Alarcon Castle - Inca Summer Fantasy

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Scenic view of Alarcon Castle (Spain) processed with a vibrant abstract color map in the foliage for a more surreal atmosphere.

Special thanks to my friend & fellow photographer Eve Livesey  for providing the base castle image, and granting me permission to publish this color manipulated variant.

Offered under a Creative Commons license / Attribution Unported. Meaning Yes for commercial use including premade backgrounds as long as you credit and link back to me. More details on my stock rules here: somadjinn.deviantart.com/journ…

For a small premium of 40 points you can download this stock at a high resolution of 4000 x 2667 px.

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Now included for download on my Patreon account if you want access to an ever-growing collection of my high res stock for one monthly subscription fee.

You can find this specific image at the following post: www.patreon.com/posts/alarcon-…

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Background story for curious minds: I realize the title might sound strange, perhaps even contradictory considering the Incas lived in South America which is a completely different part of the world than where this castle is located in Spain. But truth be told I was inspired by an equally strange dream…

There I was sitting on the porch of a remote cabin just shooting the breeze with my now late father and soaking in the pristine scenery. All of a sudden the surrounding leaves and foliage took a life of their own with ever-changing splashes of colors like a glowing prism as far as the eye could see.

Completely stumped for words but incredibly amazed, I turned to my father who offered me a warm smile and said:
“Son, that’s what we call Inca Summer. A bit like Indian Summer, but infused with vibrantly mystical properties. Fortune must be cheering in our favour as this type of phenomenon happens by pure chance only once every few generations in completely random places around the world. No one knows for sure how or why it works as it has seldom ever been documented, but it is fabled to be the vestiges of ancient Inca magic performed right before the autumn equinox for Mother Nature to protect the Earth and its people against the hard times ahead.”

Still in this dream my instinct was to desperately reach for my camera which I had of course misplaced. And by the time I found it, mounted on the tripod and adjusted the photo settings, the Inca Summer had just as quickly disappeared lol. Great, there goes my shot at capturing the perfect moment! But I woke up determined at least in trying to recreate the effect I had imagined in the dream.

Sorry for the rather long-winded story, as a stock provider I usually stick to a routine script which involves simple descriptions like image location and / or basic processes used. This experience however was way out of the ordinary for me and I was hoping to explain Inca Summer in a way that makes better sense to you.

Inca Summer doesn’t relate so much to a specific location or historical context, instead it is more like an experimental effect I used for the random yet subtle color gradations applied mostly to the foliage. It also helps bring around a full circle of personal experiences as my passion in photography and the visual arts started the same year I had the pleasure of visiting Peru where the Incas come from... not to mention some amazing artists I had the chance to meet, befriend and collaborate along the way