Every photographer needs a good way to show off his photos. The blog is great for the background story, for a chronological view of how the photographer evolves, but it’s not suitable for a portfolio so much. And that’s where Smugmug comes in play.

I’ve been using Smugmug as my portfolio and picture host for over three years now. It one of the services I use the most in sharing my photos. There are different areas one has to take into account with a service like this, and there are part that I like and that I don’t like. So let’s take a look at them.

Customisation

Since the last update, it’s very easy to customize your portfolio. Smugmug includes a nice editor and a good set of page elements you can put together to customize your site. Parts as menus, links, images, dividers and more can be just dragged into position and then with few settings tweaked to fit your site. It’s also very nice that you can create different looks without altering your live site, so you can experiment as much as you want. For advanced users you can also go into the html code and create you own page elements.

As I said this is easy to work with, but not without it’s fault. One thing that really initiates me when I customize my site is, that when I place an element onto the page, set the width (for instance 20%) and then place a second element next to it, the editor will set both to 50%. I hate this, because each time I setup my elements, just one click can reset all my settings. Good thing that usually you don’t need to customize it that often.

Customisation interface

Page preview with different theme

Galleries and photos

The photos look great on Smugmug. If you need you can upload full size images and Smugmug will create all the sizes for you. You can also change the look of galleries, have unlisted galleries, have password protected galleries, have Smugmug automatically adding a watermark (depends on the service plan you have activated), have smart galleries, which are populated based on criteria you set and much more. I love being able to create a password protected unlisted gallery to be able to send just a link to a client.

I personally use only one gallery. I used to have multiple, based on the place I took the photo at, but I than moved that to my blog. But still if I ever have time, I will create those as smart galleries.

Default gallery view

Gallery security settings

Reliability

There are two parts to reliability. Let’s look at the good part first. In all the years I’ve been using Smugmug, there was’t a single day when my photos were not accessible. The site was always up and also my blog always displayed all my Smugmug photos without problems. So the visitors always saw the photos that they should see.

On the other side, the one more in the background, I had problems with the site. They newer persisted for long, but they return from time to time. It happened to me that I was not able to upload new photos, that photo thumbnails were not generated, that uploader didn’t load at all, the page constantly logs me out of my account (this one happens a lot), that the android app refuses to refresh and few more. You could think that there is something with my internet connection or my computer, but in the time I been using Smugmug, I changed my computer, I changed the operating system I use, I changed the browser and I been using Smugmug also from other PCs, and it still happens. After the last updates they made, the issues pop up less often, but they are still there from time to time.

Available themes

Photo organizer

Other features and plans

Smugmug offers multiple plans, each one with different pricing. The one to choose is based a lot if you want to use Smugmug to sell prints. As I don’t do that, I use the Power plan, as that gives me the best price/features ratio. But if you want to use also that, Smugmug allows to use multiple printing companies, customize shopping carts and more.

Overall I really like Smugmug. Even with the few bugs I meet with there, I still really suggest you give it a try, and I think that speaks for itself. It is and for a long time to come will be the home for all my photos.

You can try Smugmug for free for a month, but I think you will stay with it once you try :) You can go to the signup page and see all the predefined themes here and you can see my Smugmug page under www.hdrshooter.net.

View all my other reviews here.

For a longer time I’ve been looking for a replacement for my camera strap. As a landscape photographer, I use it very rarely, but I also didn’t wanted to be without one for those few occasions when I need it (usually just to hold the camera for safety). So I wanted something that can be easily detached and reattached to the camera. As I was ordering the Capture Camera clip v2 from Peak design, I also took the Leash with it.

My impressions with it are very positive. The material is great to the touch and very soft. It glides very nicely across the clothing (as its the same material as seat-belts) and feels very strong. The attachment loops are around the right size, so they are not in the way if you leave them on the camera. The attachment feels secure and it’s not so easy do detach. I actually like that, as it should be harder to detach it accidentally. The length is also more then adequate. You can expand the leash from 48cm up to 152cm, with the anchors being rated to hold up to 45kg.

I would not use this strap to hang my camera from my neck. The strap is just too thin for that. Maybe with addition of some padding this could be OK. On the other hand, having it hanging across a shoulder is much better. With my Canon 5D mark II it was quite comfortable. As I said, the material glides very nicely across clothing, so moving the camera back and forth is also very smooth.

You get 4 attachment loops with the leash. This are meant to be attached to the camera, the leash itself, your backpack or anything else. I like this approach, as you can attach you camera to anything. I can think of many times when I wanted to secure my camera to the railing, or just have it connected to my belt so I don’t have to fear it falling down from a cliff. It also works nicely with the Camera clip v2, as that special holes for the loops to be attached.

Overall I like it very much and it will replace my old strap permanently for now. This should have been a Leach & Cuff review, but I have some issues with the Cuff, so I will get to that in a separate review.

For more information, please visit the Peak design site.

View all my other reviews here.

Trey Ratcliff’s New Zeland Photography tutorial

Just finished watching Trey Ratcliff’s latest HDR video tutorial. Yes, I watch other photographers tutorials, and I do it a lot. I probably watch everything about HDR and landscape photography. It does not mater how good I think my photos are (or bad :)), there is still a lot to learn.

I like Trey’s videos, even if I don’t learn that much from them anymore. His videos are mostly made for beginners and he often goes through editing basics. Still it’s intersting to see how a another photographer edits his photos, and I always end out with few new ideas, on what to implement in my own photo processing.

So if you are a beginner in HDR photography, or somewhere around intermediate level, and you like Trey’s style, this is a must watch. If you are already quite familiar with HDR photo editing, you will probably find something new in his videos, but probably not that much.

More information can be found on the New Zealand tutorial page and if you decide to give them a try and buy them, use code “SIC-6591” for 10% discount :)

Dual screen wallpapers

I have updated the wallpapers section of this blog with something new :). This time, it’s 4 dual screen wallpapers, all with the resolution of 3840×1200 (so really big). These are best for two monitors, both at full HD, or smaller. Head over to the wallpapers page to download them.

Sunny side of Paris

This one took so long to edit, and I’m not even sure I’m satisfied with it. This happen’s when one takes photos in not that great light. But as I was in Paris only few days, and some of them it was raining, I had to take photos every opportunity I got. If I was at home, I would not even go out to shoot in such light. But the result is not that bad :)

I took this photo in May of this year, and I think it’s obvious where it was taken. It was my first trip to Paris on my own, and as I don’t speak a word of french, it was also quite an adventure. But luckily I prepare quite a lot before my trips, so after a day I felt completely at ease, with having no problems finding my way in Paris. And I know I will go there again, as soon as possible :)

For this photo, I had to take two series of 5 brackets, one with my hand covering the sun (check out my tutorial on removing lens flares to see why). I then created two HDR photos in Photomatix, each one from 5 brackets. I then blended those together with the original shots in Photoshop. Btw. I left the lens distortion in the photo on purpose. I had a version where I removed it, but than the photo lost the feeling of scale and depth, which I didn’t liked.

Free eBook for all newsletter subscribers

Maybe some of you have already noticed the change in the sidebar, but I have created my first ever eBook. This one is for free to all, who subscribed to my newsletter. So if you still haven’t, now is your chance :) Head over to the newsletter page for more details, or you can subscribe directly in the widget to the right of this post.

Topaz Star Effects review

There will be still many more reviews on this blog. Today the new one is about the Topaz Star Effects. As I mentioned before, my reviews are short and I try to stick to the point. That is, what the plugin is for, and why you would like to use it. Same this one :).

And btw., between the December 10th and December 31st 2013, you can use the code “decstar” for a 50% discount on this plugin. More information can be found on the Topaz Star Effects site

Sunset at the Michael’s gate

There are not many high spots in the center of Bratislava, so one has to use all one can find. So last week I visited all the towers that are accessible (all two of them :)). I don’t think there are more, but correct me if I’m wrong. I already posted a photo from the Town hall tower earlier, so here is one from the Michael’s gate. It’s not really that all, but in the Old tow, it’s still one of the tallest.

This is a HDR created from 5 shots in Oloneo Photoengine and then merged with original exposures and finished in Photoshop.

Wow.. how quickly the week has passed again. With all the stuff around the contest and the new newsletter, it was over in a second. But again we are at a Tuesday, so we are at another process post.

For today I chosen for you a photo from Maribor, Slovania. As you will see the original photo had quite a good exposure already, so I only had to correct few things to make it a little more interesting.

So to get to this photo:

I started as I always do, with few tweaks in Lightroom. I corrected the horizon, so it’s nice and leveled. Then I corrected the white balance, removed lens distortions and chromatic aberrations and added a little noise reduction.

After that I loaded all the files into Photoshop and did the following adjustments (layers numbered from bottom up):
1. 0EV exposure to start with
2. -1EV exposure to darken the sky and lights in the photo
3. -2EV exposure to darken the brightest lights
4. +1EV exposure to brighten the bridge
5. +2EV exposure to brighten the bridge even more
6. Color efex Pro contrast to correct the colors and add more local contrst
7+8. Added glow to the photo (view my tutorial on this)
9. Brightened the shadow dark’s as I felt the bridge was still too dark.
10. Sharpened the photo using high pass filtering

And that’s all for this photo. Please continue to the full post to see the original 0EV exposure.