Top photography spots – Lyon

Recently I had more time to work on the blog. And as the Top photography spots are the most popular part of it, I’m working on expanding that part of it. So today, I have for you another list. This time it’s the Top photography spots in Lyon. Lyon is just a wonderfull city in France, that you all should visit if you can, and of course get some great spotos.

So head over to the Top photography spots – Lyon page to check them out. As always, all spots show an example image and GPS location.

Looking up

I quite like taking photos of towers. And the Eiffel tower is just so beautiful every time. Especially this golden yellow color again the blue sky. It create such a natural color contrast.

Have not been to Paris in almost a year now, so I’m not sure how this are looks now. Last time I was there, they were building a glass wall around the bottom of the tower, so who knows. Will have to check it out next time I’m there. But as always looking up is worth it :)

This is a two shot vertorama, combined in Lightroom and finished in Photoshop. I used another two separate exposures for the bottom part, where I removed few people that were too close to the camera.

So many new games

I spend yesterday evening watching the Xbox E3 press conference (and maybe some of you also did :)), and wow, so many games to be played in the next few months. From Forza Horizon 4, Shadow of Tomb Raider, Crackdown 3, Fallout 76 and even Gears 5 look great. Each year there are more and more cool looking games. Can’t wait. And there are still few presentations to go. This will be fun :)

You know, I found one thing a long time ago. If you want to enjoy games (and movies and books and so on), completely ignore any journalists and reviewers around them. I don’t visit any sites that deal with games at all. I like to make my own decision. Usually from gameplay videos I can quickly tell if you will enjoy something or not, and if I don’t buy things the first day, I won’t be disappointed. Especially around games, I feel like all the reviewers became complainers recently, reviewing games based on what they wanted, not what they got. And I really don’t make my opinion base on that.

Star trails over Burj Khalifa

Before you ask how I got the stars over the Burj Khalifa like this, I have to say, this is a composite. The star trail part was not taken above Dubai, but It’s a part of a different photo, taken earlier this year.

When I edited this shot, I liked it, but the sky just looked boring. There was just nothing there. So I thought what I could put there. Clouds were just not enough, I wanted something else. First I tried to make some spiral star trails from scratch. While it did not look bad, it looked too fake for me. So instead I took a photo I captured in Austria in January, and removed some of the stars, to not be so dense. Like this it nicely blended into this photo of Burj Khalifa.

The base here is from one exposure edited in Lightroom and Photoshop. The star trails are from around 200 exsposures. If you want to know how to create star tails, check out this post here.

Quick updates

I’m experimenting with a new addition to the blog. I tend to take a lot of random shot that I don’t post to the blog, or post as a side note to some updates. So I was thinking on where to share those. The first location would be Instagram, but I tend to share only edited photos there, and I don’t think it would look great to mix it up.

So instead, I created a separate section on this blog. You can see the updates to it on the homepage, right under the latest normal post (so right under this one right now :)). Not much there yet, but I will add more. There is also some more formatting and organisation needed, but that will come over time.

Calm morning reflection in Paris

I have quite a lot of photos taken in the early morning. It’s either I don’t have time during the rest of the day while working, or that’s the only time when a location is empty. A good calm morning reflection is also not bad. You can actually see all my reasons to take photo in the early morning (and some reasons why not) in this list, I posted a while ago.

This photo is a blend of two exposures, all done in Photoshop. Taken before the sunrise from the Pont Mirabeau. If you want to check other suggested locations to take photos in Paris, check out my Top photography spots list for Paris here.

Waiting for E3?

I presume there are many of you that wait for the E3 finally to start, and see what new games are announced. To bad that the presentations are so late in the evening for me, but since I don’t have to get up in the morning, I can still watch them :)

And yes, I play quite a lot of games. I even used to work on some, so no surprise there. I have a Xbox One, PS4, PSP, PS Vita, 3DS and a powerful PC (no interest in Switch though, maybe if they release something I want). So I have a lot of places to play games on. But I never play multiplayer. Can’t justify that much time spend on a game without being able to finish it.

Right now I’m replaying Persona 5 on the PS4 (I love that series :)) and doing a replay of Saint’s Row 2 on the Xbox One, since it just recently became again available. I somehow always play multiple games on multiple systems :)

Which presentation are you waiting for? If any :)

Night in the sky over Dubai

For today’s daily photo, another shot taken from the top of Burj Khalifa. This one was taken very early in the morning, before even the morning blue hour started. The night was still in full swing then. You would be surprised how many people were already there, all waiting for the sunrise. But I was one of the first, so I could snatch a place by the window and hold it.

For this photo I used the Lenskirt to get no reflections on the glass. But since I use such wide lenses, I do regret not taking the bigger version. It’s really hard using the tiltshift or the 12mm lens in this one, without seeing it in the corners. Still, it works great in removing the reflections completely.

This is a two exposure blend, done in Photoshop.

Reading list

The week really went by crazy quick. We are again at a Friday, so what book I got through this week?

Fist I finally got though Ready player one by Ernest Cline. Now I can watch the movie :). But, honestly, it was not as great as I hoped. I still liked it, but even though I love the 80s music, movies and even some games, the constant references to random 80s stuff was a bit much. Still, worth the read.

From non-fiction, I listened to Pandora’s Lab by Paul A. Offit. It’s a collection of 7 historical stories where science went wrong, or better said, where it was used in a wrong way. If you like history and science stuff, as I do, this is a book for you. It actually reminded me a bit of Bad Science by Ben Goldacre, which I read a while ago. But that one is even more disturbing.

I have not yet decided what I listen to next. Maybe I go with Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku or Zero World by Jason M. Hough. Will see.

What are you reading this week?

Early spring day in Hoorn

I visited Hoorn in Netherlands only once. Hoorn is a smaller town in the north of Nehterlands, about 35km from Amsterdam. It was just for a short day, and the weather was not the best. But I still tried to get a nice photo. As I could not stay there for the evening, I tried this, right before the sunset.

This is a two shot vertorama, combined in Lightroom, finished in Photoshop.