Sunrise Over São Marcos da Serra

What to do when the persistent rain keeps coming? There is always the option of photographing the rain but as I’ve only just about dried out after our very wet Nature Photography Walk, I have been practicing my Lightroom and Photoshop skills. I have recently started to play with “Luminosity Blending” which takes two (or more) images shot of the same scene with different exposures and blending them together by selecting dark and light areas. The idea is to achieve a photo that is closest to the dynamic range that a human eye can see whereas a camera sensor cannot. If you want to see what I mean, take a photo inside your house including the inside and the outside through a window. The camera will struggle to expose for the outside light and the inside dark but your eyes will see it all fine.

This technique of blending is similar to HDR however, it has far greater control of the blending.

So here is a photo that I took back in October 2017. It is made from 2 exposures, 1 exposed for the sky so the foreground and village were underexposed and another exposed for the village so the sky was overexposed. They are blended together to use the sky from the first exposure and the foreground from the 2nd exposure.

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A New Day Begins
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Meet Wally

Time to introduce the new member to our household, meet Wally.

We rescued Wally from a busy two-lane road he was wandering right down the middle of, against the rush hour traffic. No collar, no Micro-chip and the all-clear from our vets resulted in us keeping him. Our vet (and a few other people) think he was probably abandoned either because he’s not small and cute anymore (well at 7 months old, I still think he is!) or a failed Hunter’s Dog. Although getting better, both scenarios are still common in Portugal.

Expect to see a lots of photos, he’s a very willing (sometimes) model and great for practice snapping. Here are some photos against the back-lit sunrise this morning.

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Wally in the morning sun

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Serra Sunrise

Twighlight had just started when I set off this morning to a local ridge that I’d scouted yesterday. Setup the tripod and camera (D810, AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8 and “Cheap as Chips” Remote) with about 30 minutes until the sun was to appear above the serra ridges to the East.

I sat and watched a some stunning colours before the sun started to poke above the mountains and walked away with this shot.

In the foreground is my local village, São Marcos da Serra preparing for another warm October day.

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Serra Sunrise

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Frost in the Algarve?

Yes, believe it or not, the sunshine capital of Europe can get cold, particularly up in the Serra.

We’ve had a few cold nights recently, last night dipped below freezing and there was a good ground frost. However, as soon as the sun comes up, the frost instantly melts.

I was out just before sunset and walked down to the local Barragem (same location as the Sunset Reflection at the Barragem photo a few nights ago) to photograph the sunrise.

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Chilly Sunrise - D810, AF-S 24-70 f/2.8E @ 24mm, f/8, ISO64, 1/320sec (2 shots) : 24mm, f/22, 1/30sec (1 shot) - {Flickr Link}

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More Kruger (re)edits

I’m continuing to go through photos of an epic trip to Kruger Park in South Africa back in 2011 and this time, not only re-edited an old photo but also stumbled across 2 photos I’d never looked at before.

The photos are from when we stumbled across 2 brother Male Lions sleeping just after sunset. From the looks of the one that stayed asleep, he had a bit of battle with his food with a fresh scar on his nose.

The first photo is a re-edit and I stumbled across the other 2 that I’d not edited before. These photos were taken with my good old trusty Nikon D70s which by today’s standards is very dated, but it was a fantastic camera to shoot with.

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Yawning at Sunrise - D70s, AF-S 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 116mm, f/5, ISO400, 1/500sec - {Flickr Link}

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Nuthatch in the Golden Hour

This morning the light mist was creating a nice golden glow just after sunrise.

There was a lot of activity with Sparrows and Blackbirds building nests. I also saw a Mistle Thrush in a neighbouring field so I’ll be keeping an eye out for them again (Story from last year).

A pair of Nuthatches were going up and down one of our Oak Trees, always amazes me how they can descend head-first down a tree.

Here’s a photo I managed to get of one of them.

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Nuthatch - D810, AF-S 300mm f/2.8 @ 300mm, f/8, ISO220, 1/320sec - {Flickr Link}
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