Santorini is a small island but there is lots to see walking around the island. I love exploring islands like this on foot – it is the only way for me.
If you walk from Imerovigli to Oia this is the view you get from mext to the Church of Panagia – now this is one of my favourite Santorini photo locations without a doubt. The church is behind me by the way, but more of that later.
Why do I like this photo so much?
Well this photo tells a story of Santorini. It shows Oia in the disatnce, with the white buildings standing out against against the natural background. As you can see Oia is located at the very end of the main caldera. You can see Thirasia in the background, once part of the island before the massive voclano.
You can see the rocky terrain of the caldera, and there are late afternoon colours bursting out from beyond the overhead clouds.
How did I decide on this composition?
You can’t see it on this photo but there is a church right behind where I took this photo, the Church of Panagia. I didnt want the church in this photo – this photo was going to be all about the terrain of the caldera.
I decided to include the rocky terrain in the foreground to show what the terrain is actually like. And the footpath running down from the bottom right hand corner taking you into the image in a subtle way.
And then you get to the white buildings of Oia, sat on the end of the caldera.
The sotry of the caldera is completed by the next piece of land, Thirasia, disconnected from the island years ago.
And this is nicely complimented by a different sky, with clouds over Santorini but clearing to the west where the warmth of the sun is visible.
Where was the photo taken?
Church of Pagania is shown on the blue tag. I don’t have the GPS co-ordinates in Lightroom – my Canon 6D did not record them.
It can’t be the lack of signal from the satellites – there was nothing in the way! Either I didn’t turn on the GPS or it just didn’t work. Thankfully I take photos on my iPhone so I have a backup of most locations where I have taken photos.
The walk from Imerovigli to Oia is a pretty fantastic walk I have to say, going through lots of fascinating and varied terrain. I could have spent a very long day taking photos on this walk. This post is about Santorini photo locations – the walk in itself is just that!
What time of day was the photo taken?
3:12pm on the walk from Imerovigli to Oia. The walk took us a couple of hours, longer than it should of done as I kep stopping to take photos of course!
What photography gear did I use to get the shot
- Canon 6D
- Canon 24 – 105mm F4 L lens
- Handheld
What camera settings did I use?
- Aperture – F16
- Shutter speeds – 1/50th second, 1/200th second and 1/15th second
- ISO – 400
- Focal length – 24mm
- AV Mode
- Back button focus
- Auto bracketing
- Handhed
Whilst I took three bracketed images I have only used one of the images. The problem was the car with the headlights showing bottom right on that stretch of road visible.
The car was moving too fast for my chosen shutter speeds – I was photographing the landscape after all and not fast moving cars!
When I merged the images in Lightroom the car was blurry. Sure I could have just removed the car in Photoshop but I wanted to keep it in the photo. It is a point of interest to me and relevant to this scene.
I used F16 to get sharpness from the foreground rocks all the wya through to Thirasia and even the island inthe background, which I believe to be a uninnhabited island called Christiana.
One interesting fact about the image.
There is a church right behind where I took this photo. And this is the church on the top of the caldera which you can see in another photo on this website.
Here it is.
Is there a behind the scenes video of this shoot?
Well there is a video of the location showing the Church of Panagia and the views all around. The video is terrible quality I have to say, but you get the idea of the location. You can view the video here.
If there is one learning point that comes from my photography trip to Santorini it is to vastly improve the quality of the videos I take.
How did I process the image?
As I said earlier the HDR Merge did not work so the image you are looking at is a single image processed in Lightroom and finished in Photoshop.
This is what the main editing looks like in Lightroom.
I also did some localised dodging and burning to give the image a touch more depth.
You can see the sensor spots in the sky which I removed in Photoshop.
On the subject of editing photos, I always finish off an image in Photoshop removing any sensor dust spots, and stuff that creeps into the edges of an image. That is normally as far as my editing goes in Photoshop.
What could I have done to improve the image?
I tried getting the view from the end of the path which you can see in this photo but the compostion was much worse so I had to walk back to get this capture. It tells the story that I wanted to tell so all is fine with me.
And the sky was changing, the band of sunshine warmth coming and going so I was on borrowed time – always a problem in landscape photography.
And what are my thoughts on this image?
I remember being there. The walk was just fantastic – it was as though the walk in itself was a tour of some of the best Santorini photo locations – just walking from Imerovigli to Oia.
And that for me is when a photo works – when it take me back there and brings back such vivid memories. It was cloudy that day and windy on the top but warm when you sat down for a rest. And by the time we got to Oia the sun had reappeared and the clouds had gone.
Enough of me – what do you think of this image?
Please let me know what you think of this photo of Santorini, even if you don’t like it. And if you have any questions about Santorini then please get in touch with me and I will be happy to help if I can.
One last thing
If you want to buy this image, or want to speak to me about future collaboration email me at sales@rickmcevoyphotography.co.uk.
Rick McEvoy ABIPP – Photographer, writer, blogger
