Don’t have any new photo, so here goes one from my archives, that I only edited recently. This one is taken in the Autumn of 2014, from under the SNP bridgge in Bratislava. I was still on the 5D mark II at that time. One good thing about shooting RAW photos, you can edit them anytime later, and still get good results. Sometimes even better as the editing software gets better with time too.
This is a blend of 4 exposures, done in Photoshop.
Some people like to crop the photos they take, some don’t. I used to be in the second camp for a very long time. I would just never crop my photos, never change the aspect ratio. Only very rarely, when I needed to clean up the edges. But I changed my mind in the end. And today, I will share with you some of my reasons and thoughts about that.
The biggest reason I never cropped my images before was that I always felt like I was losing something. I always tried to get the composition I wanted right in the camera. But over time I just found out this is not always possible. Especially when you start using prime lenses or some ultra wider or fisheye lenses, you will inevitably capture more than you want or need. And that makes for a lot of empty space, like the extra ground, extra empty sky, extra walls and so on, that just doesn’t make the photo better.
This is an example of this. This photo was taken with the fisheye lens, and the extra ground just added nothing to it. Removing it made the composition tighter, more focused on the subject of the photo. And yes, I removed the camera shadow in post-processing.
The second reason to not crop was that I like consistency. I like it too much. It just feels nice when you look through your photos and they all fit into a nice grid, all with a nice 4:3 ratio, perfectly aligned. I very rarely even took portrait shots, as they would not fit nicely. I know, it’s a strange reason. But then, when I started to do many vertoramas and panorama, this was no longer achievable at all. Every photo was different, everyone had a different aspect ratio in the end. So instead of my photos being consistent in size, now every single one is different. And I think it looks even better than before.
Almost each of my photos is now of a different aspect ratio.
My last reason was the loos of quality. When you are shooting with a 12Mpix camera or even 22Mpix camera, cropping of half of the photo will degrade the quality quite a lot. But that’s really not the case anymore. Most of my photos now are 30Mpix to 100Mpix in size. I can crop away really a lot, and the quality is there. Also with the progress of the cameras and good sharp lenses, the quality of the photos is better, even if you zoom in. And with tools like Topaz Gigapixel AI, you can upscale you photo 2, 4 or even to 6 times the size, while still being of great quality. Gigapixel AI is probably the most impressive photo editing application I seen in a while.
This was a huge panorama, where I cropped really a lot from it. It’s still a huge image anyway.
In the end, it’s everybody’s own decision if to crop or not to crop your photos. But it’s much easier decision now than it was only a few years before.
While looking through the stats of the blog, I can clearly see which photos are opened the most times. And no surprise there, the 4K and the super ultra-wide wallpapers are currently at the top all the time. Since the last time I updated the 4K selection, this time it’s time for the other one.
As always, these are all free for personal use and you can share them further, just link back to this blog. No commercial use without my permission.
Don’t forget to check out other available wallpapers:
No single theme for the selection this time, just random various super ultra-wide wallpapers for you to download.
Usually everyone only post’s winter photos in winter. Not really sure why. Not like everyone just shares photos that took that day anyway. Especially if you take many photos and post often. I post old photos all the time too. But somehow I also don’t share many winter ones outside winter. Feels a bit strange. Let’s try one today :)
This is one of my favorite spots to take photos in Bratislava. It’s like a go to spot to try new things. Very rarely there is someone there and one is never bothered. For this photo I used 6 exposures, two sets of three brackets to create a two shot panorama. Blended together and then combined in Photoshop.
Let’s do another, a bit different, view from the Lago di Braies om Dolomites, Italy. As I was walking around the lake, I was looking for a way to hide the sky a bit. The clouds just did not look that nice. So with the help of the 12mm lens, I found this spot. The branches of the tree were low enough, that while still standing relatively close, I could see them in the frame. Like this, I got a nice frame and also hid the sky a lot. And the roots make for a nice detail in the foreground.
This is a blend from 5 exposures, done in Photoshop. I had to use more exposures, since I was standing in the shade and that made the foreground quite dark.
