Praza da Leña 4

Watcha Manuel,

lovely town square scene, but, beyond that, excellent composition and balance of light, shade, colour and texture. After the storm pics, with the light reflecting off the damp stone work is so very hard to catch right, but, when it is caught right, it produces pics like this.

best Mick

Hi Manuel,

What a great mood. I love how you have captured this early evening / after the rain feeeling, I love the color depth and how you have managed the contrast. Really beautiful.

In a perfect world I'd like to see the cross in the back of the square nearer (which I see no way to achieve without making this a totally different image), or at least better separate from the background. There would be two ways to get there. First, having lights in the background behind the cross, where it looks like a street leading off the square. Second, faking it in Photoshop. The first would have been quite impossible without a local contact, and even if you had it, you would most likely have missed the moment. This leaves you with Photoshop.

I have just tried it and it is fairly easy to do. Load the image in Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, GIMP, or what ever you use. Add a new layer in blending mode "Soft Light", fill it with the neutral color 50% gray, select one of the bright, warm yellows from the walls and, with a soft brush and maybe 10% fill, paint over the background where you feel it would be lit. Don't worry about spilling into the cross and the walls you don't want to light up. Now add a mask and paint away where you don't want the added light. My result looks like this.

Again, this is a fine image with very effective use of the wide-angle lens. Care to tell us where it is?

Cheers, Andreas

PS: Be my guest at my photoblog :)