Another very soft blend. I blended this photo from three images, but I only used a +2 exposure to brighten the middle and the ice a little bit and a -2 exposure to darken the windows. Worked out very well :) Btw. this photo was taken a year ago. Lake Kuchajda is probably frozen right now, but there is no chance for a blue sky :)
I’m continuing my attempts to learn manual blending of images. This time I went with a manually blended panorama from 4 sets of 6 brackets. Didn’t even take so long to blend, just the final touches took a long time :)
I get asked a lot of questions about my photos, and they are usually the same :) So here are my replies to most asked ones :)
I mostly use HDR tonemapping using Photomatix and finish up my photos in Photoshop and Lightroom. Check out my HDR tutorial to see the details
To see the (almost) exact location for all my photos added this year, just find the relevant post on this blog. Under each photo you can find the location on Google maps. If you click on the Google logo, it will open a new window with Google maps and that location centered.
I currently use a 5D mark II. For the complete list of my gear, check out the My gear page.
If you want to know what were the settings, just find the relevant post, open it and under the photo is a list of all the camera settings. Or you can go to my smugmug portfolio, and there if you hover over a photo, you get a Photo information button. Click on it and all the relevant exif data is shown.
Simple answer, as many as I need :) But usually it is 7, that’s my default value :)
Looks almost like a view from an UFO, invading Bratislava :) Actually it is a view from a restaurant called UFO :) This is another of my experiments with manual blending. Here I used two images, which were combined using masks in Photoshop, with some additional steps done after that (contrast, noise reduction, sharpening). For the comparison, here are the two original shots, that I used:
and here is the final result
This is the Grassalkovich Palace in Bratislava, currently still with the Christmas decoration on. And I really like the lights, so I wanted a reflection of them. And as the fountain in front of it is currently turned off for the winter, no luck with water reflection. But as it was raining earlier today, the shiny stone blocks around the fountain were quite clean. And that’s where I found my reflection. I placed the camera right on top of one of them and took my shots. Haven’t even used a tripod :)
As you can see from the photo, there will be one small change from today. Something I wanted to avoid for a long time, but will do it from now. All my new photos will have a watermark on them. Maybe it won’t look like this one, as this is only the first iteration.
I have seen many times, people sharing my photos without giving me credit, and I usually don’t mind. But as now some of them also started adding their own logo to the photo, I had to do this. I wonder what kind of person you have to be to take someones work, add your logo to it, and then represent it as yours….
And here is another photo from the New Years fireworks in Bratislava. They really were wonderful and I really like that each photo I posted of them, has a different color to it :)
