Morning rush

Back to Laos...

I exhausted the pictures from the Kong Lor Cave area already, but there is so many more from the other places. Vang Vieng was already mentioned once, so I will not repeat myself telling why this place was so awesome.

But it only takes one look at the picture below to see why it was an ideal spot for a photographer: water, mountains and amazing colours. It is hard to take a "peaceful river" kind of shot in this area though - the people are getting busy quite early. Most of them rushing to do "sunrise cruises", but also setting up their nets or just going up river with some supplies.

Sony RX100M3, 24mm, 1.3s @ f/11, iso 80

Lost in winter

Nikon 7100, 75mm, 1/60s @ f/14, iso 125

Choices, choices... 

The moment I imported the photo into Lightroom I knew it has to be black-and-white with a colour accent. Few adjustments later I ended up with the picture #1 (below). The problem was, even though the red is strong, it wasn't enough to make the subject stand out from the background.

I thought blurring with a radial filter was the answer (picture #2). But the blur was looking very artificial, like I tried to fake a DOF very clumsily, as some of the critics noticed. Oh, I posted those two photos to the Street Photography group on 500px looking for tips.

After a bit more pondering, I finally toned down the background a bit, but without blurring it too much. A bit of shadows brightening, a tad of contrast and voila! The end result is exactly, what I was trying to show.

I had two good titles actually three) for this photo:

1. Lost in winter
2. Looking for summer
3. Which way to summer?

Ended up using the first one. What do you think?

Sharp (#1)

Blurred (#2)

Vacations' end

Fujifilm X100s, 1/5s @ f/16, iso 100

Got to the beach early to get some nice sunrise pics, but did not planned on this. Very nostalgic, given my winter escape is about to end very soon...