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Rügen

Rügen is a picturesque island located in the northern part of Germany's Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state. Known for its stunning natural beauty, Rügen is a popular destination for photographers looking to capture the island's unique landscapes and seascapes. From the iconic chalk cliffs of Jasmund National Park to the charming seaside towns of Binz and Sellin, Rügen offers a wealth of photography locations for both amateur and professional photographers.

Morning Colors
Seebrücke
by Michael

A beautiful moring in Sellin on Rügen in late August. I could even confince my girlfrind to get up 4:30 in the morning to watch twilight and sunset and despite all the tiredness she liked it :-) In the evening and during day it's impossible to get a picture of this scene without hundreds of people walking by, but that early we were the only people there. For me dawn is the best time of day. Sunsets are also great but during dawn it's much more calm, there are less or no other people and you feel as if nature puts on it's show just for you alone.

This is a 2 exposure blended shot... I was to lazy to pull out my filters and for such a well defined horizon line it's usually quite easy to blend two shots.

Hope you like it!

PS: thanks for all the comments on my recent pictures! I'm always interested to hear your thoughts and don't be shy to criticize..I'm always keen to learn ;-)

cheers

Seebrücke in Sellin auf Rügen
Seebrücke
by Frank Voigtländer

2020.09 Ostsee-Berlin-Dresden-486-BA-BA

Sellin auf Rügen, Seebrücke
Seebrücke Sellin auf Rügen
by Frank Voigtländer

2020.09 Ostsee-Berlin-Dresden-517-BA

Rügen - Kap Arkona
Arkona
by Michael

Some of you might have seen my last two shots from Rügen.... Those were from the same day like this one but during dawn. They were the typical planned shots, where you go scouting the day before, pic some nice place for the shoot and come back the next day with enough time for the light to show....

This one is the complete opposite. Not planned at all, nearly missed the light and the place was picked by pure chance... that's also why this is one of my favourites from my Rügen trip. We went to Kap Arkona with still more than one hour till sunset.. I'd thought we'd have enough time to do some scouting and would find some nice subjets to shoot. After all when you look for shots of Kap arkona you always get the same scene with some old ruin standing in the water, which looks quite nice.. So I thought well we'd give it a try.

I thought we'd arrive there drive right to the coast and just walk down the cliff path... but what we didn't know was, it's not allowed for cars to drive to the front where you just needed to walk down.. no during day there are busses running from the parking lot which is more than 2kilometers away.. but in the evening you just have to walk. Not to far you might think but with the magic hour light starting it feels like an eternity. When the sun came down under the clouds and such great rays where showing I got a little disheartened and even wanted to go back to the car and just let this sunset be... but we walked on and finally arrived at the top of the cliffs just to see, that the place I had intended to shoot, the ruin, was in complete shade... hmm damn it. So I gave up and we thought at least we'd explore the place a bit so without rush we walke a bit north. Where we were now standing in the trees there was nearly no light showing at all.. just thousands of mosquitos ;-)

Then coming out of some trees I couldn't believe the sky I was seein with the crimson sun a big disk above the horizon.. now I got excited for just 100 meters farther there was another way down the cliff to the coast so I gave it a run. Well the sun was gone when I was down but the light was even better and now comes the best part, you see it in the photo. That great rock-pool. I saw it, walked through the muck, put up my tripod and snapped the shots.. No thinking at all, I instantly knew how it should look and this is how it came out.

Hope you like it, because me and my tripod had to walk through slippery muck to get it. My hybrid shoos are still smelling a bit...


PS: I'll start with some photoshop tips here .. Every shot one tip. Some might know them but for some it might be something new. So here's a great tip for your workflow

Photoshop-Tip : When you are painting in masks or do other painting or erasing you often don't know which oppacity is the right one. So most of the time you select a low one and do repeated strokes to build up the oppacity. That's no bad way to do it .. But here's my approach ->

When not knowing what oppacity to paint with use 50 percent do your stroke and then hit SHIFT+CTRL+F and you'll get the fade slider. Then you use this slider to get the oppacity you want. A great way to speed up your workflow. I use it all the time when painting in my layer masks to reveal or hide some effects.

cheers

Stepping Stones
Chalk Cliffs
by Michael

Yet another comp shot at the chalk cliffs in Rügen . I just love this stone in the water and here I had the sweet light directly behind it. I added some blue here to enhance the calm feeling, but not to much. Hope you like it. It's a dri blended in enfuse first and then manually worked on it with the original layers in ps.


