Another one of my favorites, this one is from the Neusidelersee in Austria.

I’m a little more busy right now, as I’m flying to Holland tomorrow, so no new photo today. An there will be none for the next few days, when I will be only reposting some of my favorite photos from the last year. This is due a new job I’m starting right now, so there will be a lot I have to take care off. But don’t worry, the blog will continue as it is, and there will be a lot of new photos very soon :)

So for today, one of my favorite photos from Dubai.

I stooped today at a motorbike exhibition in Bratislava. And while I managed to stay there only for about an hour (the number of people there was just to big for my comfort), I did take a few photos. And here are a few of them :)

All taken hand-held, and with a 24-70 or 16-35 lens.

As I post photos, from time to time I get questions, asking if this or that thing in them is real. Better said, if I got something because it was really there, or by camera settings or just in Photoshop. And to clarify my point of view on this, here is this post.

I think, every photographer has a line, to what edits he/she is willing to perform on a photo, while still calling it a photo. Anything after this, I would already call a photo-manipulation. This line is quite different for everyone, and also quite different based on what are the photos used for.

I edit my photos quite a lot, as it’s quite obvious from this site. But I try to stay away from photo manipulations, or if I do some, I clearly mark it it the description, that a part of the photo is not real.

So what I will edit in a photo:

1. I will remove camera issues, distortion, aberrations, noise, flares and similar
2. I will remove myself from the photo, stuff like random shadows, or forgot to move my bag and similar
3. I will remove people, cars, scaffolding, cranes and trash. All this I find very distracting and already try to avoid them when composing a photo. But as everyone knows, sometimes cropping them out will make the photo worse
4. I will play with brightness, color and sharpness of a photo. This are actually all the things you change in HDR post-processing
5. sometimes I also remove identifiable markers, like license plates on cars, or copyrighted signs

And then there are things I don’t do, or if I do them I clearly state that they have been done:

1. fake reflection. If I remember correctly, in the last 5 years, I posted 4 photos with a fake reflection. Still, they all probably had fake in their name :)
2. fake light effects, flares, light stars and similar
3. paste in a star sky. If I can’t get a photo of the stars from a certain spot, I won’t create one.
4. paste in sun, moon, rainbow, people, objects or anything else
5. combining photos from different locations into one

Then there is also a question about the sky in landscape photos. I don’t mind when someone replaces a sky in their photo, I just don’t do it. I know how to do it, I done it few times, but never posted the result. The reason is that the photo just looks so fake to me afterwards, that I can’t get over it. I just know that it’s not what I have seen.

That’s actually also how I limit my edits. If a photo starts to feel fake to me, I know I have to undo and tone down the edits I did on it.

Btw. I’m not saying I don’t like photo manipulations. I like them, and there are many photographers who create wonders with them. I just like to know, when I’m looking at a photo, if its a photo or a photo manipulation. Sometimes it’s really hard to tell :)

What are you thought? Where is your line?

I haven’t posted a panorama in such a long time, so here is one. It was taken a little after I took the last photo I posted. It’s really nice to edit such a photo on a huge screen. You just see so much more, and can get a nice perspective on how the photo looks. Too bad, that when you look at it on something small afterwards, it’s never so great. It’s actually a problem with most HDR photos. They are so detailed, that seeing them small, you never see everything. So for todays photo, you can go here to see it bigger than the usual size I share my photos in :)

This is a three shot panorama, each one from 5 exposures, combined in PTGUI, Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop.

Technique: Oloneo Photoengine, Number of exposures: 3×5, Camera Model: Canon EOS 5D mark II, Lens: Canon 70-200mm F2.8 IS II, Focal length: 100mm, Aperture: 8, Middle exposure time: 2s, ISO: 200, Tripod used: yes, Location: 48.134279,17.106281