"A travel picture must express the feeling of a time and place, portray a land, its people, or a culture in its natural state, and has no geographic limitations." This may seem clear, but different judges interpret it quite differently.
This took a lot of work to get both the walls and the lighted area at the back to look decent - in fact it is a composite. I first shot a large image of the lighted area and later in the day I tried to do an HDR of the whole thing but by then the light was no longer as good in the back, so I combined to images made at different times.
One of a sequence showing the funky old bridge in the process of being closed.
This is a handheld three-exposure HDR. I think it worked out well. It is, of course, in Amsterdam, and I think I remember the name of the canal correctly.
This is a famous gorge, but in the bright light of full day it was hard to shoot. I used a five-exposure HDR and then emphasized the church.
Bellas Artes in San Miguel is much better known than the Casa de la Cultura although, in my opinion, it is much less photogenic. For this image I used HDR and cloned out a large, distracting, white sign. I also brightened the painting at the far end.
This fountain was a few blocks from our hotel in San Miguel, and I think it wasn't there a couple of years ago. I hung out for about an hour one evening with my tripod set up waiting for people to pass, and this is my favorite shot. It took some work to get rid of bright distractions.
This is a very popular site for photographers. We had unpleasant weather but got some decent images.
We spent our first four nights of our Elderhostel trip in Borgarnes, an uninteresting village on the west coast of Iceland. The buildings are typical of Iceland. This was the only picture I made in Borgarnes
On Kitava Island, Trobriand Group, Papua New Guinea. There was the usual dancing going on, and he was watching it. I thought him more interesting than the dance...
This needed a lot of work in Photoshop to get the exposure on the different parts right.
Shot in the Rialto market. Had to do a lot to clean up and get rid of bright spots
In San Miguel de Allende. In the morning we don't see the pattern of light and shadow - I have another image that way but I like this one better. I used HDR to capture the entire range of exposures. It seems quite odd to me that this building is never shown on any of the maps of San Miguel nor described in any of the writeups I have seen. I think it mainly caters to local kids rather than tourists, so that may be the explanation.
In Andalucia. Shot at dawn - we spent the night in an inn across the street to get the shot.
This was on the Rhine between Cologne and Boppard. I had to do serious work with a Curves layer to bring out the flat and uninteresting detail behind the white castle. The original sky was white and I substituted a gray one with clouds from a few days later.
A friend who reads Chinese told me that the front bins are dried shrimp and scallops and the rest are probably medicines of one kind or another
I don't think it is strictly fruit, but that seems to be most of what they have.
Another shot on the Rhine. Again it needed a lot of work to bring out the castle, which was flat in the original, and a little treatment to make the white sky a bit less so.
We happened on this colorful cave while driving and Steve knew nothing about it, but I thought it was worth shooting.
Woman being painted before the dance. Note that in these pictures the dances are wearing their ordinary clothing.
This was made after the dance was over but before the dancers went home and changed back into their usual clothing
We spent the better part of a cold, wet day on the Cimitero, or cemetery island. I found very few things I wanted to shoot, but this is a good illustration of where most Venetians go when they die.
This is an unnamed area that Gale found, but other photographers know about it as well. Might have been better with more raking light.
A mandatory shot in Death Valley. It needed HDR and some straightening afterwards.
