The Gondola Race - a special photographic memory.

[Ndukes]

April 2002, just after my retirement, my wife and I took a few days in Venice, Italy, and my first digital camera, a 3.7 megapixel Olympus Camedia E-10, came along too. In the mid-afternoon on 25th April we were just looking out from our hotel room across the Lagoon when a group of racing gondolas came into view. They headed for a marker straight opposite our vantage point and I grabbed the camera and fitted the 1.4x telephoto converter just in time to catch the chaotic excitement as they turned. One shot only, no image stabiliser or tripod and I was happy. This is a re-work of the original with some cloning from other images to lose some modern leisure craft which were spoiling the effect. Not a sharp image by today's standards but good in its time.

The 25th.April is the Festa di San Marco, Venice's patron saint, and it is celebrated extravigantly with many events including this gondola race between teams from Venice's six regions, painted in the region colours.


Olympus Camedia E-10 with 1.4x converter (200 mm equiv.) 1/640 at f5.6, iso 80

More at http://www.ndukes.net/albums/venice/

[Shadowman]

Nicely captured.

[bnnrcn]

Nice and colorful shot

[Chri5]

I like it. Maybe the sky is a bit distracting but im nit picking. Nice shot

[Ndukes]

Thank you John, Binnur and Chris. You are right about the sky Chris. I'll probably tinker about with it later. Unfortunately this one was shot 13 years ago before I 'discovered' the virtues of RAW but that won't hold me back.

[IzzieK]

The sky just need a bit of popping up, seeing that you have CS6, is doable...use the gradient tool in Camera Raw. Ooopppsss sorry this is not for C&C?

[Ndukes]

Thanks Izzie for that. C&C always welcome. The 'nothingness' of the Irish summer encouraged me into my study rather than the great outdoors this morning and I re-worked the sky based on the original JPEG which seemed to be entirely burnt out. Interestingly, and surprisingly, by using curves I was able to recover a small white cloud but had to re-invent the blue for the sky. For this I used Curves again separately for red and green channels. I used heavily feathered rectangle selection (I usually prefer this to Gradient) to keep the sky white near the horizon. A bit of pulling and dragging with Stamp tool and slight deepening of shade in the buildings and this is the result.

[MarvinTheSpartan]

The blue sky helps a lot. Nice shot.

[Ndukes]

Thanks for that, Mike.

[rawill]

Photo makes me nostalgic! Love the place and its incredible uniqueness.

Nice action shot, clear, and captures the place well.

[Ndukes]

Photo makes me nostalgic! Love the place and its incredible uniqueness.

Nice action shot, clear, and captures the place well.

Thanks for that Robin. It really is a special place with its atmosphere which brings one back in time.

This is another from the same trip which I only discovered in my archives recently and which says more about that unique ambience.


Olympus Camedia E-10. 1/640 at f4.8, iso 80

[bnnrcn]

Your second edit looks much better Neville

Thanks Izzie for that. C&C always welcome. The 'nothingness' of the Irish summer encouraged me into my study rather than the great outdoors this morning and I re-worked the sky based on the original JPEG which seemed to be entirely burnt out. Interestingly, and surprisingly, by using curves I was able to recover a small white cloud but had to re-invent the blue for the sky. For this I used Curves again separately for red and green channels. I used heavily feathered rectangle selection (I usually prefer this to Gradient) to keep the sky white near the horizon. A bit of pulling and dragging with Stamp tool and slight deepening of shade in the buildings and this is the result.

[IzzieK]

I like this last one too, Neville -- well done!

[Ndukes]

Your second edit looks much better Neville

Thank you Binnur. I was actually surprised at how it was possible to recover the burnt out sky in the JPEG.