Six frames from one day on Mykonos

I shot 126 raw frames on Delos and Mykonos, from night into the next morning. Six of them made it all the way to finished files: the windmills, Little Venice, the red boats, the old port, a cobalt door in Chora, and an alley strung with flags. Most of the real work happened after the trip. The windmills took two full builds, the door needed a different kind of edit than I planned, and Little Venice went through seven versions before I let it go.

Here is what each one took.

How 126 frames became six

My photo bot did the first pass on the cull. It gave five stars to four frames: the Terrace of the Lions on Delos, the blue door, a Little Venice sunset, and the windmills.

That was a good start, not the answer. When I went back through Little Venice myself, I swapped in three different frames as the heroes and the sunset frame dropped to four stars. The bot is fast at getting 126 frames down to a short list. I still make the call on which one is the picture.

From there it is my normal routine. Basic edits in Lightroom Classic, then the heavy work in Photoshop.

The windmills

The first version read as early evening, so I rebuilt it as blue hour. Version two keeps the violet at the top of the sky and the pink band along the horizon.

The main mill was the dimmest white in the frame, which is backwards for the subject, so I dodged it up until it led the picture.

I wanted 16:9. There was no way to get there without cutting off the sail wheel or the wall, and both of those are the picture. So it went 16:10 instead.

Cleanup was a few people standing behind the wall, a red post and a utility box. I finished the people by hand. After that I caught a dark band sitting under the roofline that I had missed the first time around, and fixed it with a gradient ramp.

Little Venice

This one has the longest version history of the set. Version two was a brightness pass. Version three cropped in from the left to get rid of a cruise ship. Version four used a softer crop on the left that kept more open water, and pushed the water harder. There were a couple of side branches along the way, including an uncropped take. The file here is version seven.

Seven versions sounds like a lot for one frame. A lot of it was the crop. Every move on the left edge traded open water against the houses.

The cobalt door in Chora

On the back of the camera this looked like hard side light raking across the steps. It was not there in the file. The door was in open shade, and I had exposed for the sunlit walls.

My first try was one curve over the whole image. It lifted the shade fine but crushed the strip of sun. So I built it as a local tone map instead: the shade lifted about 2.6 stops, the sunlit wall held where it was, and the sky on its own curve.

I took out a person standing in the arch, finishing that by hand, and a water bottle. I left the cables in. Then a centered 4:5 crop.

Flag alley, the red boats and the old port

Flag alley was next in line after the door. White walls, pennant flags crossing overhead, and that deep blue sky.

The red boats and the old port are the harbor side of the day. They are simpler frames. Strong color, open water, and the town stacked up behind.

What I took from it

The camera preview is not the file. The door taught me that. What looked like great light on the back of the camera was open shade, and the edit had to be built around what was actually captured.

Crop to the frame you have. The windmills wanted to be 16:9 and the picture said no.

Let the bot sort, and do the choosing yourself. It got me from 126 frames to a handful fast, and I still changed its pick on Little Venice.

And look at the file one more time before calling it done. That is how I caught the dark band under the windmill roofline.

The six finished pictures are in the gallery.