Roadtrip Images

The Amalfi Coast in Italy is a wonderful meeting of land and sea. Positano is one of the best examples of an Amalfi Coast town.

Positano is normally a bustling resort town in the summer. In winter it’s much less crowded and a perfect time for cityscape photography. It can be rainy but that can also bring in some dramatic skies. It’s also much easier to set up for a shot during this off season. We did experience several buses full of selfie snapping tourists while we were there however so the secret may be out.

The city is built into the side of a mountain which is what makes it so photogenic. That also means that walking around town means climbing many, many stairs. Another “issue” during the off season is that there are only two restaurants open for the entire town. So plan accordingly.

We traveled from Rome to Salerno by train and then rented a car. The drive along the Amalfi Coast to Positano was quite beautiful but also a bit stressful. The roads are very narrow and the local drivers like to go as fast as possible through the twists and turns.

The featured image above is the classic view of Positano. The composition features the church as well as the main section of town as it climbs up the mountain. I also wanted to include a fair amount of the sea and some sky. Fortunately we had some sunset color that evening to give the sky some texture. Lastly there is just a bit of some near foreground to give the image some depth and perspective.

To create a nightscape image like this you really have to blend several moments in time together. Like I mentioned in the post for the view of the Vatican, the sunset color and the late blue hour lights are at two different times. If you watch the progression from sunset till dark you do experience the scene through all those transitions. Blending them together in one photograph relives that experience.

To make the photograph requires taking many shots over the course of the evening. These are then brought into Photoshop and blended together to make the image you see above. These images have to be perfectly aligned so being on a rock solid tripod is a must. For this image I made a number of exposures during the sunset hour and then selected the best one. I then also kept taking shots from early blue hour until late blue hour when all the city lights were on.

Our hotel room had a really nice balcony that provided a view of another section of town. It’s not as developed as the main section but has its own character just the same. We also had an amazing sunset the night we chose to shoot from there. Color extended from one end of the sky to the other. We probably should have been at the main viewpoint instead but both Karen and I were battling colds and just not feeling well. The walk to that location was more than we wanted to do that night. It was still an incredible experience that I’m glad we captured. That image is below.

The featured image at the beginning of this post requires several blends. The base layer is the town during the sunset hour. The next layer to bring in is the late blue hour scene when all the town lights are on. Using the ‘lighten’ blending mode in Photoshop add these lights nicely to the scene but messes up the sky and water. Adding a mask and brushing these areas out brings back the base layer sky and sea to create the first blend.

One issue exists however with the late blue hour image. The street lights and other points of light are blown out. The early blue hour image fixes that. By bringing in the early blue hour as another layer allows the reduction of these blown out areas. Adding a black mask to this layer and then brushing in lightly over these blown out spots brings the intensity and size down to something more pleasing.

Once the blending is done, there are several more enhancements made to bring out some of the foliage and overall color correction. A few other tweaks here and there along with some sharpening and the image is done.

The Amalfi Coast is a beautiful region for photographers to explore. You could easily spend many weeks here going up and down the coast looking for images. Day time scenes with good light can make for some wonderful images but evening is when these little towns are most picturesque.

Blending time in a photograph is a creative technique that adds some real visual interest to a scene. As long as the blending is subtle and not overcooked it makes for a very nice image. I know I’ll be doing more of this in the future.

Nikon D850 with Nikkor 24-700mm @ 32mm. f/11, ISO 64. Shutter speed varies.