As every photographer, I love to play with new gear. So when I found out that a friend of mine had a tilt-shift lens, I immediately had to borrow it to take a few shots :) It’s really interesting how you can affect whats in focus and whats not with a lens like that. But as it was a 90mm lens, I had to go somewhere high up and far away to get the effect I wanted. So where else to go as to my favorite spot in Bratislava, the top of the SNP bridge. And as you can see, the result is quite interesting :)

This is a manual blend from three exposures, created in Photoshop.
Tilt-shift experiments

Let’s look at another photo, and how I put it together. For today’s photo I used 56 different exposures, that were all combined in a different way. This was my first experiment with shooting star trails in the middle of the city, and I was quite happy with the result. So let’s go :)

For this result
Midnight experiment

I started with 48 exposures for the stars.
Midnight Experiment

Each one looking like this (you can’t really see the stars, but that’s normal :))
Midnight Experiment

I edited them all in Lightroom, to remove lens distortion, chromatic aberrations and vignetting. I then exported all into layers in photos. The exported images all looked like this one:
Midnight Experiment

I can’t show you the Photoshop file for the stars, as I forgot to save it, but what I did was to change all except the first layer to the blend mode lighten. I also played with contrast and levels, to make the stars more visible. In the end I ended with this result.
Midnight Experiment

With this the first part of the photo was finished, not for the bridge part. I took additional 8 images as a HDR series.
Midnight Experiment

I applied the same corrections to them in Lightroom as with the star shots, to make the blend easier. I then exported them all as 16-bit Tiff files and loaded into Oloneo Photoengine. There I changed the strength and contrast to get this result:
Midnight Experiment

From here I continued into Photoshop. I loaded the HDR and the stars images into layers, and blended them together by using a selection of the sky and manually painting few areas. I then also applied Color effex detail extractor onto the image, to get more detail on the bridge and make the stars even more visible. I ended by applying more contrast and making the stars more whiter by using levels.

Midnight Experiment

And that’s all I did with this image. To find out more on how I edit, check out the guides and before after categories on this blog, or check out my video tutorial series here:
banner-master

So I got home, but after a hot day of running around with my camera in a very strong sunlight, I feel that will fall into bed very early. So no editing for me, and one more day of some of my favorite photos for you.

Today they are form Bratislava, and you can see my Top photo spots in Bratislava here.
The stunning view
St. Martin's Cathedral at night
Relaxx and enjoy the sunsetN
All the lights on Danube

I usually go out shooting with a lot of gear. But sometimes it’s nice to go just with the camera and a single lens, and do something different. So as finally it was a little more sunny, I took a walk through the Botanical Garden here in Bratislava to take few shots. It really was quite relaxing :)

Little bit of spring Little bit of spring
Little bit of spring Little bit of spring
Little bit of spring Little bit of spring

Free Zoner Photo Studio 15 PRO

I came across this link, so maybe some of you will find it interesting. Until the end of today, you can download a free copy of Zoner Photo Studio 15 PRO. This is great for those who are looking for a Lightroom alternative on the cheap :) Go and get it from here now :)

My camera

This is more of a random shot. I usually only have one camera with me, but I have a borrowed 7D right now, so last time I was out I took also few shots of my camera :) Maybe will use them in some of my guides later on. But here is one of them I liked the most. Btw. I was thinking of doing a gear video, to show what I use. Would you be interested in seeing something like that?

This is a single exposure, taken handheld. I applied a little Analog Efex on it, just for fun. Btw. for those who would like to ask what’s the green cube on my camera (there are always few :)), it’s a 3-axis bubble lever, and you can get one on the cheap from Ebay.
My camera

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