In Portovenere (Italy) every year on August 17th a unique show takes place in the world, the whole place is lit with candles to celebrate the cult of the "Madonna Bianca" at the Church of San Pietro, while the sea lights up thanks to the boats that gather at dusk under the Byron cave.
The first time I was able to attend this event was in 2015, for three years I planned to go back there to take some pictures during the blue hour, so as to have a strong contrast between the blue light of the landscape and that of the candles that illuminate Portovenere.
This photo is from 2019, when I arrived there was no space to place the tripod for too many people present, I was very anxious about losing the chance to photograph the event again and waiting another year, but fortunately a foreign girl kindly gave me the place before the sunset light vanished completely. I didn't have much time available, so I tried to make the best I could out of that situation, place the tripod, take the camera from the backpack, look for a composition that could be decent and install the filters on the lens and shoot as quickly as possible and pray that everything had gone well.
Shot info: Canon 5DmkII - Lens -16-35 L f4 - iso 100 - f/8 - ND64 - GND 3 stop medium - Polarizer - 5mins ( longexposure) for the base shot and another one to recover the details of the candles in case of need.
The post production was carried out mainly in Lightroom/Camera Raw and Photoshop to refine the details and merge the two photographs.
As a last step, I adjusted where needed contrast and color dominance in Nik Collection.