Last time to submit your photo is today (7th) at midnight GMT.

Contest sponsored by Aurora HDR from Macphun & Trey Ratcliff

Thanks to Macphun & Trey Ratcliff I have for you another round of my editing contest. And to make this one bigger and better, you have even more days to submit your entry this time, plus there are great prizes for you.

Aurora HDR is the newest HDR software available, just named by Apple as one of the Best Apps of 2015. Aurora HDR is very powerful, works as a standalone or as a plug-in and gives you start-to-finish editing tools.

For those who are not familiar with Macphun and Aurora HDR, Macphun are the creators of many great photo editing applications and plug-ins. Aurora HDR is their newest creation built in collaboration with Trey Ratcliff, one of the most popular HDR shooters around.

For more information on Aurorar HDR Pro, you can check out the official Aurora HDR website, and my Aurora HDR review, that I posted some time ago.

You can also download a trial version of Aurora HDR and try it out right away. The download is available from the Aurora HDR website here. Currently, only a MacOS version is available.

When you are done playing with it, here is how you can enter the contest. For those who have joined one of my other contests in the past, the rules are the same!

How to join the contest

1. read the complete rules first :)
2. download the provided series of brackets showing a view of the blue hour Dubai Marina in Dubai, here from Dropbox
3. edit them into a final HDR photo (you can use any software and any technique, tone-mapping, blending, exposure fusion, black&white version, use the Aurora HDR trial, etc…)
4. join the contest event on Facebook here and post your photo into the event or send the final edit to me, under miroslav.petrasko@hdrshooter.com with the subject “HDRshooter contest” (please don’t post the full size version, 1500px wide is enough)

Only one entry per person is permitted. Please don’t use parts of any other than the provided photos. If you post your photo to the event page and want to change it later, you can delete your submission and upload a new one. If there is more than one from a person, the last one is entered and all others will be deleted.

Winners & Prizes

Jury selection winner will be selected by a jury of great photographers:

• Conor MacNeil from TheFella.com
• Jonathan Danker from Jonathan Danker Photography
  
• Anthony Gelot from A.G. photographe

The jury selection prize is an Everyday Messenger bag by Peak design. A premium day-to-day essential carry workhorse, The Everyday Messenger is for photographers, travelers, commuters and everyone in-between. I also use this bag, and you can read my impressions of it here.

People’s choice winner will be selected by fans on HDRshooter Facebook page, where everyone can vote for their favorites (once all the entries have been submitted). This voting will be in a newly created album, not in the contest event. Sharing of your entries further to promote them is permitted, but entries with fake likes will be disqualified.

This winner will receive a Parrot Jumping Sumo Drone by Parrot. This is a very cool, remote controlled, two wheeled, jumping drone by Parrot. Just check out the official videos, and you will see how much fun you can have with one :)

How long do you have to submit your entry?

The latest time to submit your entry is  7th February 2016 at midnight GMT. The voting on the winner will be held during the week from 8th to 14th February 2016 on the HDRshooter facebook page. The winners will be announced during the week starting with the Monday 15th .

I hope you will all have fun editing and good luck to you all :)

I reserve the right to change or amend the competition rules at any time without prior notice. By entering the competition, entrants agree to be bound by these rules. All participants can’t use the original or final photograph for any commercial use and have to give credit to me as the original author, also I will not use their versions for any purposes other than promotion of this competition. Participants can share the photo on their Facebook, blog, flickr or other accounts, but still have to give me credit as the author and link back to the contest.

In this second part, we will look together at what camera modes are available, and which one to use when. Before you start reading, please be sure you understand how exposure works, and what are Aperture, Shutter speed and ISO (all covered in the first part).

There are six basic camera modes that I will cover here, and when to use them. These modes are :

• Automatic (mostly a green square or AUTO) – the camera chooses everything for you
• Program (P) – the camera chooses the aperture and shutter speed for you, you can select the ISO
• Aperture priority (A or Av) – the camera chooses the shutter speed for you, you can select the Aperture and ISO
• Shutter priority (S or  Tv) – the camera chooses the Aperture for you, you can select the Shutter speed and ISO
• Manual mode (M) – you have to set up everything, nothing is automatic
• Bulb mode (B) – is a special manual mode for long exposure photos

Please note that most cameras offer a setting for Auto-ISO. When set, the camera will choose the ISO for you, regardless of the mode selected.

