Today I was joined for a little evening photo-shooting by Marek Kijevský from Marek Kijevský photography and his lovely wife. To bad they visited Bratislava so late in the year, as it was quite cold and cloudy. I think we got some usable photos, but probably nothing spectacular. Same with the photo I’m sharing today. I really like the colors on the bridge and that you can see few of the stones under the water, but I’m still missing a better blue hour sky here. A dark blue would looks so nice. Still good to know that they changed the bulbs on the bridge. They all look white to the eye, but have a distinct color to the light they provide. It’s really something worth revisiting.

This is a HDR created in Oloneo Photoengine from 7 exposures and the blended with original exposures in Photoshop.

Me

I’m not such a big fan of photos I’m on. It’s probably the same by a lot of photographers. We like to be behind the camera, not in front of it. But I really like this shots, even if the quality is horrible (taken with an Ipad, one can’t expect a lot with so little light :)).

A sunset lighthouse

As I mentioned yesterday, I got quite a lot of nice photos of this lighthouse. During the hour I was taking photos there, I got more nice photos than during some of my week long trips.

It was also very fortunate that I got there in Autumn. The place is quite busy in summer and I would never be able to get a photo without people in it. I always like to visit places outside of the busiest times. It usually works quite well, as the sunrise and sunset times are usually not the most popular for tourists and other visitors.

This is a manual blend from 6 shots.

DSLR controller app

Anyone of you tried this app? It allows you to control the camera using most android devices, via a cable. It looks pretty good and the delay is acceptable. I just cant see myself using it in the field. Maybe for some product style photography. What do you think?

Of course here I played with a recursion, where I placed the tablet in front of the camera. Just having a little fun :)

High above the river

I almost posted another lighthouse photo today :) I just like all the photos from that sunset so much. But then I decided for a different one, just so it’s not all the same here. But I will add the lighthouse tomorrow. This is a view of the Danube river from the Aggstein castle in Austria. You just have to wonder how much work it took to build this castle on top of such a high hill. I really would not like to move all the needed stones there :)

This is a manual blend form 5 exposures. Blended in Photoshop.

How the week passed quickly. And again we have here another Tuesday and another process post. Today I chosen a very recent photos, as a lot of people liked it. So here goes.

To get this photo

I started as always in Lightroom, where I applied lens correction, removed chromatic abberations and applied a little noise reduction.

After that I loaded all the brackets into layers in Photoshop. I used the following layers (numbered from bottom up):
1. 0EV exposure
2. +1EV exposure to brighten the foreground
3. +2EV exposure to brighten the foreground even more
4. +1EV exposure once more, to recover few areas. I’m including here a screenshot of what I had to correct. Blending can make colors look grey, and this has to be corrected.

5. -1EV to darken the sky
6. -2EV to darken the brigtest parts of the sunset
7. Color Efex Pro contrast to add more structure and local contrast to the photo
8+9. aded glow (check out my tutorial on this) but I removed it from the darkest parts of the image, as they got too dark
10. brightened the darkest spots on the rocks
11. brightened the whole photo by adding a little bit of exposure

And that was all.
Please continue to the full post to see the original 0EV shot.

I just have the feeling like I’m looking at a toy here, not a city shot. And It would be really enhanced by a tilt-shift lens, I just don’t have one (and I’m not a big fan of the fake tilt-shift effect anymore). I still really like how the buildings here create something like and S curve, even if it’s not so dominant.

This is a manual blend from 3 shots, taken from the Three towers in Bratislava. I think not many people from Bratislava will recognize the buildings here, as you almost never see them from this side :)

Also big thanks to Lucka for letting me occupy her balcony again :)