Some dumb-*** photos! - I goofed!

[jim_mex]

This weekend I earned the prize for being the most dumb amateur photographer on the planet!

Saturday was a gorgeous day so I set off early on what was to be a 300 mile round car trip to the area of northern Italy known as the Southern Tyrol of High Adige where I was looking to take photos of the alpine villages in the area and of snow covered mountains. Due to a dramatic temperature increase the past 10 days I didn't find too much snow but I did take in some splendid scenery even if it looked mostly wintery brown in colour. Unfortunately though I've not much to show of my trip because I managed to leave home without my reading glasses,without which I can't see a **** thing on the camera screen! To compound the problem I'd been playing with the camera settings the previous evening and accidentally left the exposure overdrive setting set to 3 full stops of over exposure. As a result almost all of my shots were grossly overexposed with burnt out highlights.

After reviewing the results on Saturday evening and cursing myself for being so stupid I was in a half a mind to take another trip on Sunday to get some better shots but the weather closed in during the night and Sunday began cloudy with threats of rain.

I've partially rescued a few of the better shots via Photoshop which I've posted below. One of these is a view of the Dolomite mountains about 45 miles in the distance around the ski resort of Cortina d'Ampezzo, site of the 1956 Winter Olympics. The shot was taken from a relatively high pass on the west side of the upper Adige valley. The Dolomites looked so impressive that I now know where my next trip will be taking me! Hopefully my next photos will be more spectacle-ar!

The photos shown are:

1. Looking west from the village of Tirolo showing the Tirol castle in the bottom of the valley


2. Wood carving outside a shop in Tirolo, carved from a tree truck and standing almost 6 ft tall


3 & 4. A frozen Lake Vernago and hamlet a few kms south of the Austrian border

[jim_mex]

5. Typical Germanic style small village church of the area


6. Secluded place in the country - needs some repair work!


7. A small castle on a hill overlooking the Trentino valley about 1500 ft below. The patterned areas in the valley floor are vineyards


8. Alpine pasture through the trees

[jim_mex]

9. Shot of the Dolomites, Cortina d'Ampezzo, in the distance from a mountain pass to the northwest of the town of Bolzano


That's the lot - I'm done playing with Photoshop!

[Tango]

Looks like you had another beautiful day in Italy. Thanks for saving & sharing some of your photos. I know what it is like to forget the glasses. I wear contacts and one weekend I went up north without the glasses & contact cleaners. My contacts are only daily wear, so I had to removed them that night. The rest of the weekend was a blur.

[Wood Dog]

Photos are still beautiful.......just don't forget your glasses when you are using power tools.....eh! That carving is awesome.

[Scrolling Days]

Jim, those photos look perfectly fine to my novice eye......in fact, they look incredible! The two pics with the castles are my favorites. What great views those "lords" must have had as well! Of course, if i was living in the second castle, i would spend most of my days chucking things like watermelons off the roof so i could watch the splat when they hit the field "miles" below.

I love seeing pictures of European countries....the history over there is just amazing.

[sappy]

Beautiful Pictures! When you look at the Dolomite mountains do you see ceramic? I hope you have your glasses and camera to catch Shawn climbing on the roof of the castle with a watermelon under each arm...

[Hawaiilad]

Jim those are great photo's. I do the same thing with glasses.....I think we need to have about 10 pair laying around just in case!!

[journeyman]

There's nowt wrong wi them pics Jim. A stunning part of the world. I visited the north of Italy back in the 70's when I was holidaying in Austria. I came over the Brenner Pass, which was an experience in itself. In those days you had to have a wheelbarrow full of Lira to buy a beer. Keep posting mate, and look after yourself, got to keep you in perfect condition for when you get to Frieke's.
Mick

[Sawdust King]

Great photos. I can't imagine what they would like if you didn't have to rescue them. So did you manage to have a Dolomite sandwich while you were there? I always thought that was in Austria.

Ok, I know it is actually Austraila and it is a vegemite sandwich, thank you Men at Work. I just couldn't resist another attempt at humor and fail miserably.

[ubgoofy2003]

Hey, jim, those are great photo's. Did it take quite a lot out of you to rescue them? You did a great job anyway. Thanks for showing us beautiful italy. Take care

[jim_mex]

Photoshop rules ok! - you folks are too complimentary but it was definitely worth rescuing these shots to post to then visualize the image of Shawn lobbing watermelons from off of that castle's ramparts at the serfs down below.

Hey Shawn - You sure you aren't building a watermelon catapult in your back shed pal? I certainly wouldn't put it past your imagination!

When you look at the Dolomite mountains do you see ceramic?

Hi Sappy - you might think I am spinning a tall story here but this morning, needing a pee whilst on the factory floor, I had occasion to use one of the factory toilets which is fitted with a traditional squatting pan. As I stood there, ecstatically relieving myself, as grown men are wont to do, my natural tendency with these toilets is to look down to make sure I'm hitting the waste exit hole plumb center to avoid splashing my shoes if I accidentally hit the sides. Believe me, I joke not, there's a definite technique to using these pans! - LOL!

Anyway, looking down in a concentrated manner I couldn't help but notice that the brand name stamped on this urinal was 'Ceramica Dolomite'! So, in actual fact if you had asked the question the other way around, ie 'when you look at ceramics do you think of the Dolomites' the answer would have to be a resounding yes - LOL!

And here's the proof that this wasn't a tall story - or as we say in the UK, 'me, taking the pee out of you'!






@Sawdust King - Men at Work would seem to be an apt title for the second part of this reply! Great group, btw.

[jim_mex]

those are great photo's. Did it take quite a lot out of you to rescue them?

Hi Perk - the problem I had with all of the shots was that it was an absolutely gorgeous day with strong sun which due to my accidental overexposure setting burnt out most of the detail in the highlights. Luckily I shoot in raw image format and was able to recover some detail back by tweaking the brightness levels a little before exporting the images to jpg format. After that I put them through a filter by Nik software called Vivenza which is a great tool for accentuating detail in an image using a slider called Structures. For normally photos I would tweak about 15% here but for these I had to go up to as high as 80%. Then a bit of added saturation and a slight contrast was needed to get these images to a presentable stage. Takes me about 10 mins each photo to get a reasonable result.

Here's an example of what this technique can do for you. You can see where I brought detail into the grass and the house and also that cable stretching the skyline. Unfortunately though many of my shots were so burnt out that they had no detail to bring out so they had to be binned, A lesson learned the hard way - LOL!

[frieke]

You're funny Jim! Can't wait to have you here and look after you for a few days!
Oh btw, I have a lot of reading glasses....lol
I wear reading glasses all the time...and since a few weeks I wear glasses, real glasses, there are trifocals lenses in it...still need to get used to it but it's getting better day by day...

[JimSawyer]

Wow...I've never seen one of those before..It's brilliant...!!!
Must be a breeze to clean..
Who would have thought a pee-hole would be my amazing thing today...

....Umm, thanks Jim...I think?!?