Little reflection at the Lago Antorno

Hard to believe, but this photo was taken the day before I took the one I posted yesterday. This is at another lake in the Dolomites, the Lago Antorno. This one is just a bit higher up than the rest. We even wanted to go further up, but the road was closed off here. Maybe soon :)

This is a two shot vertorama, each shot blended from two exposures. I really just replaced the sky from a bit darker exposures. I still wanted it to be bright, as I wanted the whole photo to have this snowy, bright feel. Still, it was not sunny, so the snow is not as shiny. Blended and merged into a vertorama in Photoshop.

The mountains over Santa Maddalena

While I did not get all the photos I wanted in the Dolomites in Italy, I got quite a few. And here is another one. This is from a very popular photography spot over Santa Maddalena there. You probably have seen this view already if you follow photographers. The most common is to zoom in more, and have the church in the foreground and the mountains in the back. I also did a photo like that, but as the mountain peaks were in the clouds the whole time, I was not very happy with that. So I went with a different view here. Going wider and doing a panorama instead. Like this, while I don’t have such a defined foreground, I got some nice blue color into the sky.

This is a two shot panorama, each one blended from two exposures. Blended and combined in Photoshop.

And here are a few details:

Walking around Lago Di Braies

Let’s go back to the Lago Di Braies in Dolomites for today’s photo. This is again a different part of the lake. The lake is quite big and offers a lot of differnet views.

For this one I really liked the path, you have to take to get to one part of the lake. I was lucky, as most visitors stayed by the entrance to the lake, and the path was mostly empty. There was even a nice wooden bridge right behind the place I took this photo, but the area in front of it was ugly. There were a lot of broken branches that were flooded into this part and held by the bridge. I did not want to include that in the photo.

For this photo I used 5 exposures. The trees this dark and the sky being very bright, I knew I will need more to blend from. Again I used the 12mm Laowa lens here. It does not look like it, but I was standing much closer to the trees than it looks like.

Cloudy reflection at the Lago di Dobbiago

Back to the Dolomites with another photo. As I mentioned, I did not have that much luck on the weather there, and only, towards the end of the trip, it was really nice. But this photo was taken earlier in the trip, so it was still very cloudy. Actually, it was raining a bit when this photo was taken.

This is at Lago di Dobbiago lake, around midday. There is this little waterfall, and you have a bridge right next to it. It was not the best place to put a tripod on. The moment I set up the shot and pressed the shutter, a car passed by. And since the bridge is wooden, that make it shake so much, I thought my camera will fall into the water. Since I was taking a long exposure, the shot was ruined.

And it was not once, it happened 4 times in a row. There were no cars around, I would press the shutter, and that moment a car would show up from nowhere. Like on purpose. I ended up taking the same photo over and over again until I got one I liked.

I took three exposures for this photo, but they did not align perfectly, so I used only one RAW here. The 12mm Laowa lens was used to get a really wide shot, but I still had to point it a bit down to get more of the water. That’s why the aspect ratio of the photo is a bit more of a square. I needed to do a perspective correction here, and that changed it. I also used a 10 stop ND Formatt Hitech filter, on a NISI holder.

The small St. Johann Church

Continuing with the photos from the Dolomites, today’s one is of the St. Johann Church (Chiesetta di San Giovanni in Ranui) in Santa Magdalena. This is a bit more typical view of this church. The area, while beautiful, is a bit limited on spots you can take photos from. That is if you want to follow the rules and only stay in the open areas. The whole field is surrounded by a fence, with one spot with a platform, from which you get this exact view.

This is a blend of three exposures. The sky was a bit bland and overcast at that moment, which did not help wit the photo. Because of that I pulled the detail out a bit more this time. Blended and finished in Photoshop.