Light trails on the bridge

A little different view of the Chain bridge in Budapest. I actually wanted to brighten the sky a little, but during my two brightest exposure a bus passed in front of me, so you could see nothing just the bus lights on those shots. So I left it dark. You could ask why I didn’t take another series of shots, but the reason is simple. This is taken from the middle of a roundabout and I definitively know I should not have been standing there :) So I just quickly took a series and moved along :)

This is a manual blend from 5 exposure, used to mostly darken the bridge.

HDR one magazine – January Issue

A new issue of the HDR one magazine came out a few days ago, and this time there are also two articles written by me :) So for all of you who are interested in photography, you can get the newest (and also all other) issues here for free: http://www.hdrone.com/2013/02/january-2013-issue-of-hdr-one-is-now-available/

Light Bridge

Finally a decent shot from this year. I was starting to feel depressed, as I haven’t taken any new landscape photos fro over a month. But when the sky cleared a little yesterday, I ran out to take at least few shots. And my steps went to the Danube, as I wanted to try some long exposure shots with the Hoya ND400 filter which I bought recently. I got some nice shots with the filter, but nothing share worthy, so maybe next time. For this photo I had no need for the filter, as it was taken after sunset and the exposure was long enough even without the filter.

In this photo the Old bridge and the Apollo bridge in Bratislava. Manual blend from 5 photos, exported from Lightroom and then edited in Photoshop.

Blue skies over the cathedral

I sometimes look back, to see if my skills in editing photos evolve. And so I did today. This is a photo I took last year in Madrid. And as I edited a very similar photo a year ago, it nicely shows the difference in how I edited photos then and how I edit them now.

So this is the new photo, edited now:

And this is a photo taken few minutes later, but edited a year ago :)

Over 200 versions

Today the voting for my editing contest started and this is how it looks when over 200 people edit the same photo :) You can view all of them and by liking, you can vote for your favorites here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.460089094046068.109871.139494419438872&type=1

The voting will be held until Saturday midnight, and the two winners (one from voting and one from the jury selection) will be announced on Sunday.

Contest ends

Today was the last day you could submit your entries for my HDR editing contest. From tomorrow the voting will start on my Facebook page.

What I have learned from editing older photos

As recently I have been editing mostly my older photos, I found out, that every-time I was lazy, or in a hurry, and I haven’t done something, it leads to photo I discard in the end.  So what I learned is:

• take your time to compose the shot, one nicely composed photo is better than 10 horrible shots.
• use a tripod, always when you can, use a tripod
• use a bubble level to check for and even horizon, sometimes it is easy to correct, but most of the time it really isn’t
• use a remote, even if you are using a self timer, it is not enough. A remote will give you much sharper photos, try not to touch the camera at all.
• use mirror lockup or live view mode, the difference is subtle, but your photos will be sharper
• use manual focus, especially in dark environments. Auto-focus can give you good results, but most often it’s a little off
• set your white balance in the camera, don’t rely on post-processing. When you are on the site, you can see how the scene looks, you don’t have that luxury while sitting at your PC.

This is of course mostly for landscape shots. For other kinds of photography this does not fit that well :)

Town hall in Valtice

Still one more month until my first bigger trip this year, and still the weather in Bratislava is really against any reasonable landscape photography. But at least I have time to learn more new photography techniques and be ready when I shoot again :) So for today I chosen another photo from last year, from the small city Valtice in Czech republic.

Manual blend from 6 exposures (I took 7, but haven’t used the darkest one), mostly to darken the middle part and brighten the trees.