Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The Christ the Redeemer statue, known as “Cristo Redentor” in Portuguese, is one of the most iconic landmarks in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The idea for a statue atop Corcovado Mountain was first proposed in the mid-1850s by a Brazilian Catholic priest named Pedro Maria Boss. It was another 80 years before the statue came to be, however.

Construction of the project began in 1922 and was completed in 1931. The French sculptor Paul Landowski designed the statue, while the Brazilian engineer Heitor da Silva Costa oversaw its construction. The monument was built using reinforced concrete and soapstone, and the exterior was covered with triangular tiles.

The statue was officially inaugurated on October 12, 1931, and it quickly became a popular tourist attraction. Over the years, the sculpture has undergone several restorations and improvements to maintain its structural integrity and preserve its appearance. Cristo Redentor has become an iconic symbol not only of Rio de Janeiro but also of Brazil as a whole. It is considered one of the New Seven Wonders of the World and attracts millions of visitors each year, offering breathtaking panoramic views of the city from its location atop Corcovado Mountain.

On our visit to Rio, of course, we saw the statue “up close and personal” along with many hundreds of other visitors that day. One of our other stops for the day found us taking the cable cars to the top of Sugarloaf Mountain about four miles (6.3 km) as a helicopter might fly between the tops of the two mountains. It is from the Sugarloaf mountaintop that I saw this view of Christ the Redeemer.

About the photo: I was just learning about my Samsung S23 Ultra, a new phone purchased just prior to our trip and I was looking for chances to try out the two telephoto lens modules built into the camera. In addition to the standard lens, the S23 Ultra uses two telephoto lenses each using dedicated modules with relatively small image sensors and 3x (69mm) and 10x (230mm) zoom factors, respectively. I have quite a few comparison shots with the three lenses, but for now, I am sharing this view of the statue with the Super Telephoto lens module.

From where I was with the camera on Sugarloaf Mountain, I selected the 10X module at minimum zoom. I could have zoomed digitally even closer, but according to my research on the S23U, image quality falls off quickly as the zoom level is increased. After importing into Lightroom Classic and from there to Luminar Neo, I found I had to make some compromises. The image had the mountain shrouded in clouds, especially in the background. The backlit image, however, lacked contrast, and attempts to keep the clouds and yet improve the contrast became an exercise in futility. I opted to find a balance between the two extremes. At some point, I may reprocess the image with a mask on the foreground mountain and bring the background cloudiness back to see what that looks like.

Prior to adjusting anything else, however, I had to deal with the larger mountain in the background. On the highest ridge of that mountain, a large antenna farm providing communications to the city needed to “disappear.” Luminar Neo’s erase module worked well. When using Neo’s erase module, I have a tip for you that I learned about the hard way soon after learning Neo’s erase tool. When you have multiple areas to erase, don’t just open the erase module and make all erasures in one session. At some point, it’s likely that one of the erases will duplicate unwanted areas or create anomalies that spoil the session.

Instead, as in this case, I erased one tower, then I closed the erase tool and reopened it again. I erased another tower and again closed the tool. The advantage here is that if an erasure fails, you can undo that session and revert the image to the last good erasure. Sometimes the erase module has an issue that is best fixed with the clone tool so reworking the last erasure as a clone may be the way to proceed.

You can view the final image on my Flickr site in 2K HD by clicking on the image above. I will be sharing many more images from Rio in future posts, many with the S23U. As we were traveling light, I left my Nikon D500 at home bringing instead my Sony RX100V. I will be evaluating the many images I captured on both cameras whether or not I can leave the Sony at home and rely instead on the S23U. My first impression is when traveling with minimal camera gear, the Sony appears to be better at low light, and among other things, I can easily bracket the Sony for HDR images. It’s small and almost as inconspicuous as the S23U. As I work through the images over the next few weeks, I’ll let you know what I finally decide.

Quick note: we are on the road for a couple of days for family activities. I may be slower than normal in responding to comments.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s acceptable as well. The second rule is to link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment. Oh, and, you don’t have to post it on a Sunday.

John Steiner