Entering the Chain bridge

It so great to explore a city after sunset. So many lights, so many great views. And you no longer have to hurry, as by sunset or sunrise. The lights are there for hours. There are some challenges to night shooting, as the lights can create some ugly flares, but with a little practice and work you can overcome that :)

This is a photo I took last summer in Budapest. I manually blended 6 exposures here, using different exposures for the light streaks, the bridge and the surroundings.

Pattern

You never know what you will see when you look up. Just composing is a little harder with the camera pointing straight up :). I found this ceiling in the Gellért Baths in Budapest, really a very nice old place.

I’m not completely satisfied with this photo. And I think I could edit it more and more, and I still would not like it completely. It was just an ugly day. But it’s a great photo to try out and advance my manual blending skills, as the dynamic range was extreme. You just have to think about it, the whole foreground area had no light source at all. Open the full post to see the original exposure.

Red moon over the bridge

Too bad that the moon is only so small. Sometimes I wish I would have a 400mm lens in my bag, so I could have the moon nice and big in my photos, but usually I’m glad that I don’t have to carry something like that. I don’t even carry the 70-200mm most of the time :)

For those interested, this is the Liberty Bridge in Budapest. And this is a tonemapped image, but I blended around half of it from original shots :)

While they were preparing the stage

Another photo from the Budapest opera, this looking at the stage. I tried tonemapping and also manual blending on this one, and in the end, I went with manual blending. It just looked more natural.

Btw. something completely unrelated. I’m planing a trip to the UK in few weeks, and during the trip I will go with a car from Birmingham to Edinburg… and I’m thinking of stopping for one night somewhere in between. So if anyone has some suggestions for a cool photo opportunity there, some nice coastal town with good access to the shore, let me know :)