Sagrada Familia (2008)
In 2008 I was fortunate enough to have a business trip to Barcelona, and I had a morning free to visit the Sagrada Familia. This is the famed Antoni Gaudí cathedral that’s been under construction for more than a century. Even without all the work that’s been done in the last 15 years it was a spectacular sight, and Leslie and I are aiming to visit it again after it gets completed, hopefully in the next 5 years if they stay on target!
I haven’t looked at this set of photos in a long time and it was interesting to revisit them, now with a lot more photographic experience, more powerful processing software, and a different eye. I’ve included the original way I processed some of these images down below this new set so you can see the difference.
These were shot on an old Pentax digital SLR, and it just didn’t have as good color quality as you get from modern cameras. The fact that it was a very gray day with flat light didn’t help… And at the time, using the software I had then, I couldn’t get the color and contrast out of them that I wanted, so I treated them in black and white. But they are more lively in their new color renditions!
At the very bottom I’ve included a process example showing how the editing tools have improved to make what was an image that I couldn’t get to work in 2008 into something much better in 2024.
Click to enlarge.
Original black and white treatments
Click to enlarge
Originals out of camera
On the top row are what the image files (what’s known as RAW format) look like straight out of camera, with bottom row how I’ve most recently processed them.
Editing process example
To take one example of how the tools have changed, let’s look at the sculpture of the man which his head resting on his arm. On the left is what it looked like out of camera - very flat, and he doesn’t come out in 3D from the background.
In the middle you can see how I can now easily mask (red overlay for visibility) the complex surface in the background to darken that up a little and further blur it so that there’s more contrast, making him pop out more. This is something that would have been very difficult to do in 2008, but with AI tools (in Capture One Pro, the software I use), it takes just a couple of minutes. And then I applied a basic gradient in the top left corner to darken that area so your attention is led to his face, with the result on the right.
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