I didn’t take that many photos during Christmas. A nice weather and snow were just not there. And over time I learned, that it’s not worth it to go out shooting if I know I wont use the photos in the end. But of course I took few photos here and there and this is one of them. This was taken in the center of Spisska Nova Ves in eastern Slovakia. I was experimenting a little with the composition, as the lights were too far from anything interesting, so I used them to frame the church instead.

This is a manual blend from 3 exposures (took 5, but only needed three) done in Photoshop.

For the few last week there were no processing posts, but from today I’m getting back to my normal posting schedule. So Monday will again be dedicated to editing. Today, let’s look at one of my Christmas themed photos, taken at the Eurovea shopping center in Bratislava.

Here you have the final and the original photos in comparison. The photo was just too dark, there were many moving people in the background and also the statue was not shiny enough for what I wanted.

Finished photo

Original photo

As alway I started in Lightroom. Corrected the lens distortions, chromatic aberrations and white balance. I also re-cropped the photo a little, to get rid of the letters on the side. From there I exported everything as 16-bit tiff files, and loaded them into Oloneo Photoengine.

All exposures photo

Lightroom edit

In Photoengine I put all the brackets together, just tweaking the strenght, exposure and contrast. Then I loaded all the exposures into Photoshop. I didn’t need that many edits, mostly just to remove the blurred people. So I did the following edits (layers numbered from bottom up):

1. Oloneo Photoengine result
2-8. Original exposures, each one tweaked using curves and hue/saturation, to be similar to the Photoengine result. The I painted in the parts I wanted to use from them to hide all the people.
9. Merged copy, on which I removed noise and all the dust spots. I also removed few more people, the weren’t moving in between the exposures.
10. Color Efex Pro contrast to get more contrast into the photo
11. Color Efex Darken/Lighten center, to darker the corners and brighten the center.

Photoengine edit

Photoshop edit

And that’s all I did with this image. To find out more on how I edit, check out the guides and before after categories on this blog, or check out my video tutorial series here:

As I mentioned yesterday, I will end this week with all fireworks shots. So here is a new one from the New years, and tomorrow I will be getting back to my classic weekly schedule :)

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

I decided to have this whole week fireworks theme, as those are the photos I have new right now :) And since the weather changed completely yesterday (it’s raining instead of snowing), these are also the only ones I take for a while. So I hope you don’t mind and I will also try to have every one in a different color. This time it’s in red. I usually try to remove color cast from photos, but actually in fireworks shots, the color cast can really add to the scene, when everything is colored by the exploding light. It can make every photo special.

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

7000 fans

Right before 2014 ended, I also reached another little milestone. My Facebook page just passed 7000 likes. Now what should be the goal for 2015? At least 10 000? I will have to post many good photos to get there :)

Purple night

Yesterday night was not the best for photos, but with fireworks one just can’t choose another one. It was so bright outside. With the very low clouds and all the city light reflecting from them, I felt like during the day when I was returning home late at night. And one can see it also on the photos. The had such low contrast between the fireworks and the sky. This is the only time when a nice black sky would be really preferable :)

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