My luck with the weather yesterday was just horrible. First I forgot about the time change, so I was waiting for the sunset one hour too early. Then it started raining like crazy (which is really bad when you camera is not weather sealed) and only after I gave up, returned to my flat here and thought I get no photos for that evening anymore, it just stopped and the sky completely cleared up. Really hard to predict the weather conditions here.

But still, I just turned around, and went back out to get at least few shots. And here is one of them. This is a two shot blend, as I needed a darker exposure for the building in the middle.

In this shot, I wanted to have the Eiffel tower, a passing train, and also the nearby tall buildings. I tried it last time I was in Paris, but then I included all by rotating the camera 45 degrees. I did not really like the results. This time I used the TSE lens to get a two shot vertorama, and I like the result much more :)

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

I wanted to share with you a photo from Amsterdam yesterday, but due to the late arrival, I was not able to. But today I got to take new photos, so here is the first one. As this is quite a popular spot for photographers, I thought to go with a bit more unusual composition, where the TSE lens really helped a lot. I hope you like it.

This is a single exposure, edited in Lightroom and Photoshop.

Negative reactions

I thought I share with you some of my thoughts on recent things I seen in Photography news. There are mostly negative thoughts, but one can’t avoid those here and there anyway:

– free Nik Plugins collection – since few days, you can get the great Nik Plugin collection for free instead of the 150 usd it was before. In a short term view, this is great, as you will get some very useful plugins for free. In a long term view, this is horrible, as it sounds the dead of professional Nik plugins. Since Google bought Nik few years ago, they had only one release, the Analog Efex II, and nothing else. They have been zero updates to anything since then. And now, since they are free, I don’t think there will be any, ever. I presume the same fate Google had for Picasa. Keep it up for a year or two more without updates, and they just kill it off.

– many photographers starting using Snapchat – recently I seen many photographers starting using Snapchat, and promoting their profiles. From my point, I don’t wont another social network, and I already left few and will probably leave even more. The time one spends updating everything can be used so much better. Additionally, you are never in control of your content there. The company can change anything at any time (just look at Instagram recently, but I will get to that in a moment). I rather focus on the blog, where I have full control of everything.

– the new curated Instagram – the biggest reason I preferred Instagram to Facebook recently was that I could see all the posts I wanted, not what they thought I wanted. This change is not a surprise but it’s not welcomed. Will see how they implement it. I do like that they added the ability to see the notifications on the webpage.

– will the new iPhone change photography? – no, it’s another overpriced phone with a mediocre camera. To tell the truth, I have not used the 6s, just the iPhone 6 for about a month. After few photos, I actually stopped using the camera all together, as I found the quality to be years behind all other phones I used recently.

– holding the a7R II for the first time – while in Paris, I finally held the a7R II in my hands for the first time. My first impression? Wow, this is horrible. Hard edges, strange button placements, much bigger and so on. I will try to rent one sometime shortly to get a better feel for it, but the first impression was really bad.

Ok, enough with the negative reactions, will do some positive next time :)

Night drivers

Here is for you a quick vertorama I took from the Bir Hakeim bridge in Paris. I prefer to take shots during the blue hour, but that day I was busy, and managed to get this only later, on my way back to my flat. Still, I like how the shifting got me much more light trails, to guide you better in the photo.

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

Back to a bit of a delay in posting again. I’m sorry, but I was going from Paris to Amsterdam, and as you know from what happened recently in Brussels, that was not as a smooth trip as it could be.

So for now, here is another shot from Bordeaux.