Night tram on the Old bridge

Today’s photo is of a night tram passing on the Old bridge in Bratislava. As you can see, the bridge is quite colorfully lit up in this one. This is not every day, this was just because of the White night even last year, when they install lights all over the city. I was ever standing on the tracks when I took it, which I would not do any other day there. And I don’t suggest anyone does it.

At first I was not sure if I even edit this photo. It was very dark and a little part of the bridge was missing. And I really don’t like that. But I tried and I got a result I liked. This is a single exposure, broken up into multiple and then blended back together. Then I used a second photo from that night, from which I pasted in the missing part.

And here is also a comparison to the original RAW file. As you can see, it was really dark, and the size is a bit differnt, as I added the part on top.

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.

Little bison in Topolcianky

In the last update, I mentioned I’m back and I will be updating the blog again. And right after that, I left for three days :) That’s how things work out sometimes. Work comes first. I took many photos in those days, but not much I can share here. But here is one.

I visited for a bit the Topolcianky Bison park near Topolcianky in Slovakia. While I normally don’t get to take many photos of animals, it was a good opportunity to get some. Even if it was crazy hot and sunny. It was a bit hard to get a nice composition, as I was not able to get close to the barriers, but it worked out nicely for this photo.

Hard to see how big the bison are from this photo, but they can be up to 2.7m in length, 1.9m height and up to 500kg in weight. And the big one here was not that far from it.

This is a single exposure, taken handheld. Split into two exposures, that I edited separately in Camera RAW and then blended them back tohgether in Photoshop.

And here is also a comparison to the original RAW file, for those curious to see how it looked straight from the camera.

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: