Kong: Skull Island

I have not been in a cinema for very very long, so when I saw the trailer for the new Kong: Skull Island, I just had to go. I prefer to go to the cinema for visually stunning movies, and not really because of a story. And I have to say, Kong really did not disappoint. It was exactly what I expected it to be. An OK story, with no surprises, but with stunning visuals and cinematography. I look at it probably differently as an average viewer, but I just have to say I loved how they composed and post processed the shots. I really enjoyed it a lot. Strange that the reviews I seen were not that spectacular. Did they really expect an Oscar worthy story from this?

And I even enjoyed more, that the character in the movie, who was a photographer, held the camera like she knew what she was doing and even used a tripod for a long exposure shot. Who would expect such realism from a Kong movie? It sometimes funny to think, that on the set of a movie, there are so many people who work with cameras daily, and then in the movie the characters have no idea what they are doing.

So would I recommend this movie? Of course yes. Just don’t expect anything spectacular from the story, and just enjoy the show.

A summer day in Hallstatt

For todays daily shot, I’m sharing with you one of the few daitime shot I have. I really have to do more. This one is from Hallstatt in Austria, which I think was named the most beautiful city in the word some time ago, or something like that. And it really is a beautiful place. To bad it was a bit cloudy they day I visited. But it’s on the list for this year, so I hope it works out :)

About this site

Here and there I get questions what I used to make this blog, and what plug-ins I use, so here is a list for those curious :)

• WordPress instalation – this blog runs on a self hosted wordpress intalation
• Amory WordPress Theme – currently I use the Amory theme, even if I used it more for the base layout, and I tweaked quite a lot of things about it
• Instagram feed plugin – thats the instagram feed at the bottom of every page
• Max Mega Menu Pro plugin – for the nice responsive menu on top
• Slider Revolution – for the big slider on top of the homepage
• Disqus plugin – this one is of course for the comments
• Contact Form 7 – I think the name explains this :)
• Mailchimp – for the newsletter
• PanoPress – for the few 360 photos that are on the page
• WP Super Cache – the caching system of the page, which in theory makes it faster
• Yoast SEO – the SEO of the page
• ConvertPlug – for popups when I need to add them
• Zoomify – zoom in plugin for huge panoramas

And thats almost all I use, there are few smaller one time things here and there, but nothing of much interest :)

Landscape Pro

I have been trying out the Landscape Pro program the last few days, as it has quite a different approach to editing landscape photos. You split the photo into areas based on their content (sky, water, building, …) and then do edits specific to that area. You can for instance replace the sky, change water temperature and more. The end results depends a lot of course on how good the selections are, but more on that in an upcoming review :)

Nicely framed view in Budapest

I wanted to try a view like this before, but the area was never really empty. There are benches and seats usually here during the summer, so each time I visited Budapest, it was full. But as this time I was in Budapest so early in the year, I managed to get here while it was quite empty. I only have to wait few minutes, and retouch out one person. Still, I would prefer the trees to be green, to make the framed view even better, but one can’t have everything :)

This is a blend of three exposures, with all the blending done on the bridge to remove the very strong highlights.

Back from Budapest

And I’m back from Budapest after the short trip. And not that I got that many photos, as when it started raining yesterday, it just rained all the time. But what can you do :)

The pillars reflection in the Grand Mosque

For todays daily photo I went back to my photos from UAE, and chosen one from the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi. If you ever are in the area, you just must visit it. And their great approach to photography (tripods are allowed !!!) should be an example to many other places :)

This is a blend of two exposures for the base, and then I used another two to remove few of the people present. I still had to brush out few in the end.

Destination Budapest

I’m off to Budapest for the weekend, and depending on the weather, maybe I even get some new photos there. Wish me luck :)

Hungarian Parliament up close

And while on the topic of Budapest, how about a photo from there. This is the Hungarian Parliament, from quite up close. Of course I could not get the whole parliament in a single shot here, so I did a vertorama as usual.

This is a vertorama from two exposure, edited in Lightroom and Photoshop.