So now a photoshop tip concerning colors, nothing spectacular just a little behind the scenes of how I work the colors in my images.... I usually start with selective color adjustment layer and try to remove some color casts in the different colors (a saturation layer above with increased saturation makes this easier).. I usually enhance the red in the yellows and reds by removing cyan and I remove some yellow from the blue and cyan part which deepens the blue, I also add a little cyan here.. this starts to emphasize a warm - cool contrast in the images. Then increase the saturation in a saturation adjustment layer a bit. Now some more selective adjustment focusing solely on a specific color contrast, I usually like orange-blue as I have it here. I like to use colorbalance for this. Add some red and yellow for a warm cast and apply a mask to keep it to specific areas as e.g. the warm clouds in the sky here and the reflection. Another colorbalance where you increase the blue /cyan is good for water, sky and some clouds. This was applied to most of the image here. Usually it takes some more adjsutment layers.. You don't need to get the colors you want with one adjustment layer, just build up the effect by multiple layers and by masking.

cheers

Rügen, Bergen, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt Turm
Ernst-Moritz-Arndt Turm
by Frank Voigtländer

2020.09 Ostsee-Berlin-Dresden-390-BA

Seebrücke in Sellin auf Rügen
Seebrücke
by Frank Voigtländer

2020.09 Ostsee-Berlin-Dresden-513

Blue Baltic Sea - 31071605
Seebrücke Sellin auf Rügen
by Klaus Kehrls

Please don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit permission. © All rights reserved

Take a Seat and enjoy ....
Sellin Beach
by Michael

... with me this piecful sunrise in Sellin on Rügen. Even if it was not spectacular it was beautiful, especially with some of the beach chairs left open so we could just sit down, lean back and listen to the calmness around us while watching the dawn.

I also was hopping around through the chairs searching for comps and this is one of the few where I got quite a nice distribution of them through the frame while also leaving space for the viewer to get into the picture. The sky was also harmonizing well here. What do you think?

I did DRI here but I think the blend is not noticable. Some slight color enhancements and contrast for the finishing touches!


Photoshop Tip masking:

For a photo like this when blending multiple exposures it is very nice to have at least for some objects in the frame a clean selection. For example the main beach chair which extends into the sky. There I wanted a clean selection which let me apply masks in the sky or the foregound while leavin the other alone. What can you do? Go to your channels pallete and click through the separate channels. often you find one channel which already has a good contrast around the edges (here between sky and chair) . Duplicate this channel, call it selection or something and go to "Image->Image Processing" (I'm not sure how this is called in the english version :-( ) Select blending mode overlay or soft light and the contrast will increased even more.. now got to "Image->Adjustments->Levels" and increase it so you get white on the one part and your object bekomes black. You might need some brush work to clean things up, also use dodge and burn but in the end you should get a quite good selection channel. Ctrl+click will select the while pixels and SHIFT+CTRL+i will invert it. Then you can go to your initial mask in the layers pallete and while having one part selected cleanly work there while preserving the other part.

cheers

Sellin Sun
Seebrücke Sellin auf Rügen
by Michael

A photo I took back in August during a four day trip to the island of Rügen. I had been there two years ago and knew well what I wanted to photograph. One place on my list was Sellin and the famous sea bridge. Often photographed it's hard to take a unique picture here. But that doesn't matter. It's just a great place to watch and photograph sunrise and I had some nice display of light that morning.

Using my 10-stop Lee ND filter I was able to expose for more than two minutes, which created a more dreamy look.

hope you like it!

cheers

Sellin - 03101201
Seebrücke Sellin auf Rügen
by Klaus Kehrls

Seebrücke Sellin auf Rügen

Timeless
Chalk Cliffs
by Michael

Sunrise at the Chalk Cliffs on the island Rügen. I was using my Big Stopper here to greate a mystic look for this photo. The clouds and the soft light in the foreground are the result of a 103s exposure with the sun peeking through the clouds from time to time. In a second shorter exposure I got the sunstar a bit better and blended both.

