What fascinates me about Mallorca is not just the versatile landscape, but the details you can discover when looking around. Rather than going out there to that specific location for a great sunset with pools of water reflecting the multitudes of colour, Palma cathedral in the warm light – I do enjoy just taking the camera (sometimes just my little Sony RX100) and see what is hidden out of the more traditional tourist view.
Especially old and forgotten boats or carts will add a traditional, or even a more gritty feel. An glimpse of a world long gone – or maybe still existing even though it cannot be observed with just a casual glance…
Sometimes these may serve as a “foreground interest”, sometimes as the central point of the image.
Another favourite of mine are the old boat houses. These often look abandoned – but only rarely ever are. Either still used as intended, or as a family’s weekend getaway not housing a boat but various beach “gear”. Some are maintained, some are not. And with a bit of luck you may even see some of the old mechanism to hoist the boat in/ slide it out into the sea.
In any of the towns and villages you will be able to see old buildings that are still waiting to be renovated.
For me the appeal lies in the “gritty details”, the flaking paint, the cracks, the rust, the crumbling walls, the splintering dried out wood.
At the moment I am still in the process of trying out different approaches and tools, but here is a rough description of the type of workflow I use for processing these kind of images: I take an HDR exposure sequence – anywhere up to 9 images (usually 1 EV steps). When I just have my Sony in hand and no tripod I use the built-in bracketing function which only gives three images with 2/3 EV steps. I merge my HDR photos using Photomatix and look at what style I find pleasing – this can vary tremendously and really is about what kind of atmosphere you want to create as the following two HDR merges demonstrate:
Note: These two image also demonstrate that it can be very challenging to avoid the “halo” effect that can result from HDR processing. If the halo does not support the story of my image and the atmosphere I want to achieve, I will avoid using any HDR merges (be it Photomatix, the Photoshop built-in function or other tools) and rather see what I can do manually blending images using Photoshop or simply working off just one RAW image. And yes – sometimes you get a similar result just using one image instead of a sequence of images merged into an HDR image. Adjusting highlights, shadows, whites and blacks in Lightroom can even lead to better, more realistic results while still providing the higher dynamic range.
As a next step I try to bring out more of the detail. In most cases using Lightroom is enough using Clarity and also Contrast settings. To bring out the “grittyness” I adjust Saturation and Luminance (HSL). Depending on the image and subject I also use a number of Topaz filters: Adjust, Clarity and Detail. Indispensable esp. when merging HDR photos is of course Topaz’ Denoise.
Last but never least: at the end of the workflow increase the sharpness of the image in Lightroom. Simples!
Mindful Snaps Photography 