不到長城非好漢 by JulienFolcher

Sunset at the Badaling section of the great wall, near Beijing.

This is sort of an ethical challenge for me, I’ve been asking myself wether I should post this photo or not.
When going there yesterday I was hoping to get some nice autumn colors, even though it is still early in the season. Some tree already started to show some nice yellows and some trees around my apartment in the city already turned red.
So I went there, found my composition, took my photos, realized I didn’t bring enough clothes to stay after sunset and take some star trails, took the train back home and started editing my file. Turns out during the editing process I tried to shift the hue of the yellows in the trees toward the reds to enhance the autumn feel of the image.
The whole thing started to pop, all the colors came together in a much nicer way than the original one. All the warm tones in the foreground counter balance the cold dark greens in the mountains in the distance.
But I am not sure how I feel about that kind of radical change. Usually I try to only enhance existing elements in the scene. Please let me know your stance on this subject in the comments!

PS: The title is a quote from Mao meaning : who never climbed the great wall isn’t a hero

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The awakening by MarcoGrassi

I’m finally traveling the world, researching for the best photography-destinations that every country has to offer.

I decided that my journey had to begin here, where one of the world’s wonders is.
Getting to this place has been quite a challenge, knowing nothing about Chinese language the all thing has required me a big planning. It has really been an adventure, but this is another story!

Among all the sections where you can visit the Great Wall, this is one of the less touristy. This means that at sunrise and sunset time, there is not crowd of people walking around, and you can take great “Out of time” shots. This makes the location perfect for photographers.

I stayed there 4 days, waiting for an epic moment. Every single day I woke up at 4.00, walked to the spot and then discovered, once on top, that the light was terrible. Very frustrating!

The morning I shot this picture it was raining. I woke up at 4:40, I saw the heavy rain and instead of going back to sleep I waited and waited till the rain stopped. I started to run as fast as I could afraid that I was going to miss the beautiful light. Once at the top, with almost no breath, I realized that for the first morning I was alone, without any other photographer on the spot.

It has been a beautiful day! The view was crystal clear and made other good shots possible. It got better during the night, I ended up starring under a perfect Milky Way over the Wall and made my experience much more unforgettable.

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Electric Beijing by JulienFolcher

It’s raining today, so I decided to revisit some old raw files I haven’t developed… I took this as an editing exercise. On the last 3 images I uploaded here (this one included) I am trying to not use the clarity slider in Lightroom , I tend to dislike the “HDR” look it gives to the images more and more, especially the dark or light traces it leaves around the edges.
Here I tried to make up for the clarity with a contrast adjustment layer and very specific dodge and burn.
This is an experiment, so let me know what you think or how you deal with this issue on Lightroom and Photoshop.

Cheers

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