Ronny Gabriels Photography

The photo was taken just before noon and because of the fog it was no way near bright enough to photograph it decently without a tripod. Luckily I had one with me. It's a drag to carry around, but it more than makes up for it in image quality. I tried this photo handheld and even with IS on, I wouldn't publish it, even to show you the difference. Hopefully that says enough :-)

Now why do I highlight this photo? Well actually for two reasons:

1. To talk about a bit of outdoor photography
2. To talk about post-production

Outdoor photography
I think this photo proofs a very valid point when it comes to the statement that bad weather can make for some great shots. Whether you like the photo or not, you will probably agree with me that it wouldn't have been quite as interesting if the skies had been nice and blue. Bad weather has another big advantage. Since far less people go out in bad weather, you can actually make interesting and "new" shots of landmarks that have been shot to death. Think of the Eifel tower for instance. I don't think many people can make a photo of that tower that we haven't seen before, but how many shots of the Eifel tower have you seen in the rain, fog or a storm. Far less because most people don't go out.

So if you want to make you pictures a little different and more interesting, I suggest you go out when nobody else does. (Oh and don't forget to protect your gear, 'cause although you can take some rain, your camera most often doesn't)

Post-processing
Hopefully most of you figured out that this photo didn't come out of the camera looking like this. That's because I worked on it in Lightroom and Photoshop on it to get it to look this particular "aged" way. Now in post processing lays one of the most difficult challenges for me. That challenge is to choose what you want the photo to look like as a finished product. I know for instance that a lot of you out there might not be a fan of this aged look, whereas others might love it. For me, it just works on this photo. Not just because of the subject (being a castle) but the combination between the subject and the mood of the photo. I could have left it in colour, but I don't think it would have the same atmosphere to it.

So whatever you do in post-processing, I'm convinced you should do what you want, not what necessarily everybody else will like. You see a lot of photos nowadays being finished in a particular style because that style is popular. But whether it's right for the picture is much much more important in my opinion. So I recommend making it clear for yourself what you want it to look like, before looking how others process their photos. You'll learn a lot more from your own vision than you will from other people's.
This picture is all about mood for me and that's the way I finished it.