Hviezdoslav in the snow – Plotagraph

I did not know that, with a Plotagraph Pro you can also add particles to photos. Stuff like snow, rain or flowers. It is very easy and just looks great. The only problem with this is, that you can’t compress the resulting video as much as other Plotagraphs. There is just too much movement for that. But still I thought I share one with you :)

This is the Hviezdoslav statue in Bratislava. This snowy photo really fits to this heavy snow animation, as it really was like that that day. I’m still not 100% sure about how I animated the background, but after over 50 different tries, I ended with this one. Hope you like it.

The autoplay on this one is dissabled, so it does not load all the time, so if you want to see it, hit play.

(if you use an older web browser, you may only see a static image, if you are on a mobile, please hit the play button to see the Plotagraph in motion)

Winter sunset over Bratislava

I took this photo already over 1 or 2 years ago, but never posted it. But I’m doing so today. This is the view from the Michaels gate balcony. As it’s a museum, it’s a bit hard to get there during the sunset. Only in winter, when the sunset is so early, it’s still open. And while it is not allowed to take photos inside, they have no problems if you take photos outside on the balcony.

This is a 3 shot blend, done in Photoshop.

Golden light in the city

I seem to have a lot of fog in my recent picture :) But it’s that time of year, so what can you do. This one is taken under the SNP bridge (New bridge) in Bratislava. I really like how most of the city is hidden, and you just get this wonderful glow from all the lights.

This is a two exposure blend done in Photoshop. I used a second, darker exposure, to recover the lights on the bridge walkway. I had a lot of problems with color banding here, as there are quite a few soft color transitions. Luckily, this is not the first time I dealt with it and I knew what to do. And you can to, if you check my tutorial Dealing with color banding.

The view over Danube

And we come to another panorama :) I took so many of them recently. And I even started writing a short guide on how to take panoramas without the need of a panoramatic head, which I will share with you soon. But not today.

Today I have for you a panorama shot taken from the new Old bridge in Bratislava. This was taken during the White night even, while I was waiting for them to turn on the laser lights on the New bridge. But looks like that they had problems and the lights stayed off. So I at least got a nice panorama shot from it.

This is a 2 shot panorama. I took 5 exposure for each shot and used the darker ones to blend in parts of the castle. It’s just so bright. I used PTgui to create the panorama and finished the photo in Photoshop. If you want to know how to create HDR panoramas, check out the guides I made about it. Here is one for PTgui and here one for AutoPano.

Btw. if you wonder why I share the detail shots. I like it when my photos look good zoomed out, but also at 100%. If a photo does not look good zoomed in, I usually don’t use it. Even if nobody else ever will see it at 100%, I will, and it will always bother me if its not as I want it to be :)

And here are few details:

All Saints’ Day

As every year, this again I went out to take few photos at a nearby cemetery for the All Saint’s day. As the tradition here is to place candles onto graves and also in few other locations, these make for some stunning photos.

So today’s photo is from the Martins cemetery in Bratislava. It is a blend of three exposures, where I used a brighter one to brighten the background a bit and a darker one to soften the bright lights on the statue. I’m also including two more shots, both more of a details of the candles. Both of these are single exposures, edited mostly in Lightroom, finished in Photoshop.

And here are the two extra: