Luminar 2018 Pre-orders start today

For those of you who use Luminar from Macphun (or want to use it), starting today, you can pre-order the new version Luminar 2018. The pre-orders will be open until the 16th of November when Luminar 2018 is released.

Macphun also offers a special price for all pre-orders, where existing owners can get the update for 39USD and new ones for 59USD (both are 10USD off from the normal price). Also new customers will get a 1-year power plan from SmugMug. Check out more on the pre-order here.

I already have a preview version of Luminar, so I’m working on a review for it right now.

All Saints’ Day

As every year, this again I went out to take few photos at a nearby cemetery for the All Saint’s day. As the tradition here is to place candles onto graves and also in few other locations, these make for some stunning photos.

So today’s photo is from the Martins cemetery in Bratislava. It is a blend of three exposures, where I used a brighter one to brighten the background a bit and a darker one to soften the bright lights on the statue. I’m also including two more shots, both more of a details of the candles. Both of these are single exposures, edited mostly in Lightroom, finished in Photoshop.

All Saints' Day Bratislava Slovakia

And here are the two extra:

All Saints' Day Bratislava Slovakia

All Saints' Day Bratislava Slovakia

Plotagraph Social profile

You can find my plotagraphs on this blog, but you may have missed that you can find most of them (and soon all the ones I published here) also on Plotagraph Social website. You can find my profile here.

Of course you can also scroll down to the bottom of this blog and choose the Plotagraph category from the dropdown list. Or just click here :).

The reflected colors of autumn – Plotagraph

I really like this photo. And so of course I had to try and create a Plotagraph from it, just to make it even better :) So I did. As you can see from how it looks and from the animations points screenshot to the side, I went with a quite subtle animation, only in the reflection. I think that was enough.

If you want to know how to create Plotagraphs, check out my tutorial here.

(if you are on a mobile or use an older web browser, you may only see a static image)

So many hours spend listening to Audible

I mentioned before that I love to listen to audiobooks while I take photos (and not just then). And I just had a look on how many hours I actually spend listening to them. And according to the app, I have spend over 1 month of listening time in the last year. That’s around 2 hours for every single day.

It just so great to be able to read books even when I don’t have time to do so. Just finished the new one from Dan Brown, Origins, recently and right now getting through Paradox Bound from Peter Clines (I really like books with time travel :)).

How about you? Do you use audible, and what great book have you listened to recently?

Morning fog over Lesnica

There has been quite a lot of fog recently, and here is a shot I took about a week ago over the village Lesnica in eastern Slovakia. The weather did not look that promising, and also the sun rose right on the other side. But when it got over the hill, and the light poured down into this valley, it looked quite nice.

This is a 4 shot panorama. I did HDR bracketing, but did not use it. Combined and edited in Lightroom, finished in Photoshop. As again, this is a huge panorama, I have included few detail shots to go with it, to show you how it looks up close.

Morning fog over Lesnica Slovakia

And here are few details:

Morning fog over Lesnica Slovakia

DxO acquires Nik Collection

Funny thing. Just few days ago I was talking to a fellow photographer about, what would be the best future for Nik Collection plugins. And we both agreed that the best would be for some company that actually makes photography software, to buy them away from Google. We just don’t want loose such a great piece of software (they have not been updated for years and they still are great). And just today, that happened. DxO acquired Nik Collection assets from Google, and even announced plans to continue development on them.

This is definitive great news for all photographers and I can’t wait for the “Nik Collection 2018 Edition” that also been announced for the next year. You can see the official announcement on DxO website here.

Long exposure panorama at the Strbske pleso

Long exposure panorama at the Strbske plesoI just love taking panoramas recently. They looks just so great and give a different view to normal photos. And with the 21:9 monitor, and now a 18:9 phone, they just look great on my devices. But they don’t look so nice on the blog. And I yet to find a better way how to show them off here. So for now, here is a bigger version of the photo, and you will see also few close ups under the full shot.

This is a 3 shot panorama taken at the Strbske pleso lake in High Tatras in Slovakia. I used a 10 stop ND filter here, to blur the water, to get the nice reflection. The lines in the water were just a nice bonus :) The panorama was combined in Lighroom and finished in Photoshop.

Long exposure panorama at the Strbske pleso, Slovakia

And here are few details:

Long exposure panorama at the Strbske pleso, Slovakia

Sale on all Topaz plugins

Right now you can get all individual Topaz Labs plugins with a 25% discount by using the code FALL25. This sale is until the 30th of October, so if you are missing a plugin from their series, now is maybe the time to get it.

You can see the whole list of plugins and buy them on Topaz Labs website here.

The reflected colors of autumn

I did a short trip to High Tatras last weekend and while the weather was a bit all over the place, I did manage to get few nice shots. And while most of them were very wide panoramas and huge landscape shots, I did have my 70-200mm lens with me, so I ended up taking also few more close up shots. And here is one of them :)

These are the trees right next to the Strbske pleso lake. I just loved the color here and I wanted a nice reflection. The problem was that it was a bit windy, so the lake was not stable enough. So what I did was, to get out the 11 stop ND filter I have from VF FOTO and slowed down the exposure by quite a lot. There is a bit of movement in the trees, but the reflection is just wonderful.

This is a single exposure of 80seconds, edited mostly in Lightroom, finished in Photoshop.

FREE EBOOK!!!
Subscribe to my newsletter and get a free Capturing fireworks ebook. 
Subscribe