About the Image(s)

Background: Castiglione Falletto is one of the many little villages of the Langhe in Piedmont, Italy. This geographical area is famous for the wine (Barolo and Barbaresco among the most famous) and the birth of the “slow food” movement. The geographical area is characterized by hills and vineyards. At the top of almost each of this hill you can find a medieval village and Castiglione Falletto is one of those.

Taking the image: I took one day to drive slowly in the area that I know well because we have a house close by and we spent a lot of time there before moving to US. The image was taken around 3 pm. This is an hour of the day when landscape photography is discouraged because the light is too hard. However, in this case there were some clouds because of an approaching storm, I thought I had to catch this scenery that is so representative of the area.
Nikon Z-7ii, with Nikkor Z 24-120mm f/4s at 66 mm, f/11, 1/80 sec, ISO 64 with a circular polarizer. The scenery was difficult to capture considering the time of the day. As usual I have exposed for the highlight since with the Z series shadows can be recovered easy up to 4-5 stops and there is no need to take HDR series.

Post processing: as usual I post process all my images with Capture one. After cropping the image 16:9 I have decreased the highlights and the white to increase contrast in the sky and open shadows and blacks. I also have slightly increase contrast, clarity and dehaze. I have added some structure for the details. I then applied a selective layer for the sky and adjust the white balance and add some more contrast. Finally, I took the liberty to clone out the house on the left of the image since it created some distraction to my eyes. I understand this can be considered unacceptable for many, but to me this does not take away anything from the image and still provide an accurate representation of the landscape.