French village at 100kph

Concept

A terrible "snapshop" photo taken out of the window of a tour bus doing 100kph with a blurry foreground, dull grey sky, reflections off the glass and using a Canon G9 point-and-sheet.

But the memories of the landscape for me are precious. An idyllic, French provincial village centered around its church tower.

Nothing but an extreme photoshop treatment would make this photo interesting to everyone other than me. I have been experimenting with the "Top Gear" treatment and chose to recreate this look.

Setup

This photo was one of those "out the window of the bus with a point-and-shoot camera" shapshots which dont normally survive the first edit.

There was no second chance for this photo - I waited for a rare gap in the roadside trees to grab this shot. And then the view was gone.

Camera Setup

Canon G9 (point and shoot) at 1/250th f/4.0 and cropped about 2/3 of pixels to remove blur and some annoying window reflection. Camera was handheld through the bus window with my hand around the lens hood to limit reflections.

Processing

Only highly stylised processing would save this photo as the even, grey sky meant the entire scene was lit like a huge softbox. Lightroom 2.0 curves were used to bring back some contrast, colour saturation sliders brought back some oranges in the building roofs and an artificial vignette to focus the eye to the central church tower. The stylised sky is thanks to one of my Lightroom graduated filter presets which simultaneously reduces exposure, adds a strong deep blue tint and reduces clarity to zero to make any cloud highlights "glow".

Improving the photo

In an ideal world, I would have had one of those glorious blue French summer skies with white fluffy white clouds and be standing behind my Canon 5D mounted on a tripod with a huge piece of quality glass. Next time ...

For me the photo is special. I rode my own bike through a dozen of these small villages in the Provence region of central France during a week-long tour in 2008 and this photo brings back memories full of romance. This photo brings back memories of cycling through rural France which I will never forget.

Do I care if the stylised "television" look does not suit some peoples' taste? Nup. This photo always brings a smile when it pops up in the electronic photo frame.