Trey Ratcliff’s European Photo Walk

Today Trey Ratcliff, from stuckincustoms.com announced his plans to host multiple photo walks across Europe. And as one of them is really close, in Vienna, I will probably attend. It of course depends if I’m at home at that time, but right now it looks that I will. Could be fun to meet up with other photographers from all over. So if any of you are joining, you may see me there :)

Hidden rock under the SNP bridge

I feel like I have not posted a photo from Bratislava in a while, so here is one :) This is a view from under the SNP bridge. You can get here quite easily, as there are stairs going down close by. But it’s only possible when the level of Danube is quite low. And also this rock in the middle, is only visible when the water is really low.

This is a blend of three exposures, done in Adobe Photoshop.

About this site

Here and there I get questions what I used to make this blog, and what plug-ins I use, so here is a list for those curious :)

• WordPress instalation – this blog runs on a self hosted wordpress intalation
• Amory WordPress Theme – currently I use the Amory theme, even if I used it more for the base layout, and I tweaked quite a lot of things about it
• Instagram feed plugin – thats the instagram feed at the bottom of every page
• Max Mega Menu Pro plugin – for the nice responsive menu on top
• Slider Revolution – for the big slider on top of the homepage
• Disqus plugin – this one is of course for the comments
• Contact Form 7 – I think the name explains this :)
• Mailchimp – for the newsletter
• PanoPress – for the few 360 photos that are on the page
• WP Super Cache – the caching system of the page, which in theory makes it faster
• Yoast SEO – the SEO of the page
• ConvertPlug – for popups when I need to add them
• Zoomify – zoom in plugin for huge panoramas

And thats almost all I use, there are few smaller one time things here and there, but nothing of much interest :)

Exposure bracketing on the Canon 5D mark IV

As I mentioned yesterday, I have been playing around with the Canon 5D mark IV. Before I got it, I was interested in it’s bracketing capabilities, and since I did not find much about that, today I will show you in this little video, how the bracketing works on it. Few more additional points to this:

• You can do 2, 3, 5 or 7 brackets
• The difference can be from 1/3 to 3 EV
• The biggest range you can get is -9 to +9 EV
• The timer takes all shots for you automaticali
• The 30 second limit for the brightest shot is still there :/
• The build in bulb timer can make longer shots than 30s
• You can choose the order the photos are taken in

Overall it works really well and I’m quite pleased with it.

The Danube view

I like to include foreground elements in my photos, but it not really possible all the time. But it worked out for this shot. I took this one from one of the pontoons by the Danube river, quite a long time ago. This is from one of the spots I recomment in my Top Photography spots in Bratislava list.

I took this shot with a normal wide angle lens, so I had to correct quite a strong perspective distortion. And as the castle ended at the most top corner of the shot after the correction, I ended up also compressing the river a bit, to move the castle and its reflection closer down. Maybe I do a post about that sometime :)

This is a blend of three exposures, one for a base, one to darken the highlights of the castle and one to brighten the foreground. Edited in Lightroom and finished in Photoshop.

Two new translations

Some time ago I posted about adding translation of the Top Photography spots pages into Japanese. The first 4 pages were available then, and another two, London and Budapest are available from today. Only two more missing, but those will be added soon. You can find the English versions here, and the Japanese ones here.

Foggy and cold at the Old bridge

I’m still not sure if they changed the name of the Old bridge, now that it’s the newest one in the city. Who knows. I just hope they don’t. It just leads to confusions.

I took this shot about a week ago. The fog looked very promissing, and I thought I would maybe get a bridge completely covered by it. Too bad that in the area I live in, the fog is usually much thicker than in the city. Like this, mostly I don’t get the result I want, but one has to try.

This is a two shot blend, edited in Ligtroom and Photoshop.

What are you listening to?

I’m just curious :) What are you listening to while taking photos. I spoke to few photographers, and they all listen to music. But I don’t. I always listen to audiobooks (I am a big Audible user :)). You can even see what I’m listening to right now, if you check my Goodreads account (you can friend me there if you want :)). My goal for this year is to go through at least 100 books this way.

So am I the only one who listens to books? Or are there more of you :)

A castle vertorama

I started writing a guid on how to use a tilt-shift lens, but until that is finished, here is another vertorama for you. This one I actually took the fist day I bought the lens.

This is a two shot vertorama, taken from the little lookout area in front of the Bratislava castle. Edited in Lightroom and Photoshop.