Low Danube under the Apollo bridge

And this is one of the photos I took today, around 30 minutes after the video. The blue hour was not completely blue, but still quite interesting. As the Danube is also quite low now, I could get much closer to the bridge as usually, and so get a much better view. Of course I almost feel on the rocks many times, but that’s always the risk. At least they were only covered by mud and not frozen :)

This is a HDR from 6 shots created in Oloneo Photoengine and then blended with original exposures in Photoshop.

Bubble level

Every time I post a behind the scenes photo, with my camera in it, I get the exact same question: “What is that green cube on your camera?”. Once, it even happened, that after I finished shooting, I went to a restaurant, place my camera on the table, and even the waitress asked me what the green cube was :). So for those that still don’t know what it is, it’s a 3-way bubble level. As my camera is older and it does not have a level function, I use this to keep my photos nice a leveled.

In reality I don’t look at it that much, as with years of practice I get most of my photos leveled, it’s still great, so I am sure all the time. It’s a very cheap piece of equipment (you can find it under 5 USD on eBay if you buy it from China) and it will make you photos much better.

One autumn sunset

I just love sunset colors. And what is even better is to have them doubled by a nice reflection. As I stated many times before, the Kuchajda lake is great for this, as it’s very calm most of the time. Like a natures mirror.

This photo Is a manual blend from 3 exposures. I took 5, but had no need for the +2 and -2EV. Actually all I did was to start with the -1EV, as I liked the sky on that one, and brightened the middle are from the other two exposures. After that I only tweaked mostly detail, colors and contrast. Recently I try to go towards fewer edits on my photos. If I no longer can see all the layers in the list without scrolling, I feel like I have overdone a photo.

Don’t forget the free HDR tutorial

Based on Google analytics, around 50% of all visitors to the blog are first time visitors. And this is just a little not to all of those. If you didn’t notice, this blog also includes a detailed HDR tutorial, which explains a lot of how I edit my photos.

And for those curious when I will continue with the manual blending tutorial, don’t worry, is in the works. It just takes it’s time :)

City of light

You never notice how a bridge shakes with every passing car, until you try to take photos from it. And sadly, the Apollo bridge is not different. It’s really hard to get any longer exposure while shooting from it. It all just get so blurry.

Same here. I used only -3EV to 0EV, as the brighter exposures were blurry. But with a little editing, I think I did fine also without them (and I quite like this darker look :)). This is a manual blend from 4 exposures.

New look for the blog

Recently I felt that my blog needs a little visual refresh, so I’ve been working on it, and today I finally put in on the live server. I think you have all noticed the change already, so there is not much I can say about it :) I just hope you all like it. I changed a lot of stuff, including how the page scales in the browser window, so if any of you see any problem, or bugs, please let me know.

Light tree at the sunset

I really like winter, but with absolutely no snow, I just can’t wait for spring. How much could this photo look differently if everything was covered by snow. The tree would just not looks so out of place.

This is a 5 exposure HDR created in Oloneo Photongine. I then blended in a brighter tree, removed few people and added glow in photoshop. And that’s it.

I don’t do that much astrophotography, as most of my photos are from cities, and you can’t get any stars there. But as I was in a less populated area during Christmas, I tried to take few shots also of the starts. And the day I took this, we got to the cabin around midnight. Most of the day, the sky was covered by clouds, but just a short time before it cleared. And as it was not that cold, I had to take few shots. I’m just sad, that at that time I did’t know that there was a second cabin a little behind this one, which would give me a much better composition. I just found that out the next morning, when we were leaving the area :)

This is a blend from two exposures in Photoshop.