Budapest fireworks

I have not been updating the blog recently that much. No really big reason for that, I’m just tired and a bit unmotivated. It’s probably just that time of the year. Not in the mood to do much. This happens from time to time, and probably it’s the same for most of you. After a while, things change and I get a new bost in energy. But not there yet.

But let’s do another photo for today, one more from the St. Stephens day fireworks in Budapest. This is a single exposure, split into two and then blended them back together.

Green fireworks

I was in the mood for another fireworks photo today, so here is one more from Budapest. The beautiful thing about fireworks is, that even if you do many from the same spot, each one is a bit different. There is just so much variation and randomness in them.

This is a single exposure, that I broken up into two with different RAW edits and then blended them back together in Photoshop.

Now and then

My editing style changed a lot over the years. Mostly I tried to move more towards more realistic and softer edits. Away from the typical grungy style that is associated with HDR photos. I don’t re-edit photos once I finish them, but for today I thought, I try to edit a similar photo to one I did years ago. So I went back and chosen a photo from 2012, where I posted a very similar one. I edited it, and here you can see the result. These two photos were taken minutes from each other, but with 7 years between the edits.

This is a blned of 4 exposures done in Photoshop.

I’m no longer 100% sure how the old one was edited, but I presume it was a HDR from 7 exposures done in Photomatix Pro, that I then finished in Photoshp. You can see the biggest difference on the bridge. I used to pull out a lot of detail in my photos, where now I leave some shadow still there.

Morning sun at the Liberty bridge

Let’s do a nice warm photo, even if the day I took it was not really that warm. This photo was taken one early autumn day in Budapest, very very early in the morning. It was raining during the night, and I was not even sure if I go out to take photos. But I woke up, and I gave it a try. And it was one of the nicest sunrises I ever seen. Not that it works like that every time. Most of the time you are happy if you get a nice photo at all.

This photo is a blend from 5 exposures done in Photoshop. There is a bit of a final touch done with Topaz Adjust AI.

And here is also a comparison to the original RAW file. You can see why I needed to use so many brackets this time.

Beautiful details in the Cathedral

I edited this photo sometime in January, but I never posted. It happens to me sometimes, I edit a photo, save the PSD and just leave it be. It’s like I have to think about it more. Then from time to time I clean up these unsorted PSDs and do one or two more edits and it’s done.

Same with this photo from the Sts. Peter and Paul Cathedral in Pécs, Hungary. I just toned down the color on the carpet as the last touch and I was done. Now I can post it.

This is a three shot panorama, combined in Lightroom, edited in Photoshop. No blending needed here, as the lighting was quite even from the start.