Unedited version:

Creation Process:

This render, specifically the place it depicts is kind of important for me personally, as it is a recreation of a village my father used to go to when he was young, and recently, I had the opportunity to go to that exact same place. Absolutely loved it, the abandoned houses, the river by the village itself, the sound of crickets and all that stuff. At the moment, I believe only two people live there, and as a way to remember this place, I did this render. (Village is named Valoiro btw)

Now for the technical stuff:

I really struggled with the lightning in this one, as I wanted some parts of the path to be dark, and even though I didn't achieve that, the first version of the render was a lot brighter, with a very strong light source basically removing all darkness. I eventually removed that light and only kept 4 lights, two of them coming from the light model, and the two others just existing to light up some places that really needed a light to be seen properly. The water was also a problem because it's supposed to be falling, in other words, it's a small natural fountain of sorts. At first, I wanted to use particles, but it didn't look that convincing, so I ended up just using a plane mesh and deforming it, so it felt like water. Really want to improve that aspect for my next renders