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.