Destination Arnhem & Amsterdam

And it’s time for another work trip for me. This time the destination is Netherlands. And as before, I have no idea if I will be able to keep up with the blog updates. This will again be a busy week, with a lot of photos I have to take, but mostly nothing for the blog. But I do hope I get a bit of time here and there, and if the weather works out, I get also some shots I can share with you here :)

Cross over the Liberty bridge

One of my favorite photo locations in Budapest is the cross on the hill above the Liberty bridge. And if you go there, and go a bit more further up the hill, you will get this view. You can even walk further up, but you don’s see much due to the trees and it get quite steep anyway :)

This is a blend from three shots, done in Photoshop.

Landscape Pro

I have been trying out the Landscape Pro program the last few days, as it has quite a different approach to editing landscape photos. You split the photo into areas based on their content (sky, water, building, …) and then do edits specific to that area. You can for instance replace the sky, change water temperature and more. The end results depends a lot of course on how good the selections are, but more on that in an upcoming review :)

Nicely framed view in Budapest

I wanted to try a view like this before, but the area was never really empty. There are benches and seats usually here during the summer, so each time I visited Budapest, it was full. But as this time I was in Budapest so early in the year, I managed to get here while it was quite empty. I only have to wait few minutes, and retouch out one person. Still, I would prefer the trees to be green, to make the framed view even better, but one can’t have everything :)

This is a blend of three exposures, with all the blending done on the bridge to remove the very strong highlights.

Destination Budapest

I’m off to Budapest for the weekend, and depending on the weather, maybe I even get some new photos there. Wish me luck :)

Hungarian Parliament up close

And while on the topic of Budapest, how about a photo from there. This is the Hungarian Parliament, from quite up close. Of course I could not get the whole parliament in a single shot here, so I did a vertorama as usual.

This is a vertorama from two exposure, edited in Lightroom and Photoshop.

Working on a tablet

I never used tablet to edit my photos. I’m just so used to just use the mouse all the time. But I thought it’s maybe time to give it a chance.

So about a week ago I got the Wacom Intuos Pro S and to tell the truth, I still have not gotten used to it. Not that I did not use a tablet before. But each time it was just for retouching. Not for general photo editing. It’s just so different.

But let’s see how it goes :) Will keep you updated, and maybe will do a review of it later on.

Blue hour lions on the Chain bridge

Getting the chain bridge people free is not really easy. There are always people using it to cross to the other side of Danube. So for this shot I took multiple exposures and blended them in Photoshop. As you can see, I did not take enough shot to remove everyone, but it’s close enough.

And if you want to see how its done, check out this tutorial I posted some time ago.

You will notice here, there is a church tower in front of the Hungarian parliament. It would be better without it, but there is a small problem to that. There is a place, from where you can see the parliament without the tower. It’s directly from the Fishermans bastion. The problem there is, that it is a restaurant, that is mostly not accessible at all, or they allow entry to it only for a short time and close it quite early. In the years I have been visiting Budapest, I only got into the bastion once, and this is not one of the photos from that evening. But I still like it, and I hope you do so too :)

Yellow glow of the Hungarian parliament

If you ever been to Budapest, and every tried to take a photo of the Hungarian parliament building, you know how crazy strong the lights are compared to the surroundings. It just completely overpowers everything around it with the strong yellow glow. I really does take a bit of work to tone it back down again, so one doest not have the whole building overexposed.

For this photo I used two exposures, one for the base and a second at -2EV for the light. I edited both in Lightroom and blended together in Photoshop.