After being stopped twice that day in London by security guards I started looking more for signs that announced private property (I still don’t understand how a walkway in a city can be designated as private property). And as I walked around this passage, there was an open gate and a big sign announcing that you are entering private property, with few cameras pointed toward the entrance. So I put my tripod 1 cm in front of the sign, and took this shot. So I was still on public land :)

This is a manual blend from 5 shots, taken in London, UK.

As I mentioned few times before, my trip to London was plague by ugly and bad weather (lets hope my next trip, to Paris, will be better :) ). But still I took some photos, as I will not be there so soon again. One thing I don’t like to do, is push the saturation on a photo. I try to get most of the color buy adjusting the white balance and contrast of a photo. Even if I did ad more saturation, I would feel that the photo is fake, because the scene didn’t looked like that to me. But as always there are exceptions, and this is one of them.

The photo I got here was completely grey, with only a little hint of color. I could probably go with B&W here and make a nice dramatic photo, but even if I like B&W photos, I don’t like creating them that much. Especially with landscape shots, I really miss the color. So I added saturation here, but steel trying to keep it subtle. I also used a 9 stop ND filter here, to blur the traffic and add a little more softness to the water.

I included the original OEV bracket after the brake, so you see what I mean :)

This is a manual blend from 5 shots, taken by the Westminster bridge in London.

I really liked the view from the Calton hill in Edinburgh. So I took there a lot of photos, trying different compositions and different lenses. And of course I had to take at least one panorama, and here it is.

This is a panorama from 3 shots, each one blended from 5 exposures. Taken in Edinburgh, Scotland.

New guide on the blog

I added another guide to this blog. This time is all about how I combine photos into panoramas, before I combine them into HDRs. I hope some of you will find it helpful. You can find it in the menu on the right, or go directly to the page here.

Morning bus

Morning shooting is so great. You have the whole city for yourself. Even in such a big city as London, you meet very few people out at 5am. And as a photographer, you know that’s great.
I took this photo at the Westminster bridge. I was there completely alone. And as the sky was quite boring, I player more with long exposures and capturing the passing doubledecker buses. Was able to get this one on the first try :)

This is a manual blend from 5 shots, both buses in the shot are actually one bus, taken from different exposures.

I wanted a horizontal photo with the Shard, but as it it so hard to fit it into a photo together with all the surrounding building, I ended up with a panorama. Too bad the weather was how it was, hopefully when I’m there next time, it’s better :)

This is two row panorama from 6 shots, each one blended from 5 exposures. Taken in the center of London.