Sunrise at Vinales (Viñales), Cuba, for Lior by Elcet

Photography • Landscape • posted on Oct 04, 2008

Open full image in new tab Zoom on image

Hover over top left image to zoom.
Click anywhere to exit.

Members remain the original copyright holder in all their materials here at Renderosity. Use of any of their material inconsistent with the terms and conditions set forth is prohibited and is considered an infringement of the copyrights of the respective holders unless specially stated otherwise.

Description

The Vinales (Viñales) area, some 30km (ca. 20 miles) North of Pinar del Rio, West of Cuba, is world famous for its mogotes, which are peculiar rounded hills made by the karstic erosion of limestone layers. The hotel Las Terazas, some miles away from Vinales, is the most renowned point to observe the sun rising on this wonderful landscape, which can inspire Vue, Terragen or Carrara enthusiasts liking to create alien worlds. I took this image here… After having shoot pictures, the tourists can appreciate an excellent breakfast, bath in the swimming-pool or make a nice walk with a guide who is able to give them interesting explanations about trees, flowers, tobacco culture, birds etc. But, if you want to capture this kind of sunrise, please notice that the extremely high contrast makes a trap for most CCD devices (except the most recent and top-level ones), resulting on sky burnt into a plain white, while the shadows appear black and without details. For this reason I took a lot of photos, and this one is a collage of two of them taken with different exposure data in Manual mode. I dedicate this picture to my friend Lior, an excellent Terragen artist who is also a good photographer. Comments welcome.

If you liked this photo you should also enjoy this one:

Recuerdo de Cuba (souvenir from Cuba), for Fred 255

Techdata: Nikon D70 with Nikkor 3.5-4.5/18-70 Pro ED at 22mm, ISO 200, manual mode. 1/60s at f/8 for the low-lights, 1/250s at f/8 for the highlights. Collage and an Adjustement Layer Hue/Saturation acting on the upper (more exposed) Layer in Photoshop CS3 Extended, not to create special effects but to try to reproduce the mood of the scene that I was seeing. A bit of sharpening (in Lab Mode) too, because I noticed that reflexions within the very complex zoom damaged seriously the sharpness of the image compared to a photo taken in more favourable conditions.

Comments (35)

)

MrsRatbag

12:09PM | Sat, 04 October 2008

Beautiful scene; I particularly like that little pointed shack. The colors of the earth and green are rich, and the backdrop of those strange mounds is wonderful!

)

ElizaB

12:34PM | Sat, 04 October 2008

beutiful capture...great earthy colours

)

jeroni

12:36PM | Sat, 04 October 2008

Excellent shot,my friend,a beautiful work

)

lior

1:08PM | Sat, 04 October 2008

Bonsoir Edouard, Il est vrai que cette image pourrait inspirer un utilisateur de Vue voire TG2 mais pas TG1 car il n'est pas possible d'importer de la végétation. Mais ces générateurs de paysages ne pourront jamais rivaliser avec la beauté de la nature comme c'est le cas concernant cette image qui est d'une beauté indéniable et indicible! Une dédicace à laquelle je ne m'attendais pas qui me touche vraiment: te remercier ne suffirait pas.M'en voici plus qu'honoré! Amicalement et très chaleureusement, Lior

)

Coppens

1:47PM | Sat, 04 October 2008

Wonderful!

)

Janiss

2:29PM | Sat, 04 October 2008

Quel fabuleux paysage que je ne connais, hélas, pas! Les lumières et les teintes de ce lieu sont splendides... un bien beau cadeau... merci Edouard!

)

helanker

2:55PM | Sat, 04 October 2008

What a beautiful place. A lovely capture.

)

mtc

3:32PM | Sat, 04 October 2008

Paysage vraiment étonnant et meme fascinant. Il y a dans cette image de très belles lumières et un rendu pictural, peut etre dû à un petit manque de piqué qui, à mon avis ne dessert pas ta photo.Et pour celà aussi, finalement aussi: "bravo".

)

durleybeachbum

3:50PM | Sat, 04 October 2008

Marvellous! A beautiful pic of a fascinating landscape!

)

novelist

6:09PM | Sat, 04 October 2008

Gorgeous scene and it's always interesting to learn about your technique. It's so wonderful to be able to visit places in the world I'll probably never see through the eyes of such talented people because you know how to capture the significant details. I love the colors in this, and the landforms are intriguing. Thanks for sharing!

)

jocko500

6:12PM | Sat, 04 October 2008

wow this is super to lok at. never saw hills like this before. cool loking

)

Minda

10:48PM | Sat, 04 October 2008

great scene and nice dedi to a wonderful person...

)

UteBigSmile

2:35AM | Sun, 05 October 2008

Outstanding - Want to spend holidays some day in Cuba!!! Hug's

)

pixelmeister

2:47AM | Sun, 05 October 2008

Awesome image!

)

El_Lee

7:49AM | Sun, 05 October 2008

Absolutely stunning capture. You caught the true beauty of the area well. 5++

)

2Loose2Trek

8:53PM | Sun, 05 October 2008

Very nice composition and POV ... and wonderful dedication. Well done.

)

MagikUnicorn

10:54PM | Sun, 05 October 2008

S U B L I M E

)

kitzie21

5:27AM | Mon, 06 October 2008

Wow, quelle vue spectaculaire! On se dirait facilement: avec un paysage pareil, facile de prendre une photo éblouissante, mais tes explications montrent bien que c'est loin d'être évident. Chapeau!

)