I was in the mood to edit a Dubai photo today, probably from seeing all the great photos from my friends from there. So I looked back through my Lightroom catalog, and chosen one I tried before, but never finished.

This spot is still quite close to the Burj Khalifa to get it into one shot (I so regret not having a tilt shift lens :/) so I tried for a vertorama here. I did lost quite a lot from the photo due to a lot of perspective distortion, but in the end, there is still enough :). This is a two shot vertorama, both exposures edited in Lightroom, combined in PTgui and finished in Photoshop.

This is probably my most favorite photo spot in Vienna. The calm pond is just so great for reflection. That is if the water is there, and there is no stage in the middle :) This is of course the St. Charles’s Church (Karlskirche).

Most of this photo is from single exposure, but I had to use a second exposure to darken the tower (the lights there are crazy bright) and another exposure to brighten few shadows.

Technique: Photoshop edit, Number of exposures: 2, Camera Model: Sony a7R + Metabones Adapter ver. IV, Lens: Canon 16-35mm F2.8, Focal length: 16mm, Aperture: 9, Middle exposure time: 6s, ISO: 200, Tripod used: yes, Location: 48.19907, 16.37126

Strange Twitter experience

I had a strange experience with Twitter yesterday. I don’t use it all the time, but visit every few days, to check whats new there. But recently, I seen only post that were really strange. Nothing from my interests (which is mostly photos of course :)), and a lot of posts from people and companies I never heard from. Stuff like gold exchanges, reality companies, bands I never heard of, sport clubs, makeup products and similar.

So I started looking into who I follow, and started unfolowing those I did not recognize. In the end, I had to unfollow 350 accounts in a row, before I got to the ones I knew about, and know I followed them. Now I wonder, if my account was hacked sometime in the past, as I can’t find any other explanation for this. Any of you had a similar experience there?

Sparkling in the night

Those of you who were in Paris know, that the Eiffel tower sparkles each hour after sunset. This looks great, but it’s a bit harder to catch in a photo, as it’s quite late and it’s already dark. And even here, you still see all the sparkling lights on, as even a bit longer exposure captures them all on. But I can live with that :)

This is a again mostly a single exposure, edited in Lightroom and Photoshop. I used a bit of a second exposure, to add a bit of detail in the foreground trees, even if I left them quite dark in the end.

Technique: Photoshop edit, Number of exposures: 2, Camera Model: Sony a7R + Metabones MkIII Adapter, Lens: Canon 70-200mm F2.8 IS II, Focal length: 165mm, Aperture: 7.1, Middle exposure time: 4.0s, ISO: 100, Tripod used: yes, Location: 48.842261, 2.321754

Taking a little rest today, so no new photo, but two new wallpapers for you. And since the 21:9 seem to be most popular, here are two new for you, both in 3440×1440 resolution. As always, you can download them from the wallpapers page.

First of all, sorry for the late announcement, but it’s always a challenge to synchronize the schedules of busy photographers :)

But before I get to the winners, let me first thank you our sponsor Aurora HDR from Macphun & Trey Ratcliff, for providing the great prizes, our judges Conor MacNeil from TheFella.com
Jonathan Danker from Jonathan Danker Photography, Anthony Gelot from A.G. photographe,  and of course to all of you who joined the contest or voted for your favorites.

Don’t forget to try out Aurora HDR. You can get the free trial version right now form Aurora HDR website.

Jury selection

It was quite hard to choose the winner this time, with all judges choosing different favorites at first, but in the end, as the one winner they choose the entry number 70 from Renant Hong Cheng, with the judges praising the clean “real-life” processing he used.  As the jury selection winner Renant will receive an Everyday messenger bag by Peak design.

I would also like to mention entries 74 Marklin Ang, 111 Nguyen Thai Thach, 114 ET Choong and 124 Sebastien Gaborit who all were not far from being the winner.

Peoples choice

Same as by the jury selection, the voting in the facebook album was really close this time, with multiple photos being very close in the number of likes and only in the end one broke away from the pack. And the winner here with 411 votes, was the entry number 107 from Richie Goh. As a winner of the peoples choice selection, Richie will be recievein a  Parrot Jumping Sumo Drone by Parrot.

I will be contacting both winners in the next few hours, so if you are one of them, check you FB messages, and if you don’s see one from me, contact me there or via my email miroslav.petrasko@hdrshooter.com.

Again thank you very much to everyone and I hope to be able to make another round for you again :)