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24
Jul 2012

Summer On The Rocks || Riomaggiore

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The Beautiful Riomaggiore, Cinque Terre

I love when human architecture blends with nature in a unique and beautiful way. It’s hard to find a place that can illustrate it better than the town of Riomaggiore, Cinque Terre.

Shortly before I shot this, a fisherman pulled through the inlet and docked his boat. He hopped up onto the rocks with a bucket and pulled out a large octopus. Clearly pissed off, the octopus writhed and wrapped his tentacles around his arm. With his free hand, the fisherman pulled the octopus off his arm and by the tentacles, he repeatedly slammed him onto the rocks. Wham, wham, thwack, and…. Problem solved.

Technical Mumbo Jumbo

First of all, this photo is not an HDR image or a blend of multiple exposures. Instead, it’s processed from a single D700 RAW file. I wanted to mention this today because a lot of people have been mistaking colorful images for HDRs lately. When did that happen? Anyway, before I go on a rant, I’ll break down the image.

After correcting the Chromatic Aberration in Lightroom, I exported a 16bit Tiff file and opened it in Photoshop. From there I added some selective sharpening to the foreground elements using NIK Sharpener Pro and made all of the contrast and color adjustments using simple luminance masking and adjustment layers. I also cast a level 16 wizard spell on the green channel to give it some more pop and tonal contrast. Some of the lens distortion was also manually adjusted without the aid of magic spells.

A warm sunny afternoon on the rocks overlooking the beautiful Riomaggiore, Italy.

Filed Under: Architecture, Cinque Terre, Italy, Landscape, Riomaggiore, Travel
04
May 2012

Dreams In Color – Cinque Terre

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Dreams In Color – Manarola

Manarola, Cinque Terre is simply stunning any time of day but when the sky turns shades of pink, it’s out of this world. It’s at those times that the color sings. (Or maybe that was the wine talking)

I know that I’ve been releasing a lot of photos from Italy lately but I just can’t help it. I’ve said this before but Cinque Terre is my photographic happy place. Since I’ve been a little down with a virus over the last week (some really strange Chinese cough thing) , I’ve been using some of these italian photos to lift my spirits.

Post-processing Before and After

This photo is a blend of two exposures 0 & -1, with a tiny tiny bit of tone mapping thrown into the mix. After that I applied a few simple color and contrast adjustments. Nature provided me with such a great base that I really didn’t need to do much. It’s always nice when that happens. :)

Questions are always welcome.

Filed Under: Architecture, Before & After, Cinque Terre, Italy, Landscape, Manarola, Sunrise and Sunset, Travel
19
Apr 2012

Summer’s Heart || Italy Is Calling Me

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Summer’s Heart || Italy Is Calling Me

I’m not sure why but I’ve been missing Italy like crazy lately. I just can’t seem to get it out of my mind. I’ve been feeling an intense pull, almost like someone has been calling my name. From the food, to the scenery, to the warm summer sun, Italy has been in my thoughts almost every day.

Since I’m not visiting again until this August, the only thing I could think to do about it was edit another photo from Le Cinque Terre, my photographic happy place. And this shot of Vernazza has been sitting in my “to process” gallery for almost a year now. As soon as I opened this file in Photoshop, my heart swam with warm emotion as I remembered being in this beautiful place. Then when I zoomed in, I noticed something very strange that made the hairs on the back on my neck tingle a bit…

Check out what’s written on the third boat to the right. It’s my name, Elia. Now that’s one hell of a coincidence, right? Maybe Italy really was calling out my name. I may need to visit earlier now… I don’t know if a message can get any clearer than that.

Post-processing Before and After

When you toggle the slider, you may notice that the water shifts along with the boats. That’s because the water and boats are made up of of exposure -1, while the rest of the shot is a blend of exposures 0 and a sliver of tone mapping to punch out some of the details in certain areas. But what really makes this one pop is the color correction. Well, that and it’s Italy. I mean, damn this place is awesome. :)

 

Filed Under: Architecture, Before & After, Cinque Terre, Italy, Travel, Vernazza
14
Mar 2012

Falling Tide || Post-Processing Before and After

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Falling Tide – Getting Close To The Finish Line

Apologies for the lack of posts over the last week but things have been absolutely nuts. With less than 2 days left before I begin my permanent traveling & location independent adventure, I have at least 10 days worth of work left to do! It’s a good thing I bought extra espresso yesterday. I’ve almost gone through an entire brick since then and I’m just getting started. Zooooom!

To prevent myself from continuing to bore you with the details of my current predicament, here’s another shot from the stellar Cinque Terre (aka, my happy place).

Falling Tide - (Vernazza, Cinque Terre, Italy)

Post-Processing Before And After

Manarola is one of 5 beautiful towns in Le Cinque Terre and throughout each day, I’d set out to scout these amazing Italian Villages. Some of the days greeted me with cool cloud formations and with the long summer days, the lighting stayed warm and beautiful. It made for great shooting conditions from sunup to sundown.

The Post-Processing for this photo is pretty straight forward. All I really did was give the scene a tiny bit of encouragement and a few small color tweaks using simple masks and adjustment layers. Let’s just hope I tweaked them in the right direction. ^_^

before
Filed Under: Architecture, Before & After, Cinque Terre, HDR Photography, Italy, Manarola, Travel
02
Mar 2012

Golden Embrace – Beginning to roll out the new website

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Welcome to BlameTheMonkey 2.0

Well, sort of… ;) It’s not QUITE finished yet, but we’ve been working hard on getting it completed. It was time to at least get the new (nearly finished) design up and running. We’ll be ironing out the little kinks with it over the next week or so and then we’ll begin rolling out the new content as promised.

What’s up with the delay you ask?

Well, come to find out, the thought of selling all my possessions was much simpler than actually doing it. It’s proving to be one hell of a task that has kept my wife (web design master) and I thoroughly consumed over these past few weeks. It’s all starting to wrap up though – which is extremely exciting. ^_^

Please bear with us a little longer.
Now, that the awkward disclaimer is out of the way – on to the photo details.

Golden Embrace - (Vernazza, Cinque Terre, Italy)

This is a late Golden Hour shot of Vernazza, one of my favorite towns in Le Cinque Terre, Italy. I hiked up to this spot and watched as the light faded into twilight. I was the first photographer to setup and the last one to leave. Slightly before I did leave though, I grabbed this other beautiful view.

Filed Under: Cinque Terre, HDR Photography, Italy, Landscape, Sunrise and Sunset, Travel, Vernazza
24
Jan 2012

More From The Beautiful Cinque Terre

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The Beauty Of Surrender – Riomaggiore, Cinque Terre

Back in 2010 when I just started getting into travel photography, my wife and I visited our good friends near Florence, Italy. There, sitting in the living room was this amazing picture of colorful Italian buildings built into a seaside mountain. For me It had every visual element of a great photograph. At the time I had no idea that The Cinque Terre region even existed, let alone that it contained such unique and special beauty. I remember writing down in my notebook the word: Riomaggiore.

Flash forward to now and my wife and I travel full time, exploring and photographing unique places all over the world. Out of everywhere I’ve been, hands down, Cinque Terre is the most beautiful. The vista points blew our minds and we instantly fell in love. I’ve had a long love affair with the sea and for me, Cinque Terre embodied the perfect synergistic balance between civilization and the ocean. I instantly felt comfortable, at peace, and at home. To this day, my photos from Cinque Terre continue to be some of my greatest inspiration.
 
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A Sincere Thank You to Scott Kelby

Yesterday, I was honored and humbled to find out that Scott Kelby listed BlameTheMonkey.com as the “Best New Blog For Photographers.” — Part of his 3rd Annual “Best of 2011 Awards.”

He also has Crazy Stupid Love as the best romantic comedy of 2011 and I couldn’t agree more. That movie has kept me laughing out loud on multiple flights… And, there’s a lot more cool stuff on there too. Check it out. :)

Filed Under: Architecture, Cinque Terre, HDR Photography, Italy, Riomaggiore, Sunrise and Sunset, Travel