Endless

I really like all the repetition I got in this photo. All the pillars, together with the light the sun created on the ground, it just pulls you in. This was taken in the not used part of the Strahov stadium in Prague, one of the biggest stadiums in the world.

This is again a manual blend from 5 photos (I took 7), where I used one as the base and than two to darken the sky and another two to brighten parts of the shadows. Edited only in Photoshop.

Difficult light in Prague

I tried to edit this photo few times before, and I’m still not sure if it as it should be. The blue from the sky, with the yellow from the square just don’t play along well here. I got a photo with much better colors few minutes later, but that one is not usable. They turned on the flood lights, which shine on the tower from this was taken. So I got so many flares :)

This is a manual blend, from three shots, one for the most of the photo, one for the sky and the bright yellow part in the middle, and one to lighten the foreground and some other dark areas. I could have removed the distortion, but I decided against it, as then the feeling of looking down disappears.

For those interested, this is the Lesser town square in Prague.

Photography contest

The contest I announced yesterday is up for a great start. Already over 100 people joined the event and over 70 already posted a submission. I think I’m right on track on beating the number of entries from last time (which was 153). You can see all the info about the contest here: https://www.hdrshooter.com/2013/02/12/hdrshooter-photo-contest-sponsored-by-hdrsoft/

Foggy reflection in Prague

Another soft blend today :) I tried to do as few global adjustments as possible, as everything created ugly color bending in the sky and water. I used only Photoshop to edit this one, no other program, no special plugins.

For those interested, this is of course the Prague castle and it’s reflection in Vltava, taken late in the evening around a year ago.

Btw. do you want me to mention if a photo is tone-mapped or blended by all my photos? Just curious :)

Photo contest sponsored by HDRsoft

!! contest ended on the 3.3.2013 !!

Little later than I expected, but today I’m announcing a second round to my HDR photography contest. Thanks to HDRsoft I have for you two copies of their great HDR editing program Photomatix Pro. I think most of you know what Photomatix Pro is, but if you don’t know, just check out any of my photos or my HDR tutorial :) I use it almost all the time.

You can find all the information on HDRshoft and their products here: http://www.hdrsoft.com/ and you can find a trial version you can try right away here: http://www.hdrsoft.com/download.html. The trial mode is fully functional and does not expire, but adds watermarks to processed images.

The rules for the contest are exactly the same as last time, but still here they are:

1. download the provided series of brackets from here : https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xeaj3in493k5kmu/FysTgnR8XW (you can use the JPG or the RAW photos)
2. edit them into a final HDR photo (you can use any software and any technique, tone-mapping, blending, exposure fusion, black&white version)
3. join the contest event here https://www.facebook.com/events/433929666677698/ and post your photo into the event (if you are not on Facebook, you still can join, just send me your result via email to miroslav.petrasko@gmail.com with the Subject HDRshooter contest)

Only one entry per person is permitted. Please don’t use parts of different than provided photos in your entries (so don’t replace the sky and similar).

For the whole duration of the contest submission, you can delete your entry and upload a new one.

There will be two winners in this contest, booth of them receiving a download copy of Photomatix Pro Plus Bundle (so not just Photomatix Pro, but also a Plugin for Aperture, a Plugin for Adobe Photoshop and Merge to 32-bit HDR plugin for Lightroom 4)

Winner number 1 will be selected by a jury of great HDR photographers, Beboy from Beboy Photography, Conor MacNeill from The Fella photography and Nikola Totuhov from nikolatotuhov.com

Winner number 2 will be selected by number of likes given to the photo on my Facebook page (so not in the event, once the submission time has ended, I will post all the entries into a single gallery on my page, where you can like your favorites). You can see how the voting looked last time here.

Winners from last time are not eligible to win in the same category the won the last time.

The latest time to submit you entry is Sunday the 23rd February at midnight. The voting on the winner will be held during the week from 24th February to 2nd March.

I hope you will all have fun editing as last time and good luck to you all :)

I reserve the right to change or amend the competition rules at any time without prior notice. By entering the competition, entrants agree to be bound by these rules. All participants can’t use the final photo for any commercial use and have to give credit to me as the original author, also I will not use their versions for any purposes other than promotion of this competition. Participants can share the photo on their FB, blog, flickr or other accounts, but still have to give me credit as the author and link back to the contest.

And this is my own version:

A little bit of vertigo

Funny thing how this photo worked out. I took it only handheld, without even looking through the viewfinder (there was no way I could get my head there :) ) and at a very high ISO (3200 that is). So it’s not as sharp and clean as I would like, but still I like it :)

Taken in the monastery in Melk, Austria.