Evening at the Matthias Church

I had a really “nice” surprise this morning. When I went to turn on my PC, I found out my 34 inch monitor was dead. Would not turn on at all, not even the led light. Not really happy about that. Luckily, I have been using 2 monitors for a while now, so I can work still on my secondary one. But using a 24 inch monitor on it’s own is really a huge change. This is actually the first time I had problems with a monitor. There even is a monitor I bought in 2006 that is still being used on daily basis and works fine. But looks like 4 years was max for this one.

Now I’m not sure if I will go a get a new one, or maybe just get a second 24 inch to go with the one I have now. Or maybe I just stay with this one for now. It’s strange to go to a smaller one, but one gets used to things very quickly. But I do like how clean and empty my desk looks now. So much more minimalist :) Will be hard to decide.

For today I have for you another photo from my archives, taken few years back in Budapest, next to the Matthias Church. It was taken from the walkway that is available on the Fisherman’s bastion there. This is a two shot vertorama, with the top being from a single exposure, and the bottom from three. These three exposure were all taken at the same settings, I did not use them to recover highlights or shadows, but to get rid of the moving people in the photo. If you want to know more about this technique, check out this guide.

Elisabeth bridge in Budapest

The Elisabeth bridge is not my favorite bridge in Budapest. It just looks so plain in comparison. And the old bridge it replaced looked so much nicer. Too bad they changed the style. Still, I always looked for a nice composition with it.

I took this photo already few years back, but when I edited it afterwards, I did not like the result. So it was still in the photo library, but never finished. But few days back I tried to re-edit it again, and this time I liked the result. So here it is.

This photo is was taken from the Liberty bridge. Normally that’s not the best place to take night photos from. The bridge, as almost all bridges, shakes from the traffic, especially the trams. But the day I took this, the bridge was closed for traffic. It was full of people and there was some dance performance in the middle. I have no idea what the occasion was, but I was glad as I could take a nice photo because of it.

This is a three shot panorama, each shot from three exposures. Blended, combined in Panorama and finished in Photoshop. I did not use anything else here. It ended up being a 96Mpix photo, as I used the Sony a7R here and that makes for some large shots.

And here are few details:

Night lamp over Budapest

To break away a bit from all the Winter photos, here is a panorama I took in Budapest last summer. It was a crazy hot day. I wanted a bit different view of the city center, so I decided to include the lamp and part of the wall. Still, it was not easy to edit. The lights on the Chain bridge are crazy bright compared to it’s surrounding and even with multiple shots you get the area overexposed. So I sped actually around 2 hours on this photo, just playing with it to get it to a point I like. There is a random work-space shot I took when I edited it to the side here.

I’m a bit unhappy about the composition though. The laps is on the wrong side. Since the parliament in the back and the lamp are both the brightest elements in the shot, the whole photo is a bit out of balance. I would prefer the lamp to be on the right so the light areas create a frame around the bridge. If I remember, I will try and check if I can get a shot like that when I’m there next time :)

I was a bit lucky that there were only few people passing by. I did this photo as a two shot panorama, with each one from three exposures. Only in the last shot a couple stopped right in the middle of the photo, but luckily I could remove them. You can check my article about that here.

This panorama was created in PTgui (see here how) and then blended in Photoshop.

And here are few details:

Stunning fireworks over Budapest

Fireworks make for such stunning and colorful photos. I always try to take more photos of them when I can. But you may have noticed, I always include a lot from the scenery. I don’t like fireworks photos with just the fireworks. That makes the shot very generic for me, if there is nothing to identify the location.

This shot, as many other of my fireworks photos, was taken during the St. Stephen’s day celebrations in Budapest, Hungary. These are every year on the 20th of August there. This is a single exposure, edited in Photoshp.

Budapest center

Here goes another one of my huge panoramas. This one is of the Budapest center, as seen with a long lens from the top of the Citadel hill.

The Danube in Budapest is quite busy in the evening, as all the visitors want to see the parliament light from the river. Normally I don’t like them in my photos, but here, I think they add more to the life of the photo. What do you think?

I used three shots for the panorama, with each one being from three exposures. I used PTgui to create the blend planes and then created a HDR in Oloneo Photoengine. Then I put all together in Photoshop.

And here are few details: