The popular holiday area of Algarrobo is less than an hour and a half away from Santiago. These photos, which are also from yesterday, follow on from my previous post. The change in light was totally unexpected after how it had been when I took the vineyard shot.

By the way, the last photo came about because I wanted to include the foreground plants. We call these Pigface  back in Australia, and I see them frequently in and outside of Santiago. (They're much more visible in the large size image.)

Click any photo for the larger size.

Technical note:
A few posts ago, I mentioned that I was trying out jpegs with custom settings to see if I could simplify my workflow, at least with some files. Today's photographs were processed from RAW (DNS) in Lightroom, as were those in the last two posts.  I really couldn't have achieved the same results with jpegs straight from the camera. I used quite a lot of highlight and shadow recovery, and the graduated filter to reduce the exposure in the sky.  I also reduced magenta and purple saturation, while increasing red, orange and yellow a little. My purpose was to keep the images as realistic looking as possible. The photos were taken with my older Canon 40D this time, at 200 to 640 ISO, between 5:35 and 6:10 pm.

PS. All I can say, then, is that you were right, George, about using RAW...

On the way from Santiago to the coast today, it suddenly became foggy at midday. Not much good for photographing, I thought, until I saw this scene. The afternoon at the coast ended up being sunny, giving me some brilliant light to photograph the beach, and that's coming in the next post...

After some weeks of continuous overcast autumn weather in Santiago, the sky was blue today. Just after midday, I went for a walk up San Lucía Hill. It's just been a few days now since we've started to see snow on the Andes, but its arrival is typical for this time of the year. These are photos from today.

Even though I was happy with my jpegs in the last post, standing in front of this scene in the North Island of New Zealand in November 2007, I think I could have "waited till the cows came home" shooting jpeg, and would never have been able to suitably capture the extreme brightness range that way. RAW processed in Lightroom was the answer, in this case.

I  said in my last post that I was trying out the idea of using jpegs with custom in camera settings, to see if I could minimise my use of Lightroom. It worked well enough with the shots there, but I have to admit that yesterday, I came home with a couple of  jepgs with unsaveable  hightlights, even in Lightroom.  They weren't worth keeping, anyway, so no loss this time.  I'm now going to try taking each shot jpeg + RAW for a while, and see what percentage of the former turn out to be useable.

The above photo is from my Australia & New Zealand Gallery.

It's autumn here in Santiago, and we've had continuously overcast skies for the last week. Today (actually the 13th, as this was published after midnight), though, there were glimpses of sun, and I decided to go up to the top of Santiago's highest hill, Cerro San Cristóbal.  There are always a handful of street dogs at the top of the hill, and the girl was almost having trouble freeing herself from this  one, who could not get enough of her attention. As I pointed my camera in her direction, her friend, who's sitting there on the wall, told her to pose for me, and there you have it.

On the 21st of May last year, I visited the Ground Zero site and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, in Manhattan, New York. Here is a series of photos from that afternoon. Some of these appeared in a post on my old blog, others though, have not been previously shown.

In May last year, I was in New York. Here's a photo from Chinatown that I have not shown before. A click on the image opens my New York gallery in a new tab.

While planning this New York trip, I was wondering what my chances would be of running into Woody Allen in the streets of Manhattan, and perhaps that's why the following quote of his suddenly came to mind while I was choosing Chinatown photos from that night for the gallery:

Can we actually "know" the universe? My God, it's hard enough finding your way around in Chinatown.

(And no, I didn't see him.)

Steps up Santa Lucía Hill, which is near Santiago's downtown area. A walk up Cerro Santa Lucía (not to be confused with the much higher Cerro San Cristóbal) to take in the view, makes for a refreshing break from the bustle of the city below.

This is a photograph from March 2012, that I haven't shown before. I'm using this post to announce the new versions of my galleries on this site. (There is still more to come, though.)

Click the photo to open the Santiago gallery in a new tab.

Here's one from last month, taken up in the hills overlooking the port. I'll be going back there really soon, as I want to build up my collection for a whole gallery on this city.

I don't normally post twice in one day, but this is a special one that can't wait till tomorrow. On the 24th of March (Palm Sunday), we had the pleasure of showing fellow photo blogger (and now friend!), Alex Kay, round Santiago on his 24 hour stop over here.