To break away from the landscapes shots for a moment, today I have a night shot form Paris. It’s a little off center, but I just could not get to the center spot. There were too many people on the Traocadero, and the best spot was occupied by another photographer who was taking photos of that lovely red moon, which you can see to the left of the tower.

This is a manual blend from 4 shots. I’m sorry if the sky looks horrible. It looked so good as a 16bit file in Photoshop. But after exporting it, the colors created a horrible bending. I managed to correct that, but after uploading to Smugmug it created very ugly artifacts there and I haven’t found a way to remove those.

I like to plan my trips, so I always know where and when I will be and what I will be shooting (actually right now I’m planing my Prague and Dresden trip, which will start in few days :)). But on each trip, there are few spots that just appear and you have to take a photo. So was this. We were on the way to another castle when we passed this one and just had to stop. If only for a moment, for few photos :)

This is a manual blend from 5 shots, taken by the Schonbuhel castle in Austria

Today another process post. These look to be quite popular, so I’m thinking of making Monday the process post day. What do you think? :)

Today it’s another shot from London. This was created using manual blending in photoshop and I used Color efex pro and Tony Keuper actions here.

So to get to this image:

I did the following. First I corrected the white balance in Lightroom and also toned down the highlights on the darkest exposure. Then I loaded all the files in Photoshop and continued as follows (layers numbered from bottom up):

1. 0EV exposure
2+3. +1EV exposure darkened by one stop and used to remove people from the stairs
4+5. +2EV exposure darkened by two stops and used to remove people standing by the railing
6+7. -1EV and -2EV exposures used to darken the lights
8. +1EV once again to brighten the dark areas
9. on this layer I retouched out the crane in the background
10. added contrast to the basic mid-tones
11. Color effex pro contrast to give more pop to the image
12+13. added glow using a blurred layer and brightened it using curves
14. added more saturation to the sky
15. TK actions vibrance mask to add more saturation to some parts of the image
16. brightened the image by changing the exposure

Continue to the full post to see the original RAW image.

I took this photo a short time before sunset, as the sun was just about to hide behind the mountains. The last rays of the sun gave a nice glow to the city and that’s what I was trying to capture here.

I had a “funny” experience while taking this photo. I was standing around one meter from Danube, totally focused on my camera and not looking that much on what was happening around me. I was almost alone on this small beach and the water was quite calm. So when a ship passed by, I took no notice and just continued to take photos. To my big surprise, the ship had a much bigger effect on the water than I thought, and when I finally noticed what was happening, I was already standing in a 40cm water. This wouldn’t normally be so bad, but I was in my trekking shoes and jeans and both were soaked immediately. One could call it a funny way to end a photography trip :)

This is a manual blend from 4 photos, all taken through a HOYA ND400 9stop ND filter. Photo taken across the Danube from Durnstein in Austria.

When shooting daytime landscapes I really like when there are some clouds. Even if they don’t look good, they still provide some shade and make the light more interesting. The opposite can be seen here. After weeks of 35+ degree weather and no rain, there were absolutely no clouds that day. Of course for the sunset they magically appeared, together with a very heavy thunderstorm :)

I really like how most of the ruins in Austria are opened without any limitations. You just go there and take photos. No entry, nobody to tell you what to do and similar. Of course all is at your own risk, but that the same even if there is someone. I was also surprised how all was nice and clean. Somebody must have been taking a good care of it :)

This is a manual blend from 4 shots. Taken from top of the tower of the Hinterhaus castle ruins above Spitz in Austria. I included a little behind the camera shot on the side. I usually put those on my Facebook page, but why not sometimes also show them here :)