Night in Astana

Still have some edited photos of Astana in Kazakhstan, that I have not posted yet here. So here you have another one, taken in the middle of the city.

As in many others I have the Bayterek tower in this shot, and as in other, it was quite a pain to blend it together. That’s actually the reason I even started with HDR in the first place. Being able to get nice photos where normally you would get over or underexposed parts, is just so great.

This is a three shot blend, done in Photoshop.

Sunny path towards the Eiffel tower

Let’s stop in Paris with today’s photo. This is another vertorama I took from right under the Eiffel tower there, while trying to not have many people in the shot. It’s surprisingly possible :)

You may notice, there still is quite a strong perspective distortion here. I corrected it, but only partially. The problem is, that if something is really tall, and you are taking a photo from close by, the corrected view just looks strange. We are so used to see some distortion in cases like this, that we just expect it to be there. I did try a version where I corrected it completely, but I really did not like it.

This is a two shot vertorama, edited in Lightroom and Photoshop. Photo taken in the early spring.

Morning clouds over Astana

A simpler photo today. I took this one while exploring Astana in the very early morning hours. I was actually on my way to the new pedestrian bridge, you can see on the left in this photo. It looks really great in photos, specially when you are on it.

But I can’t show you a photo of it, as I was not able to get onto it. It was still under construction when I was there. Should be opened now already though. So if you go to Astana, you should check it out :) The bridge can be found here.

So for this photo I focused more on the moving clouds over the city. This is a single exposure, edited in Lightroom and Photoshop.

Light tunnel in Amsterdam

Not that long ago I shared with you photos from the White night event in Bratislava. But of course this is not only done in Bratislava, and many cities have events with light inhalations. And last year before Christmas, when I was visiting Amsterdam, they also had few there.

This was a very cool light tunnel, where boats passes under all the time. It was quite short, but it also animated, so the effect was very nice. I did not take the boat, but I stood opposite from it, to get this panorama.

Was not easy to get this shot. The day was quite rainy, and the light difference between the light tunnel and the surrounding was huge. So what I did? I did a 2 shot panorama, each shot from 5 exposures. I corrected the photos in Lightroom, exported, merged into a panoramas in PTgui then merged them into a HDR in Oloneo Photoengine. Then I loaded all into Photoshop, and blended all together with original exposures. I probably used every blending mode I knew on this photo :)

If you are visiting Amsterdam and want some nice spots to take photos from, check out my Top Photography spots in Amsterdam list here.

And here are few details:

Online course via Skype

If you want to get better at editing your photos, this may be for you. For the one or two hours (based on your choice), over a Skype connection we would cover topics from :

• Basics of photography, terminology, exposure
• Basics of working with Lightroom and Photoshop
• Basic corrections, perspective correction, fixing errors
• Composition basics
• HDR, using HDR specific software like Oloneo Photoengine
• Luminance masking
• Exposure blending
• Working with Panoramas and HDR panorama
• Editing one or multiple of my photos together, or a photo you provide.
• Photo critique, with suggestions on improvements
• General photo discussion

I’m not doing any specific course content, as everybody’s skill level is different and you may be interesting in a specific topic. Based on your skill level, you can suggest what you want to know, or I will choose for you.

For this course I would suggest you own at least Photoshop and Lightroom. Basic knowledge of working with computer is of course also a must.

Everyone who buys this course will also get a copy of the video tutorial series Master Exposure Blending for free.

Length of the course 60 minutes €49,00 EUR120 minutes €79,00 EUR

Offline course in Bratislava

The second option, is to meet up in Bratislava (for now I’m limiting this to only one city) and take photos together. Here is what we can go through is:

• Basics of photography, exposure
• Composition in landscape and cityscape photos
• Setting up your camera
• Taking multiple exposures
• Panoramic photos, panoramas, vertoramas, 360 photos
• Taking long exposure photos
• Choosing exposure
• Focusing your photos
• General photo discussion

I’m not doing any specific course content, as everybody’s skill level is different and you may be interesting in a specific topic. Based on your skill level, you can suggest what you want to know bout, or I will choose for you.

The location for this course will be the center of Bratislava, the area around the Bratislava castle, SNP bridge and Old bridge. Other location is possible on request.

For this course I would suggest a camera that support manual settings. Since it’s a cityscape course, a tripod.

Everyone who buys this course will also get a copy of the video tutorial series Master Exposure Blending for free.

Number of people in the course 1 person 120 minutes €79,00 EUR2 people 120 minutes €99,00 EUR