Morskie Oko is maybe the most famous outdoor scene in Poland. It is a mountain lake in the Tatras moutain. I took this picture early morning, when the light was low and the air was still. The place was magic.
As my camera had broken down a few days earlier, I had to use a mobile phone. Even at 100 ISO, the phone struggled a bit, as I was shooting in the light.
I post-processed the image with darktable. My goal was to create large scale composition with the interplay of highlights and shadows in the many planes of this image. I was also careful to create interesting details to serve as texture.
I started with a little bit of non-local means denoising. I shifted the highlights of the upper right part of the image toward yellow, as these were in the sunlight. I increased the contrast on the upper right part of the image with a local contrast filter. I increased even more the contrast at the center of the image, to highlight the rim that splits between the sunlight background, and the dark foreground. I made the front right of the image softer with an equalizer filter in "bloom" mode. I made the remote part of the lake darker and greener, using color correction and tone curves. I also made the dark left part of the mountain darker and greener, to enhance the overall contrast of the image as well as the impression of shadow. I also used an equalizer filter in bloom mode there, because I wanted to wash away the details in this part of the image. I use local contrast enhancement to highlight the trees in the middle of the image and the rays of the light in the upper left part of the image. Finally, I decreased the contrast on the white slope in the right of the image and it’s reflection. I thought that it had too much weight in the overall composition of the image, so I shifted it’s highlight colors from white to light yellow.
