Taking few days off

After few months, I’m finally taking a little vacation from work and also from Internet :). So the next few days I’m completely offline. But as always, blog will be regularly updated with a new photo every day. Thank you wordpress for the scheduling function :)

Front page on Flickr’s Explore

For the fist time ever, one of my photos got on the front page on Flickr’s Explore. Thank you all who helped to achieve this :)

Small moon under the bridge

On this one I could have used so many more brackets. I took 6 shots, from -2 to +3 and created two additional ones in lightroom at -4 and +4, but still the castle is too bright and the bridge too dark.

HDR from 6 shots, taken with Canon 450D with Sigma 10-20mm lens, from a tripod.

Number 1

Another beautiful veteran car. This was also taken by the Incheba exhibition pavilion, during a veteran rally.

HDR from three shots, taken with Canon 450D with Sigma 10-20mm lens.

Photo in Flickr’s Explore

Yesterday the Letting of steam photo got into the Flickr’s Explore selection. This is my second photo that made it there :). The highest position it had until now was 383 :)

Single RAW HDR

Most HDR’s are created from multiple shots, but from time to time, you have to use just a single RAW file. This is usually with a moving subject, or something like fireworks. Photomatix can directly open just a single RAW file and tonnemap it, but I prefer a different approach. What I do is that I export the image three times from Lightroom, always with a different exposure setting. Then I have my three photos, from where I continue as with a normal HDR file. From my experience, this gives me a better result, than if I only opened the RAW directly in Photomatix.

Btw. If you have a JPG file, you can still try HDR processing it. Just export it at different exposures and combine back in Photomatix. The results are worse than if you used a RAW file, but sometimes are really nice. Some of my older photos are created from a single JPG, because I wanted to edit photos I took before I started with HDR.

Just to see the difference, here is the original RAW file for today’s photo.

Reflected Fireworks

I really hopped I’ll be able to take new fireworks shots over the Kuchajda lake this year. But this year, there were none. I don’t know why as it’s kind of a tradition, but either way, it was raining so heavily that day, that it would be quite impossible to take any good shots. So this is one of the last years shots, when the weather was great and the fireworks were just beautiful :)

HDR from a single shot, taken with Canon 450D with Sigma 10-20mm lens, from a tripod.

Tension

I think this type of composition has a tension in it. The opposing lines of the bridge and the railing are in conflict, where your eyes are pulled to one side and then immediately to another (or maybe not, what do I know? :) ). But either way, I like this type of composition. In the photo the New Bridge in Bratislava.

HDR from three shots, taken with Canon 450D with Sigma 10-20mm lens, from a tripod.

Cinemagraph

For some time I have been looking at cinemagraphs, and wanted to try one for myself. I have quite a problem with this, as my camera can’t shoot any video. But this time, I went shooting with a friend, who borrowed me his :). So this is my absolutely first try for a cinemagraph. I have never done this before :)

I quite like it :). I don’t think it’s the best, but passable :). I probably should have selected a simpler one to start with, but maybe next time :). Video taken with Canon sx20, edited using Photoshop, based on tutorial found here.

Letting off steam

There was a gathering of historical trains in Bratislava this weekend (called Rendez), so I had to go there to take few shots. This was my favorite, from all the trains there :). And even the weather played along nicely, with the clouds breaking up few minutes after I arrived there :)

HDR from three shots, taken with Canon 450D with Sigma 10-20mm lens, from a tripod