Automatic

A mode best used for snapshots. You just want to take a picture, and you don’t really care how it will look. In automatic, most cameras are set up to use a bigger aperture and higher iso, just to be sure you get a short enough shutter speed, so the photo is not blurry. So if you are not in a really well lit space, or outside during a sunny day, this can easily result in out of focus, very noisy images. If you are at least a bit serious about photography, you should move away from this mode rather quickly.

Program (P)

Program mode is a bit similar to Automatic, but it already gives you access to some settings. Better said, its everything except aperture and shutter speed (there are more settings available then the basic one, like white balance, focus points and similar, but here I will just stick to the basic ones, all others will have their own articles).

Program mode is a good point to start. As you can change the ISO, you can already influence the photo in quite a strong way. You can also observe what settings the camera chooses for you, and since you already understand what they do, you can easily then move on to more advanced modes.

Aperture priority (A)

Probably the most useful mode. You choose the ISO and the aperture and the camera will choose the time for you. Like this, you have direct control about the DOF (depth of field) of your photos, and an indirect control of the shutter speed. You just:

• choose a big aperture (1.2 – 2.8) when you are going for a small DOF and you want to blur out the background
• choose a medium aperture (5.6-8) for normal photos, where you want sharp detail, but not need that much of a DOF
• choose a small aperture (11-22) when shooting wide view, like architecture or landscapes, in situations where you really want to maximize your DOF.

Aperture priority works wonderfully in a combination with Auto-ISO. If you shoot hand-held, you can set  the aperture to an acceptable value for the DOF you need, and the camera will try to increase the ISO so you get short enough times for a hand-held shot.

Shutter priority (S)

Shutter priority is the opposite to Aperture priority. You choose the ISO and the shutter speed, and the aperture is chosen by the camera. This is mostly meant to be used when you really need to have a specif shutter speed. You want to freez motion, you choose a short one, you want to blur movement you choose a long one.

While this all works as it should, I never once used this mode. As it take away control of the aperture, it takes away control of DOF. And having the DOF you want, is really important. So usually, it’s just bettor to go to full Manual mode, where you have the control of both, the aperture and the shutter speed.

Manual mode (M)

Manual mode is the most advanced. It gives you control of everything. You can choose your ISO, shutter speed and aperture. The camera will change nothing for you. But it will still meter the proper exposure of the scene, and indicate this on the screen. You will see an exposure scale, usually from -3 to +3 with a dot marking what exposure will the current settings result in. If you don’t see it, you have to first hall press the shutter and the indicator will show up.

Manual mode is great, if you have time to set up your camera (landscape photos) or you are shooting a series in which you know you want the exact same settings in each photo (shooting at a party, with the light being constant, you can just set up the camera once, and just leave it).

Manual mode is not preferable when you are encountering quick variations in available light.  Since you would need to tweak your settings all the time, the Apperture priority is much better for this.

Bulb mode (B)

Bulb mode is a special version of the manual mode. On some cameras its available as a separate mode, on some it’s activated when you try to change the shutter speed to a time longer than 30 seconds. In bub mode, you choose you ISO, your aperture and the shutter speed is determined by how long you hold the shutter button down. So when you press it down, the camera opens the shutter, and when you let go, it closes it.

This mode it used for long exposure photography, when you need times longer than 30 seconds. With the bulb mode, you can go as long as you want. It’s best to use this together with a remote, and most camera remotes can lock the shutter button, so you don’t have to hold it down all the time. Most cameras show a timer on the screen during this.

Scene modes

A lot of camera offer also scene modes. This modes are meant for specific situations and each mode is also represented by an icon, fro what situation it is. So there are modes like portrait, landscape, night and similar. They are in really just specific settings applied to the camera that you can do in other modes with much more control. For instance:

• portrait mode – is usually just aperture priority, with a bigger aperture selected
• landscape – again, aperture priority, with smaller aperture selected
• nigh – aperture priority, with bigger aperture and higher iso selected

And so on. Once you understand what effect different aperture, shutter speed and ISO have, you will never ever need one of these modes again.

