Photos

Thanks to comments made by my TE friend and 'neighbour' Livia Comandini and generous ideas by my beloved friend
Beatrice Baumann, I decided to work on this shot to make a better presentation.

I worked on the DNG(SAMSUNG RAW) file first with UFRaw, a GIMP plugin, on WB and level curves.
Then in GIMP I worked on colour balance and contrast.
At last I resized, framed and used the 'sharpen edges'
filter on the resulting jpeg file in PhotoFiltre.
It's a new proposal of a shot made under extreme dynamics without an ND grad.
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While in Sicily, last October 2008, I came back to the Aeolian Islands, a place whose magic I remembered from a geological field excursion during my studies in the early eighties. So much has changed! So many more houses and people...but the charming views and magnificent panoramas of these isles linger on! :-)
The Aeolian Archipielago has been declared a World Heritage site.
All isles are of volcanic origin, having gone through several periods of activity in their formation.
Lipari was an important place from which an extensive obsidian trade took place during the middle and late stone ages, till the introduction of metals.
Weapons made of Lipari obsidian have been found as far away as Scandinavia!
More on Lipari and the Aeolian Islands here

This is a view of the west coast of Lipari leading to the next isle, Vulcano, a still active volcanic site. In fact you can see Vulcano's crater with its sulphur clouds rising.

I took this picture during a guided tour around the isles and didn't have many choices to wait for better light,
so I had to work a bit on curves in Gimp to bring out a better contrast, due to this hazy and backlit conditions.
Anyway, I love such sights, and could spend hours just watching!

ISO@100
29 mm
WB Manual

Thanks, René