was the one I worried most about. I was afraid that the fake bokeh would be problematic, I mean just look at all those fuzzy details of the subject's costume!

Having done so many of the fake bokeh shots lately, I've learned the ins and outs of the process. The key is to get real close and meticulous with the lasso tool when the background is busy, and looser when it is relatively monotone. My first try to get this right turned out much better than I expected it to. I usually go over it with the clone stamp to smooth the edges after blurring the background, but it required very little work this time. Maybe because I was extra careful with the lasso tool...? It was a huge relief nonetheless.

/MrsHjort

Day 5 - The Ladies

Yey! Things are moving forward! I've had two epiphanies since yesterday - I've figured out a new way to reduce noise selectively using the Nik Collection, and a new, much faster way to fake a narrow DOF.

Let's deal with the noise first. Sometimes, the name of a thing can blind you to the effect is has. The Nik Collection includes a filter called Dynamic Skin Softener that reduces texture in, you guessed it, skin tones. But, you have the ability to redefine what should be accounted as "skin", which means that you can soften any color you like by using the pipette tool. Neat huh? That helps a lot when changing a portion of an image drastically, like say when you use the Detail Extractor to bring out a sky and it becomes "too noisy". I wish I had figured that out sooner.

Next, lets talk about the fake DOF. Before, I used do that in a very time-consuming way. I used the lasso tools to select the portion I wanted to keep sharp, copied it and put it on a new layer. After that I  went back to the base layer, cloned the areas close to the "copied part" and painted over it to minimize the bleed effect that blurring an image creates - otherwise I would end up with a give-away fuzzy "halo" around sharp area. Today I figured, why not simply cut the subjects out instead? That way there would be nothing left on the base layer to bleed from. As you can see, it worked beautifully! Tough, I had to copy the base layer three times, blur three of layers and keep a sharp one in the back so that there wouldn't be any "sharp bleed" or transparency (am I making sense here? I hope I am).

So there you have it. My two new methods, I hope they're useful to you too.

/MrsHjort

New Tutorials at Dagger Bay

My new favorite online hangout spot is coming along nicely. Contests are up and running, sporting wonderful entries, and the community is a twitter of shared ideas, art, and the usual random shenanigans. Can you tell I love Dagger Bay? I really do! The place picked up just where the old place left off and we're having a blast.

Anyway, there are two new photography tutorials there now for you to check out, with some of my tips and tricks, as well as a way to save a load of time editing. Find them here.

Cheers
/MrsHjort

Busy Busy Busy

As you most likely gathered by my last post, there's a lot to do right now - starting a new site is a lot of hard work! Don't get me wrong though, I absolutely love it! I'm totally addicted to Dagger Bay already! Creating a place for the spirit of our old home to live on in is so much fun! There are so many new ideas and discussions floating around. It's very inspiring! We are so fortunate! So many amazing people have chosen to join us, and they've brought a truckload of enthusiasm and zeal with them. So, let me say thank you, to all of ye fellow pirates out there! If you read this, I want you to know how thankful we all are for your input. We want our new home to be worthy of you! Keep those creative juices flowing ;)

Cheers

/MrsHjort

Day 8 - Cholcolate

Shooting this I used similar techniques as when I shot tea, and soup a while back. Shooting food is a question of speed and preparation (not just of the food itself). Therefore I set up the arrangement before actually pouring the hot chocolate in. I was a bit worried the piece of chocolate would melt against the hot glass though. That's when I figured I'd put a nut behind it to lean against, and it worked like a charm.

When all was in place, I poured the drink and snapped away. Though I soon realized I'd need an other light-source in front of the glass - the subjects got too dark against that bright background. I immediately ran upstairs to get my flash, but when I got back, there was too much condensation already. So, I poured the chocolate back into the pot, to reheat on the stove, and took out a fresh glass to repeat the procedure. It turned out much better the second time, and it was yummy too ;)

/MrsHjort

Still Chasing the Dream

I don't know how many hundreds of butterfly pictures I've
shot. I find it hard to stop snapping once I've started. I'ts like when you were young and went to the candy store haha. I just can't stop chasing that perfect shot. Not that I have a particular one in mind, I just want a real gorgeous one. A picture that makes all other pictures look mundane and boring. That one dream shot, that constantly alludes me, fluttering out of reach just as I reach for it.

I doubt that I will ever get it, that once in a lifetime shot. Not that I doubt my abilities, it's just that some goals should never quite be reached. You should always strive to do better - it keeps you on your toes, and besides, it's the journey itself that's interesting. It does not matter If I ever make it, I just enjoy the ride.

So, yesterday, I once again went out into my garden with my camera-hand itching for action. Somehow, every shooting gets you something different. The light is never exactly the same, the environment around you changes and gives you a different bokeh, and the butterflies themselves never behave in exactly the same way.

Having shot tonnes and tonnes of butterflies, I've learned a bit about how to get closer to that dream shot. So, here are some of my thought about macro photography, and shooting butterflies.

1) Choose a calm day - it's so much easier if you don't have to wait for the wind to stop blowing all the time, and for the bushes to stop moving. Even the smallest gust of wind can be very frustrating when using a narrow DOF - things will move in and out of focus, a lot!

2) Any time of the day is fine, as long as the sun is shining. Even late in the afternoon or early in the morning - it makes for great opportunities to get "contrasty" shots with the main subject shining in the sun! Anyway, lots of light makes for shorter shutter speeds which, in turn, makes the shots sharper. It helps a lot when working with small, fast moving subjects.

3) Always think of the bokeh. You want the butterfly to be contrasted to the background, unless your intention is a dreamy shot, like the second from the top.

4) Experiment with angles, The butterflies may be pretty with their wings out from above, but there are a million of those shots, and one more isn't original. Unless, it's exceptional in some way - I just love the colors in the top shot :)

5) The focus should be right in the butterfly's face. Just like when shooting portraits. It's the coolest thing when you get those eyes just right. You know, I actually never thought of butterflies as fuzzy creatures before I started shooting them, haha, but they are, and gorgeously so.

6) Speaking of close-ups... A macro lens might have the ability to get you those really cool zoomed in shots, but, they're devilishly hard to get just right. So, do not use the maximum zoom capability all the time, sometimes a shot from a bit "further away" can be just as lovely.

7) Composition is tricky when working with subjects that have a will of their own. A good deal of luck is involved, but you can learn to anticipate their movements to some degree, if you observe them closely.

8) Shoot a lot of "safies". Butterflies are tricky to capture, and the more shots you have, the larger the quantity of really sharp shots will be. Let that trigger finger work!

9) Use an empty mem-card with a large storage capacity, I can, literally, shoot hundreds of pictures during one shooting. And, trust me, it's not fun to have to go through them and erase the ones you think are bad because you have run out of storage. And, it might make you miss a lot of cool stuff too.

10) Have fun and be patient :)

So, those are my thoughts, I hope they helped you.

Cheers, and happy hunting!

/MrsHjort