In front of the Bratislava Castle

While I hoped to get some photos while in Zagrab in Croatia yesterday, I had no luck. It rained most of the day, and not just a drizzle. So time to go back to my photo archive for a another photo.

This one was taken from the area right in front of the Bratislava castle. It’s actually not a single photo, but a panorama from 4 taken with the tilt-shift lens. I took a photo of the middle part, then shifted the lens left and right to get the sides. To finish up, I shifted the lens up to get the top of the castle into the shot. That left empty corners, but since that area is just the sky, it was easy to fix in Photoshop.

Infrared view of the Bratislava Castle

Something different for today. It has been very sunny and hot in Bratislava recently, so I thought I try something that would fit for this weather. And it was trying to use an infrared filter. I tried one many years ago, when I just started with photography, but I did only very few photos with it. This time I did a few more. Not completely happy with the results yet, but with a bit of practice, I hope to get the one I want :)

This is a single exposure, edited in Lightroom and Photoshop. I used the HOYA Infrared R72 filter here. Not sure if thats the best one, but currently have no others to try.

And here is also a comparison to the original RAW file. As you can see, as with all infrared photos, it’s very very red. But a bit of editing helped here a lot :)

All the bridges in Bratislava

There are five bridges crossing the Danube in Bratislava. There are the Lafranconi, SNP bridge (also known as the New Bridge), the Old bridge, Apollo bridge and the Port bridge (in the order from the closest one in today’s photo). I always like taking photos of all these bridges, and you can find many on this blog. But for a while now, I wanted to take a photo with all of them together.

This is not that easy, as they are quite far from each other, and there is a bit of a bend in the Danube. But a while ago I found a spot from which one can see all of them. Over the town of Hainburg in Austria, there is a hill with a small lookout tower. It’s quite the popular sunset spot with photographers and other people, as it’s easily accessible by car, and gives a great view of Hainburg (this one). But if you walk to the other side of the hill, you can see Bratislava in the distance.

I tried before to take a photo from that spot. But as my longest lens is only 200mm, it was just too far. So last week I borrowed a 1.4 and 2.0 extenders for the Canon 200mm lens and I tried again. This time I had 560mm to work with. Still, I could not get the city as zoomed in as I wanted. But I got close and got a photo I liked. It was a bit hazy but still good.

This is a three shot panorama, each one from a single exposure. I start with the most cropped version here, as that shows all the bridges closely, but I’m also including the full version.

And here are a few details:

The new UFO tower sign

Yesterday I posted a photo from the top of the SNP bridge and today it’s another one. When I got there, I noticed they installed this new sign, showing the height of the UFO tower. Was definitively not there in February when I was the last time there. I think it was done so the visitors can take photos with it, and I saw a lot doing so. But of course, I also wanted to use it as a foreground element in the photo.

I tried different views but ended up with on straight on. I wanted the castle to the side of the sign, and in different views, I mostly had the pillar in the middle of it. I did not like that. I had to also be very quick, as a bigger group of tourist just got to the top of the UFO tower, and they walked into the shot almost immediately after I took it.

This is a single exposure edit. While I did take multiple exposures I could not use them. It was crazy windy and they just would not align perfectly. So I rather took the same exposure, created a second copy, overexposed it and then used it instead. Edited in Photoshop.

And since I did a lot of perspective correction on this one, I thought I show you a before/after here. Mostly I’m trying out a new plugin here, as I want to use the before/after slider in my reviews, and want to be sure it works fine :)

One almost sunny day in Bratislava

I call this photo the almost sunny day, as if you look to the right part of it, you can see it’s raining in the distance. And it has been raining in Bratislava for most of the last two weeks. I took this photo on Friday, and while it looks sunny, I got rained on a few times that day.

This is a two shot panorama, each shot from two exposures. Blended and merged in Photoshop.

And here are a few details: