And were reached another Monday, and as every (almost) Monday, it’s time for another process post. For today I chosen to show you this rainy photo from my last years visit to Paris, so let’g get to it.

Let first take a look at the finished photo and the original 0EV exposure. As you see, the original is too bright, lacks detail and contrast, and has completely boring color. All that needs to be fixed.

 
I started with 5 exposures in Lightroom. I corrected the lens distortions, chromatic abberations, white balance and the horizon line. Here you can see all the 5 exposures and the middle one already corrected.

 
I then exported all the files as 16-bit tiffs and loaded into Oloneo Photoengine. Actually I loaded them twice. First time only the first 4, to create a darker version, second time all 5 to create a brighter version. In both versions I used the same settings. Quite often I leave the brightest version out of Photoengine, as it can create a too bright result. Same here, but I still used the too bright result later in Photoshop. I could have done the same with one of the original exposures, but the Photoengine result has a better contrast and detail already, so lees work later on is needed.

 
After this I loaded both results and the original exposures into Photoshop and continued from there (layers numbered from bottom up):
1. the darker Oloneo Photoengine result
2. the lighter Oloneo Photoengine result, used to brighten the darkest areas
3. used the -1ev exposure, to town down the lights (there were just too saturated in the HDR) and to correct ghosting from moving cars and ship
4. few more bright spots darkened using the -2EV shot
5. Color Efex Pro contrast filter to add more detail to the sky, the water and the building on the right
6. Tk Actions saturation mask, to tone down the yellow lights even more
7+8. Color balance adjustment to get a different color feel to the photo. They are both the same, just the second one has a smaller opacity, with which I tweaked the look.
9. merged layer with noise reduction
10. little desaturation on the blue color channel
11. added overall contrast. Almost every photo I edit, ends with a little overall contrast added. This is because the sharpening for web after the re-sizing, removes a little contrast.

 
And that’s all I did with this image. To find out more on how I edit, check out the guides and before after categories on this blog, or check out my video tutorial series here:

I’m still so tired after yesterday. I have been taking photos at the Vienna Latin Gala, and as that was until late at night, and my first train to Bratislava was in the early morning, I decided to go to the city to catch the morning blue hour. For a moment I thought also of waiting for the sunrise, but after the disappointment the sunset was, I rather went home. And without any clouds, the sunset was boring anyway :)

But as I went to bed at 7.30am, I’m still quite tired, even if I slept already twice today. I’m probably no longer so young that I an be up the whole night. Somehow I remember this was never a problem when I went to the university :)

I also had the pleasure meeting and doing a little sunset shooting with Cosmin Stoleac, who is a photographer in Vienna, an you can check out his photos on his Facebook profile here.

So this is one of the photos I took in the morning. It’s of the St. Stephens Cathedral there. I wanted a photo of it for a longer time, but during the day and in the evening the area is just always full of people. It was much better in the morning, but still few people passed through the shot. I can’t really say I understand the lights they have there. I don’t think they add anything interesting what a beautiful architecture without them.

This is a HDR created from 5 exposures, in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop.

This was not exactly the composition I wanted, but I just didn’t wanted any people in the shot. And for the few minutes during the sunset, when there were no people near the lighthouse, I just took the best shot I could. But still I had to remove one ship from the photo, I just didn’t like it there. Still, the sunset was nice and the whole trip to this spot was a success :)

Right now at this moment, I should be shooting a sunset in Vienna somewhere, so if all goes well, I hope I will have for you a nice new photo tomorrow :)

This is a HDR from 5 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop. I used a 10 stop ND filter while taking this photo.

Anytime one tries to get a nice reflection on any water in a middle of a city, going there early in the morning is always the best. It’s the only time when the water is nice and calm, with no ships running around. It was exactly the same in Dubai. The Dubai marina canal is not that heavily frequented by ships, but still enough to destroy the reflections.

This is a HDR from 5 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop.

What lens to take?

Last week I was going to out for a short trip and as I was going with friends, I haven’t planed to take many photos. But as I also knew that I will be at some nice places, I took my camera with me. But than I got to a dilemma, which lens to take. I normally use three lenses, the 16-35, the 24-70 and the 70-200. The 70-200 was of course immediately out, as it a more specific purpose lens. But which one from the other two to take. The 24-70 is a better all around lens, but the 16-35 is much better if I’m in a city and also for interiors. But the 16-35 can be horrible for shots with people (the distortion is really visible if you stand too close)

So in the end I chosen the 16-35, and took most people shots with my phone (Nokia Lumia 1520, it has a really nice camera :)), but I wonder what would you take, or better said, which lens do you take when you only take one with you?

And I included here a shot from the Lumia 1520, just to show how it looks :) I’m actually very pleasantly surprised with the quality of the photos from it.

A lovely blue hour

And how about another photo from my recent photo-shoot at the Neusidler see. This one is taken a little later than the previous one, already during the blue hour. Actually during the whole sunset, there was a ship docket right next to lighthouse, completely in a way of a nice shot. But at least they left right after the sunset, and I got few shots without it :)

This is a HDR from 5 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop.