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

I started with 48 exposures for the stars.

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

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:

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.

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

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:

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.

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:

As I mentioned yesterday, in the Pyramidenkogel Lookout Tower you can take a slide to get down from it. And here you have a photo of the slide. It’s quite crazy :)

This is a HDR from 5 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop.

While at the Worthersee in Austria, I also visited the Pyramidenkogel Lookout Tower that is on top of the hill over the lake. The whole tower is quite crazy, as there is a slide, where one can slide down from the top. I of course have not tried that, as I had my camera gear with me :). To bad I was there in not the best time, it was very sunny, with few clouds, which created very strong shadows. But I hope you like the photo anyway. I of course also have photos of the slide, which I will share later on :)

This is a HDR form 4 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop.

Last weekend I visited a tuning car gathering with some new friends at the Worthersee in Austria. I took a lot of photos, but mostly only handheld. I did this mostly because the weather was not really photo friendly, with a very strong sun with only very few clouds the whole day. And one know, that not that great for any photography.

But still I thought I share with you few (and maybe few more sometime later :)). All single exposures, taken handheld, edited mostly in LIghtroom and a little in Photoshop.

There are many things one can do to improve ones photography skills. One can read books, watch tutorials, get new equipment and much more. But the thing that helps the most, is taking and editing photos. The much the better. The more you do something, the better you get.

Now the question is, how to get oneself to shoot and edit as much as possible, when it isn’t ones main job. A lot of people try so called 365 projects, also called a photo a day project. The goal there is to take a photo every day. But I thing, having a daily blog is a more crazier version of this.

This blog passed it’s 4th year of existence some time ago, and it hasn’t been always easy to keep up with it. As every photographer knows, there are days when one really is not in the mood to touch the camera, or when every result just looks ugly. Of course there are also days when one is busy, one is traveling and there is absolutely not time.

It actually happened a lot of times, that I just arrived late at night home from a trip, and first thing was to copy the photos to the PC and edit one, so I can update the blog :)

To every photographer, I would suggest to try it out for a while. Not many can stick with it, as it just takes too much time and commitment. I have thought many times to switching to a less regular posting, but as I’m a very stubborn person, I never did it :)

But do I think that it’s crazy to do a daily photo blog? Yes I do. It helps one get better, helps one to try to do more with photography. But it also makes one more nervous. Once you get used to a daily post, and one is late, it aggravating. Or when one had no time to shoot for a while, or no good photo opportunities, and one want something new for the blog.

As everything, it’s usually goes up and down. It’s great after a trip, when one has a huge amount of new photos, and it’s horrible after a month without a new one :)

It’s also a great pleasure to look through ones old posts, and see how the skill evolved (of course when one gets over how horrible the old photos are :)). I started posting to Flickr right when I started with photography, and to the blog soon after that, so I have a history of all my photos.

I seen photographers who started with blogging and ended quite quickly, because the haven’t seen the response/ visits/ comments/ fame there were hoping for. But in all cases, one has to do this for oneself. Actually blogging is the only platform, where you can do what you want. On social networks it is easier to get followers and views, but there one is always at the mercy of Google/ Facebook/ whoever, who can change anything from day to day. On ones own blog, one is the own master. Also blog posts don’t get lost in time so easily :)

So if you are a photographer, I really suggest you start a blog. I just would not do a daily one :)