Best vs Worst on Ello?

I’ve been using Ello for a few days now, and there are things I like and things I don’t like, so here is a little list of those:

Best:

• wonderful clean responsive design, it can fill up the screen
• high-quality images.. and big, really big
• gif support is really nice
• no ads, no sponsored posts, no suggested posts, even the Ello account posts are in noise by default

Worst:

• little buggy, my feed stooped updating for few hours today, or better said, its few hours late to show me updates
• easy to miss comments, as there is no notification list
• no dedicated mobile app (but the website is not so bad anyway)
• no way to directly reply to a comment
• invite system
• no preview on links (but this could be also a plus.. as it looks cleaner :))

My overall impression of Ello after few days is very positive, and I’m quite curious if it catches on and keeps growing. Let’s wait and see.

Photographers to follow on Ello

And while on the subject of Ello, yesterday I created a new page on the blog, which is a list of photographers that are already there. So if you are there and would like to have a constant stream of great photos, check the list out, and follow the ones you like.

Also, if you are a photographer, and would like to be included, just message me, or comment on the list with a link to your profile. I’m trying to continually add those who request it :)
The list can be found here:

https://www.hdrshooter.com/photographers-to-follow-on-ello/

Mountain living

The photo for today, is of course another one from Switzerland. I took this one on the road, while leaving Zermatt. Of course we shopped on a nearby parking lot, which was so nicely above the city. It’s quite interesting how people live there, on the hills. I think I seen a cable car in every city and every village :)

This is a HDR from 5 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop.

Behind the scenes in Dubai

These are two behind the scenes photos, taken earlier this year while I was occupied with taking photos :) They were recently posted by Marek Kijevsky (check out his photos on his Facebook page) who joined me for most photo shootings there. But I should give credit to his lovely wife Julia, as she took them :)

Btw. I’m the one on the right in the first photo, and on the left in the second :)

The curvy road

There were so many nice spots in the Alps. Just going along the road, we had to stop few times, so I can take more photos. Same here. I really liked the curvy road, even if I could not find a place that was high enough to see ti better. Still, it creates a nice path for the viewers eye to follow into the photo :)

This is a HDR from 5 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop.

I was a little late when arriving to Zermatt, so I missed the last rail car by 10 minutes. And since I was not really in the mood to go up by foot, I stayed in Zermatt, taking a lot of photos from there. And luckily, the weather was just great, even if the sun was exactly next to the Matterhorn, so right in my shots. But since one still can get a nice shot into the shun, when using HDR, I managed to get a lot of nice shots. And here is the first one.

I used the technique of shading the sun with my hand here. You can read more about it in by How to remove Lens flares guide. Or just look at the Lightroom screenshot I’m including here, to see what I mean. For this one, I took two series of 5 exposures, one for the sun, one for the foreground. I created a HDR from both in Oloneo Photoengine and blended them together in Photoshop afterwards.

It’s a little bit strange to edit landscape shots, after so many cityscape shots in a row. They are so different. It’s so easy to get them to look very unnatural, just by adding a little bit more color. But since I took a lot of them last week, I at least will have a lot to practice on :)

This one, same as the one yesterday, was taken at the Schwarzee, above Zermatt. This time you can see the other side, towards the Matterhorn mountain. This is a blend from two exposures, created in Photoshop. Since I used a polarizing filter to darken the sky, I only needed to brighten few shadow areas from a brighter exposure.

I’m also including a behind the camera shot. I took many of those during the week for my Facebook page, so will include them with few of the Switzerland posts :)

So today I got back home from Switzerland, but I’m so dead tired. I visited 6 cities during the last week, and slept so little the last few nights. So for today, just a quick edit of one of the photos I took at the Schwarzsee under the Materhorn, and there will be more tomorrow :)

This is a blend from three exposures (two just for focusing, with one focused on the mountains, one on the rocks in front) in Photoshop. I also used a polarizing filter for this photo.