Ready to meet another KelbyOne Member? Hadrian Robinson created the beautiful photo you see below. We’d love to have been there to see this captivating sunset in person. Keep reading to get the full story behind this image.

About the Photo

The photo’s title is “Vernazza Sky on Fire”. The image was taken at Vernazza, one of the five towns of the Cinque Terre in the Liguria region of Italy.  I had taken this image because I really wanted to try and capture the essence of the town. The lookout from where I captured this gave such a beautiful view of the unique town and how it juts out into the water, as well as the stunning coastline. I was extraordinarily fortunate to have experienced such an incredible sunset.

I knew when the sky started turning orange and the red on the horizon appeared that I had a “keeper”.  For me, one of the fun moments, or should I say best moments, was experiencing this with my wife, who patiently waited and encouraged me while I snapped away (we were on our honeymoon). The other fun moment was when the sailboat came into the scene. I remember being worried the boat would be out of focus from motion blur. Thankfully everything turned out!

Gear and Software

I used a Canon 5DsR with an EF 24-70 f/2.8L II. I also used a sunset graduated Lee Filter to really bring out the orange and reds in the sky. 
For software, I used Lightroom Classic CC and Photoshop CC. I put the finishing touches on the image using Skylum’s Luminar 2018 software.

Photography Preferences

Travel photography is my favorite. I enjoy capturing all the different qualities of the places I go, such as the people, iconic locations, and overall atmosphere. I do also very much enjoy landscape photography as well. I try to spend as much time in Banff, Canada, for example, to get my landscape fix.

Photography Inspiration

Scott Kelby’s “Travel Photography: Capturing the Essence of a City”. Scott has some incredible travel images that have inspired me, and I tried to pay close attention to his advice in this course so I too would come away with the best images possible. I’d consider this one of my “hero” shots. My hope is that people see my image and immediately want to hop on a plane and get to Vernazza. 

Favorite KelbyOne Class

This is a tough question. I’ve found many of the courses to be extremely helpful while developing my photography skills. If I had to pick just one, however, it would be “How to Remove Distracting Stuff in Photoshop”. Several of the topics in the course, such as Removing Tourists and Scaffolding removal, have made an enormous difference to the final quality of my travel images. The ability to remove eyesores, or unwanted elements of a scene, can turn a good image into a spectacular image in a lot of cases. With the right knowledge base in Photoshop, it’s amazing what can be accomplished in this regard. 


Another example from one of my favorite KelbyOne courses that blew my mind was in Mimo Meidany’s “How to Take Stunning Long Exposures” where Mimo removed the scaffolding from the entire righthand side of St. Mark’s Square. This turned a good image into a work of art!

Connect with Hadrian on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

Be sure to submit your photos to be considered for a Member Monday feature of your own.