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Winter morning at the Charles bridge

I just got back from Prague about a hour ago, and thought I edit one of the photos I took for the blog. It was not that great of a weekend to take shots, as the weather was a bit awful. Not cold enough for there to be still snow, and no warm enoughs to have a spring feeling. It was mostly foggy, but not foggy enough for a great fog photos. But still foggy enough to not be able to get some nice views. You know how it is. Of course right around we were boarding the train back to Bratislava, the sky cleared and the sun showed up. It sometimes like this :)

But I got some shots on Saturday, especially early in the morning at the Charles bridge. My friends would not believe me that there would be people there at 5 am (the sunrise was at about 7.30) but once we arrived they saw it for themselves. Even funnier was, when a young man passing around us gave a question to one of my friends. What were we doing there so late? He presumably did not understand, that for us it was still early. For him, since he probably did not sleep at night, it was still late. But as you can see in the behind the camera shot on the side, it still was quite dark.

But to the photo. This one was taken right before sunrise. It was very cloudy, but it caught a hint of blue during the morning blue hour, and thats when I got this. This is a two shot vertorama, combined in Lightroom and edited in Photoshop.

Back from repair

Today my camera, the Sony a7R returned from the service, where it was for the last two weeks. Looks like part of the motherboard and the charging board were replaced, as the camera kept freezing and restarting in the recent weeks. Looks to work fine now, so I will see how it works out. But to tell the truth, I’m buying a new camera soon anyway. I just still haven’t decided which one (5D mark IV or 5DsR are my candidates :)).

Sunset Prague

For this next weekend I’m off to Prague, to spend the few day’s taking photos. I never been to Prague in winter and with a bit of luck, there still be snow there (there is in Bratislava, but it’s already melting away). I have two ND filters from VF FOTO to test during the trip (especially curious about the ND2000 filter), and I’m also taking the Peak Design Everyday Backpack for the first time, so the goal is to test that one as well. You will find my finding probably in an update next week.

And since I’m off to Prague, how about a photo from there, taken during one of my previous visits. This one was taken from Vyšehrad fort during one quite cloudless, but still very colorful sunset. This is a single RAW edit done in Lightrom and Photoshop.

New translations

I’m trying a bit of a experiment this year. For the most popular pages on the blog, which are currently the Top spots pages, I’m adding a Japanese translation (with a big help from my friends :)). I’m curious to see if this gets a good response, and more people will find the lists helpful. If it works out as I hope, I plan to add more languages, and expand the translations to other parts of the blog, like the HDR tutorial and similar.

For now, first 4 lists are available in Japanese, that is Paris, Dubai, Cesky Krumlov and Amsterdam. Others coming soon. All can be found here トップ写真スポット.

Night in Prague

This is another one of my older shots (I went through few recently :)), this one taken also around two years ago in Prague. This one is from the top of the Petrin tower.That evening I had luck. Usually, the tower is quite full, and using a tripod is not really allowed. But that evening, there was only me, a small group from Asia, and a very nice guide. And as I wanted photos, and they wanted photos, and there is only a small window open that points towards the city center, we changed places the whole time. I took a photo, they took a photo, I took a photo, they took a photo :) It worked out great.

This is a blend of two exposures, one for the base, second one to darken the bright areas.

I really do more city than landscape shots, but to have more variety here, here is another shot taken in the Souther Moravia in Czech republic. This fields are really beautiful and just great for photography :)

This is a single exposure, edited in Lightroom and Photoshop.