The new UFO tower sign

Yesterday I posted a photo from the top of the SNP bridge and today it’s another one. When I got there, I noticed they installed this new sign, showing the height of the UFO tower. Was definitively not there in February when I was the last time there. I think it was done so the visitors can take photos with it, and I saw a lot doing so. But of course, I also wanted to use it as a foreground element in the photo.

I tried different views but ended up with on straight on. I wanted the castle to the side of the sign, and in different views, I mostly had the pillar in the middle of it. I did not like that. I had to also be very quick, as a bigger group of tourist just got to the top of the UFO tower, and they walked into the shot almost immediately after I took it.

This is a single exposure edit. While I did take multiple exposures I could not use them. It was crazy windy and they just would not align perfectly. So I rather took the same exposure, created a second copy, overexposed it and then used it instead. Edited in Photoshop.

And since I did a lot of perspective correction on this one, I thought I show you a before/after here. Mostly I’m trying out a new plugin here, as I want to use the before/after slider in my reviews, and want to be sure it works fine :)

One almost sunny day in Bratislava

I call this photo the almost sunny day, as if you look to the right part of it, you can see it’s raining in the distance. And it has been raining in Bratislava for most of the last two weeks. I took this photo on Friday, and while it looks sunny, I got rained on a few times that day.

This is a two shot panorama, each shot from two exposures. Blended and merged in Photoshop.

And here are a few details:

Passing clouds over Bratislava

I did not manage to post an update yesterday, as I got home quite late. But there is a new one today, with a photo I took yesterday :)

The weather was all over the place in Bratislava yesterday. It was cloudy, sunny, raining and it changed every few minutes. And it was also quite windy a bit higher up. So the clouds moved really fast. Of course, that immediately brought a thought of long exposure to my mind, and I took some. As this is the view from the new Old bridge in Bratislava, I had to retake the shots a few times. The passing trams cam make the bridge shake, and while it was not a big problem in such a long exposure, I still did not like it.

This photo is a panorama from two shots, each one from a single exposure. I used the 11 stop VFFOTO filter here to push the exposure up to a 60 second one (with F14 and ISO 50). Combined and edited in Photoshop.

And here are a few details:

The tiny cathedral

While I do use a tilt-shift lens all the time, I don’t do many tilt-shift photos. The problem is, if you use a wide lens, like the 17mm one I have, you can’t really create a nice miniature effect. You need to zoom in a bit, to compress the perspective. Without that, it just does not look right.

For this photo, I used a 90mm tilt-shift lens. This one works really well for creating miniatures, you just have to be a bit further away, as you can’t zoom out. This is a blend of three exposures, done in Photoshop.

The SNP bridge

I used this photo as an example in yesterday’s article on blending using luminosity selections, but I did not include the final edited version of it. So here it is. Actually, compared to the blend I have shown there, I only edited it as shown in this article on editing using luminosity selections. I used Levels to brighten the dark areas more and add contrast to them, and I also used color balance to make the dark areas colder.

This is a blend of three exposures, done in Photoshop.