Landscape Photography

This image represents the beach of the "Battistini" beach resort in Ostia Lido, in the province of Rome, Italy. Looking at the image, one might think of a mild day with a gentle ripple and a sea breeze. However, in reality, the photo was taken during the last days of August during a powerful storm. The temperature was low, and the sea water continuously crashed against the pier. The strong wind made it extremely challenging to achieve a good composition, select the right shooting parameters, and, most importantly, to keep the camera and lens stable and protected from splashes. I am very proud of this photo, firstly because it represents the beaches and the sea of my hometown, Ostia Lido. Secondly, it is one of the very first photos I took with the brand new Canon R8 with the Canon RF 35mm 1.8 lens. The result of this photo left me truly impressed, both for the quality, even though it's not perfectly sharp as I shot it at f/4. However, the details in the center are fantastic, and the .CR3 raw format provides incredible flexibility in handling colors. With Lightroom, I was able to certainly adjust the white balance because, as mentioned, the day was quite gloomy with many clouds, making it difficult to achieve a good white balance. I slightly adjusted the colors of the sky, making them warmer, while I tried to maintain a mix of warm and cool tones on the beach, paying attention to the reflections on the sand. In Lightroom, to achieve this, I used the tone, exposure sliders, and most importantly, the color split tool. I favored a blue/purple tone for the shadows and an orange tone for the highlights. I also used the standard lens correction through Lightroom, added a bit of vignetting, reduced the highlights, lifted the shadows slightly, decreased the whites slightly, and raised the black values slightly. Finally, I increased the vibrance slightly and slightly desaturated the saturation, which was too pronounced due to the previous settings.