Normandy American Cemetery

When one hears that there are over 9000 graves in this cemetery, it’s pretty hard to imagine. But as one walks between them, and there are more, and more, and still more as you go further in, the size of it is really overwhelming.

As I spend the whole last week in Normandy, I visited not only the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, but also Omaha beach and the surrounding area. It’s really interesting to see the places that one learned about in school, but it’s also quite depressing. So I will post only few photos from here, and focus rather on the more happier places.

This is a two shot vertorama, the top is from a single exposure, the bottom from two. I used a brighter one to brighten few shadows.

Golden sky at the Eiffel tower

The photo for today, is one from my archives, taken during one of my visits to Paris. I edited it only few days ago. I think I tried it once before, but I did not like the result. But as the skill advance, so one can get more from photos, one would once find unusable :)

So if you are curious, I’m again including a before/after comparison of this photo. You can see as it was right from the camera, and how it compares to my editing result.

For this photo, I used a single exposure, edited in Photoshop.

Quickly approaching rain over Paris

For today, I edited a photo I took already few years ago. This one is from the top of the Eiffel tower in Paris. That day, right as the sun went down, it started raining. The rain movied towards us from the direction of the sunset. It really made for a very spectacular view. Good that the 5D mark II I used at that time is a weather-sealed camera. I could just take photos without the need to hide from the rain.

For this photo, I took 10 exposures. 5 normal and 5 with my hand in front of the sun. I needed the second set to get rid of the lens flares (you can learn on how to remove lens flares here). In the end I used I exposure for the base, one for the sky, and two from the ones where my hand shaded the sun.

And if you are curious, I’m including a before after shot to the side. You can see how the 0EV exposure looked like and how the final shot turned out after about 30 layers of tweaks in Photoshop :)

A hot evening in Lyon

I took today’s photo last August in Lyon, France. I just hope this year it’s a bit colder. It just was so crazy hot there, with very little wind. And those nice clouds you see here, were only in the evening, no such luck during the day :)

Close to the water in Lyon

When it comes to reflection, I like to get as close I can to the reflective surface. It just makes for a more interesting view. Same here, in Lyon, where I got completely close to the surface of water, to get this shots.

This is a blend of two exposures, edited in Lightroom and Photoshop.