What are you listening to?

I had this discussion with few photographers, and always got a response, that when they are taking photos alone, they are listening to music. Strange that I never do that :) I always listen to audiobooks. But never books with a story, they are always from the non-fiction category. Right now it’s the Packing for mars by Mary Roach. Really quite insetting book and makes one think different about space exploration.

So what are you listening to? I’m just curious :)

Clear sky over Dubai

With the weather being really horrible last few weeks in Bratislava, I’m inclined to edit more sunny photo. It just has been raining almost every day for the past three weeks. Sometimes I feel like not even getting out of bed in the morning :)

So for today, I chosen a photo taken right around lunch in the Dubai marina. Actually this was the first photo I took there :) My plane to Dubai was 3 hours late, and since the arrival time was 11pm, I arrived to the flat I was staying at, at 3 in the morning. So getting up at lunch was the earliest I managed. Actually I got up so late almost every day, as we were shooting usually until very late at night :)

This is a HDR from 5 exposures, crated in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop. Btw. the ISO 400 was a mistake. I change it so rarely, that I forgot to check it before taking the shot.

Photo shared by Huffington post

It always cool to see a photo of mine on home bigger page, and this time one was on the Huffington posts page. It was in an article called “Proof That Prague Is Europe’s Prettiest City”, so of course it was one of my Prague shots. For those who want to see the whole article, it can be find on their page :)

5 more days

5 more days to join my photo contest, sponsored by Oloneo. If you haven’t done so yet, now is the time :) Go here for details.

The huge crossing

This is one huge crossing, and looks just so interesting form high up. And so busy :)

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

While taking photos of the Burj Al Arab was quite interesting. The light on top and on the nearby hotel changed quite often, and as many lights in Dubai, were very bright neon color. If you ever took a photo of something neon, you know how big a problem is to catch a nice color there. It just oversaturates everything a burns out any detail. But as I captured everything shining with a purple light in this photo, I decided to tone the whole photo in purple.

I was also thinking what to do with the very saturated top. In the end I only recovered it from one of the exposures, doing no desaturation on it. I think you can have one saturated color in a photo, as long as its not covering the whole photo. It creates a point that draws your eyes, but one also has to have less saturated part, for the eyes to rest. And I think it worked on this one (at least on my screen :) )

This is a HDR from 4 shots, created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop.

What a start

What a start indeed. Only yesterday I announced my photo editing contest and already there are over 50 entries. It’s so stunning to see what different people can create with the same photos. And for you all who still haven’t joined, you still have 9 more days to do so. All the rules in yesterdays post, and all the already submitted photos can be seen here.

Long exposure reflections

One thin one always sad to do before shooting long exposures, is to clean the ND filter. I always do so, but it does not really help with my Hoya ND400. The problem is that while I was in Paris last year, it got loose from my camera and fell onto some stones. So now there are small spots all over the filter, that can not be cleaned. But luckily, the filter is still usable, I just need to spend a little longer with cleaning up the photos :)

This is a HDR from 5 shots, created in Oloneo Photoengine (yes, the software you can win in my contest :)) and finished in Photoshop. Taken in the middle of the Dubai Marina.

I got to the Burj Khalifa very late the day I was there. The problem was, that when I booked my ticket (around a week before my trip) all the good time were already completely sold out. Of course no chance for a sunset time, but luckily, I got one for my last day in Dubai, for the blue hour. Of course when I got up, it was already after the blue hour, but that just means that next time I’m booking my ticket a month before my visit :)

This is a HDR from 4 shots, created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop. I took this one through the glass wall there, as I wanted more reflection from the building, and my tripod was not high enough to get enough over the wall.