Which mode to use?

If you are just a beginner, I suggest skiping the Automatic mode completely. Start with the Program mode, play with the ISO and see what settings the camera uses. As soon as you can, move over to Aperture priority and star controlling the depth of field in your photos. And in special occasions when you need it (bracketing, long exposure, repeating photos ans similar) or when you already feel the need for complete control go into full Manual mode.

This was the closest I could get under the new Old bridge while taking photos of it on Sunday. I got right at the fence, and thankfully, my tripod was high enough to have the camera over it :)

This is a three shot HDR, created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop. I actually used two different ISO settings here. As I set the middle exposure to 30s, as I wanted a smaller aperture for the DOF, I had to bump the ISO to 400 for the +1EV.

Update : After reporting the matter to Instagram, my copyright claim was accepted and the stolen photo was removed from the service. I hope all other affected photographers did the same and reported this user for copyright violations.

I said I hate this topic, but the story evolved from yesterday, so I thought I will post an update.

So looks like the person who used my photo (and other photos from other photographer) without permission, without credit and was quite a jerk about it by deleting comments and changing his Instagram account to private, is a more widely know person in Croatia. So once more photographers started to complain, the local news sites in Croatia picked up the story and published articles about it.

So I have been bombarded by questions, comments and really nice messages from Croatian people who are really disgusted by how he behaves. But here are few answers.

No, I don’t plan to sue him. Not worth it, to spend the time and effort on such a person. I still plan to submit a copyright claim, but not sure how to, as he changed his account to private, and so I can’t link to the offending photo. I think the news coverage will be punishment enough.

I hope he learns his lesson and stops profiting from other peoples work. But since that will probably take a while, and right now he still claims that he is the author of all the photos, here is an undeniable proof that I’m the author, which he can look at while doing such claims :) (sorry for the huge watermarks, I don’t want to give him anything to work with)

So first, my final photo and “his” edit.

Screen-shot of the original RAW image:

And a screen-shot from the photo series, I took that evening:

And for those curious, who also speak Croatian, you can find an article about him here, here and here. Most include examples of other stolen photos by him.

There are few topics I want to mention today, so here goes :)

Free copy of Macphun Focus CK

If you are running a MacOS system, you may find this offer interesting. Until the end of the month, you can get Focus CK from Macphun, for nothing. Focus is used to create blur effects as tilt shift and similar. And did I mention you can get it for free? :) Download it here from the Macphun website.

8000 fans

So yesterday, finally my Facebook page passed 8000 fans. Thank you very much to everyone who liked my page, and I hope there be more and more of you :)

Stolen photo

I hate this topic, but from time to time one has to return to it, as there is no other way. I try to be very lenient with the use of my photos. As long the use is not commercial, there are no edits on the photo performed and one links back to this site, everyone can share my photos as much as they want.

But if a person takes a photo, implies that he/she took it by not including the author, and even modifying it, that something I can’t tolerate. And this is one example of this. This person on Instagram is really a thief, and not only of my photo, but many many more. By pretending to be the author of them, he amassed quite a big following, while stealing other work.

In this cases, I like to leave a comment, give the person a chance to correct the error. Even if he just admitted his mistake and edited the post to show who the true author is, I would be satisfied. But this person is just a thief and instead of doing so, he just deleted the comment and blocked everyone else who also commented on the stolen photos.

I hate this, because now my only option is to file a copyright infringement claim. I love taking photos, I love sharing my work. It motivates me to do more, share more. But people like this add a really sour taste to everything.

If you speak Croatian, here is an article about this thief, and few examples of his other stolen photos. And here is a link to my original photo as posted on this blog. Also you can check out the rules for using my photos here, on the Licensing page.

The new Old Bridge

I went out today, to check out how the reconstruction of the Old bridge continues. So here is for you, my first photo of the new Old bridge (not sure if they will changes the name). It’s this crazy green now, and it looks really good. So may new walkways and viewing areas that will be great for photos, and so many lights that when turned on will make it look great in photos. I can’t wait until they open it to public as I was not able to get closer right now.

This is a HDR from 4 exposures combined in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop.