Photos

Before I move and go to another city I want to post some of the best photos I've taken in Nafplio which I have visited this year due the persistence of my other half.

This photo is dedicated to her, for making me fell in love with a place I visited for the first time in my life.

I'm stating a new series from Palamidi the famous fortress with the 999 steps from the city to the top.


Some history:
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The Fortress of Palamidi is a military fortress to the east of Akronafplia in the town of Náfplio in the Peloponnese region of southern Greece. Nestled on the crest of a 216-metre high hill, the fortress was built by the Venetians during their second occupation of the area (1686-1715).

The fortress was an incredibly large and ambitious project, but was finished within a relatively short period from 1711 until 1714. It is a typical baroque fortress based on the plans of the engineers Giaxich and Lasalle. In 1715 it was captured by the Turks and remained under their control until 1822, when it was liberated by the Greeks.

The bastions of the fortress were originally named after the Greek Proveditori. However, when the Ottoman Empire came around, they captured the castle and town and the bastions were given Turkish names. Lastly, when the Greeks overthrew the Turks the bastions were renamed after Greek saints. One of the bastions, called the "Miltiades," was used as the prison cell of Theodoros Kolokotronis, a hero of the Greek Revolution.

If you are interested to read more history about Palamidi and the Greek revolution, click here. Wikipedia has everything you need.

All my shots from Argolida Region are here.


Some notes about the photographic cover of the Castle:
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I've certainly didn't went through the stairs and I haven't walked the 999 steps haha, through the best way is to take a taxi to drive you the way up, explore the castle, and take the stairs on the way down.

Walkthrough tip: ALWAYS have a bottle of water with you, the castle is huge and try to avoid noon times where the heat is massive.
Second tip: This castle is a photographic challenge. The size of it will force you to use wide angle lens in most of your scenes, while ultra zoom lens are completely useless. (Unless you want to take some close shots of the view below).
My poor but brave 18-55 worked quite well in most of my scenes, though I'd love to have an 10mm ultra wide lens with me.
My advice for the lenses use, is not more than two lenses with 10-20mm and 17-85mm

You may picture it in the morning, or at noon, it doesn't matter. If you'd like an increased contrast, more accurate colours and vivid blue sky, the morning time will do fine. If you want to play with highlights, shadows, warmer colours and less blue sky, noon time is the best for you. Some shadows and washed colours may be annoying at noon time. I would prefer a morning time, however I covered it at noon through my weird schedule :)

About the shot:
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This scene is somewhere in the middle of the fortress, where the famous prison of Kolokotronis is at the top right, second level.
Settings used: Aperture Priority
f/7.1, 1/200 at 18mm and a polarizer filter for the blue sky.


RAW Post Processing notes:
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This is my first post of a desaturated image.
The original purpose was to create a dawn feeling however this picture has taken at noon time.
I hope I did it :)

Here is my list of actions:
- RAW desaturation
- RAW minor exposure/highlights/contrast levels adjustment.
- All colours are customly desaturated except blue which was extremely increased.
- Point to Point selection over red doors where I kept the colour
- Layer duplication
- Colorize with custom sepia tone over layer
- Layer opacity to 20% (to sweeten the monochrome walls a bit)
- All layers merged
- Some clone stamp to remove the shadows in front
- Frame added
- Title added
- Layer duplication again
- Custom sharpness filtering
- Layer opacity to 70%
- All layers merged
- JPEG optimized for TE


Workshop:
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I have uploaded a workshop picture same scene post processed with the original colours.


Thanks for viewing/commenting!
My Best Regards to all!