As cathedrals go, the Maribor Cathedral (Church of St John the Baptist) is one of the more simpler ones. So in this photo from there, I also vent with less editing, leaving it simple, realistic, to as much as possible what I seen there :)

This is a HDR created from 5 shots in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop.

The day I took this, it started raining right around the sunset. I thought about going back to my hotel, but as I was leaving the Paris next day, I thought I wait, maybe the rain stops. So i hid under one of the bridges, and spend the next 30 minutes watching a couple playing chess there :) And not that it stopped raining after that, but at least it stopped raining enough for me to take few photos.

I tend to use my 24-70mm lens when it rains. The reasons is very simple, and I think you would see it once you see the lens hood on it. It’s just massive, and it keeps the front of the lens nice and dry.

This is a HDR from 5 exposures, created in Oloneo PHotoengine and finished in Photoshop.

Always when I edit a photo taken with the Canon 70-200mm F2.8 lens, I just cant believe how sharp it it. Al my other lenses are sharp, but this one is just crazy sharp. But I’m not complaining :) It just could be a little lighter. The first year I had that lens, I almost never used it, as I never had it with me. But now I take it every time.

Btw. how about a little editing tip :) It easily can happen, that when you use Photoengine or Photomatix, your results look less realistic. It’s very dependent on the settings you use, but the biggest reason for this is, that the light distribution is not as it should be. The results have usually everything in the same level of brightness. It just isn’t like that in reality. But there is a simple way you can make it much better. Just take the HDR result from Photoengine/Photomatix and load it into Photoshop with the original 0EV photo in separate layers. Put the original on top of the HDR and set it to 20-40% opacity. And that’s all. This will darker the areas that should be dark, and brighten the areas that should be bright. The effect is subtle, but the photo looks much more realistic after that.

I also used it for this photo. This is a HDR created from 5 exposures in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop.

New tutorial from Trey Ratcliff

Yesterday Trey Ratcliff published a new video tutorial on his page. And I have to say, it looks quite interesting. You can even find a free 40 minutes tutorial video there. But he also announced a photo contest for everyone who purchases the tutorial. The all expenses paid photo trip to New Zealand sound so good :) Check it out on his tutorial page.

Morning with the gold sky

I published quite a few photos already from this sunrise, but I still got few that I really like. It was one of those sunrises, when you try to get as many photos as you can, and they all look good :)

This is a HDR created from 7 exposures in Oloneo Photoengine and finished in Photoshop.

First of all, thank you very much for all your comments, responses, shares and likes to my yesterdays post. Your support is very appreciated. Still if you like the article, please share it further. I think more people still need to understand the value of photos.

My photo for today is a little less colorful than my other photos, but I think it nicely captures the mood of the day I took it. It was a rainy day, with heavy clouds covering the sky most of the time. It was a day like made for B&W photography. I even tried this one in B&W and I quite liked it, I just always miss the color so much, that I never use the B&W version :)

This is of course the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, captured in May last year. I used the Hoya ND400 filter to get a long exposure to blur the water. This is a HDR created in Oloneo Photoengine (I was lazy to blend the moving leafs of the trees, and so I used the deghosting in Oloneo) and finished in Photoshop.