Barcelona Cityscape Panorama
Photo of the Day
Fortune and a bright, purple dawn smiled on my as I descended Montjuic Hill in Barcelona. After searching around for a good vantage point, I eventually settled on an area close to the site used for the swimming events in the 1992 Summer Olympics. I would have loved to have been inside that facility for its more unobstructed views, but I made the best of it when I realized it wasn’t going to be open any time near when I needed it to be.
Click for a larger image:
Photo of the Day – La Perdrera
I’m currently going through images from my trip to Barcelona last year and just processed this one from La Pedrera, one of Antoni Gaudi’s brilliant Art Nouveau apartment buildings. Also known as Casa Mila, this UNESCO world heritage site is full of Gaudi’s signature organic shapes and whimsical design.
This photo shows the view up to the sky from one of the many oddly-shaped courtyards below. It’s composed of five shots combined to make an HDR image. As tripods aren’t allowed inside La Pedrera, I had to shoot handheld which is never ideal for combining images in this way. But, thanks to Photoshop CS4’s improved ability to align layers, it all worked out.
I rarely get the results I want from Photoshop’s automatic HDR tool. Instead, I tend to throw all the different exposures into separate layers and go to town with masking. It gives better control over the final image and I can generally prevent the nasty halo effects that come with some automated HDR procedures.
Click the image for a larger version on flickr:
Photo of the Day – Feb. 16, 2009
Making good on my promise to do a bit of photoblogging, here’s the first in what will hopefully be a series of posts looking at the photos on my new portfolio site: darbysawchuk.com.
First up is one of my more recent travel images. Click on the thumbnail to see the full size:
This image was shot in Barcelona, Spain in the Gothic Quarter. The narrow alleys made for lovely shafts of light that burst through the darkness in the morning. It was tricky, however, to find a spot where the light wasn’t so overpowering that the background disappeared completely into darkness.
The other tricky part is, of course, being patient enough to someone interesting enough to walk past to round out the picture. This might be a pretty enough location shot, but with the man (and his companion pigeon) take it up a level and make the scene.
At first, I was unsure of the detail of the Christmas lights creeping into the top of the frame, but I’ve settled on liking them. Something about this fellow makes him look like he could be a musician and those notes at the top fit in nicely with him.
Darby Sawchuk is a Canadian-born photographer who currently resides in Manchester, England. He has travelled to over 40 countries and is always adding more to the list. He creates stock for multiple agencies and is available for assignments.
+44 0790 992 8932