Hope you like it.

cheers

Arkona Glow
Arkona
by Michael

I know I know it's getting boring but I have so many shots from Rügen. But I promise soon it's over :-)

This was from our sunset shoot at kap arkona ... I told the story with the other pic I posted 2 weeks ago.. pure chance and a lot of luck brought us to this rocky shore. It was 15 minutes of chasing comps and wading through the muck .... and not to forget being bitten by moskitos. Here I liked how the stones seem to lead into the picture. You can find your way to the horizon, jumping from stone to stone, but be aware they are a bit slippery sometimes.


Photoshop tip midtone Contouring -> done in the end to add the last bit of needed contrast -> this was inspired by a lesson held by vincent versace at the photoshop convention last year

Most of you might know, that a highpass filter with a high radius (e.g. around 50px) can be used to increase local contrast when you set the layer blending mode to overlay or soft light. Copy the original layer, apply a highpass with 50px radius and switch to overlay or soft light. That's way to harsh so reduce the oppacity to around 30-40 percent. starting to look good... But we will keep the effect to the midtones (hence the name midtone contouring ) so double click on the highpass layer to get to the layer styles. In the blending options you will find two slider bars at the bottom going from black to white with handles to control the blending. We will move the handles of the upper bar, the left one to around 40-60 and the right on to around 190-210. Then ALT+click on each handle and drag the mouse while holding down the button, this will split the handles and let you get a soft blend. So what did you do? You just told the layer to only have effect on the midtones. Apply a mask and selectively apply this layer to help lead the viewers eye through your picture with increased local contrasts in specific parts of the image.

cheers


PS: I'm also on facebook -> www.facebook.com/pages/Michael-Breitung-Photography/36788...

Seebrücke Sellin I
Seebrücke

Die bekannte Seebrücke in Sellin, Rügen. Leider gab es zur blauen Stunde nach einem trüben Tag keinerlei Wolken, welche das Foto bestimmt...

flickr.com
Another Sellin Sunrise
Seebrücke Sellin auf Rügen
by Adelheid Smitt

Almost 4 weeks after the first one, I was back in Sellin, with my own camera repaired again. The sunrises there are just amazing.

Sellin, Germany (explored)
Seebrücke Sellin auf Rügen
by Adelheid Smitt

Sunrise at the pier in Sellin, Rügen, Germany.

[#13 on explore 02/08/20]

Sellin auf Rügen, Seebrücke
Seebrücke
by Frank Voigtländer

2020.09 Ostsee-Berlin-Dresden-514

Sunrise Strandkörbe, Rügen, Germany
Sellin Beach
by Adelheid Smitt

I photographed these tyical Baltic Sea beach chairs near Sellin on Rügen. They fascinate me, they have such a classic, old fashioned look, like stepping into a movie scene from the 1930's. It is a typical German thing. there is even a slight difference in style between the Baltic chairs and the North Sea chairs. Their German name translates to 'beach basket' and apparently no day on the beach is complete without renting one of these for the day. I was lucky enough to photograph these during a wonderful sunrise.

Stralsund Evening Blues, Germany (explored)
Stralsund from Altefähr
by Adelheid Smitt

Two years ago I photographed the early morning view of Stralsund from the marina of Altefähr on Rügen. This year I returned for the blue hour from the same spot. It is a panorama of 3 horizontal shots.

[#179 on explore 24/8/22]

Early Morning in Stralsund, Germany
Stralsund from Altefähr
by Adelheid Smitt

Early morning and looking across the water towards the city of Stralsund, from Altefähr on Rügen. It was nice that this family of swans decided to swim through my view.

baltic sea
baltic sea

** website | fluidr | follow me on Facebook | Getty Images**

Thank you for your comments, favs and views...:-)

**Don't use this image on any media...

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Thanks to all Phoide contributors to Rügen!
Most notably Sven Deigl Nürnberg, Michael, Adelheid Smitt and Frank Voigtländer.