I really like fireworks photos. The fireworks always give something special to the landscape. Same here. I took this one quite a long time ago, sometime at the beginning of last year. And they even formed into something that looks like a tree, which worked great for my composition.

This is a single exposure edited in Lightroom and Photoshop.

During my stay in Birmingham in April this year, I had quite a bad luck for weather, and had no nice sky. So I tried to get something interesting in the photo and as the area around Selfridges is quite a busy spot for bus traffic, that is what I tried to capture. At least partially it covers the sky.

This is a manual blend from 3 shots (I took 5, bad had no need for 2 of them)

I took this shot so many times. And few of those I also shared on this blog. But this is still my favorite composition with the Bratislava Castle. And each time I’m close by, I take a new shot. This time I almost didn’t, but as I was waiting for another photographer, and the reflection was so nice, I just had to take 2-3 shots :)

This is a HDR created from 7 shots in Oloneo Photoengine and then finished in Photoshop.

Today there is another process post for you. This time its a long exposure photo from Durnstein in Austria. I used the Hoya ND400 filter here, which made the water nice and smooth, giving so a beautiful reflection.

So to thet to this result

I dit the following (layer numbered from bottom up)
1. -1EV exposure to start with
2. -2EV exposure to darken few parts of the buildings
3. +1EV exposure to brighten most of the photo
4. +2EV exposure to get detail in the darkest areas
5. color balance just on the darkest exposure, as the shadow areas were to blue and I wanted them more yellow
6. color balance on the whole photo, added more yellow to correct for the ND filter color cast
7. first Color efex pro contrast filter to pull out more detail in the photo
8. added sharpness with the high pass filter
9. second Pro contrast filter, as there was still a little color cast
10. third Pro constras filter, as I wanted to pull out the darks even more (I would probably be able to get all this in one use of Pro contrast, but like this I can mas all them differently)
11. darkened the brightest lights
12. the water got too green, so this color balance corected this
13. added more saturation to yellows to get more color in the hills
14. a little bit of motion blur on the foreground water, to give it a more smoother feel
15. noise reduction, but not on the hills
16. more saturation to the blue color to get better looking sky
17+18. added glow, to see what exactly it does, check out this guide
19. a bit of brightenss to the darkest parts of the photo

Continue to the full post to see the -1EV exposure from which I started my edit

As I’ve been shooting photos in Bratislava for a few years now, it happens that I revisit the same spots. I try to get some new original composition, but it not always works out. But what I found the easiest, is to take a lens I haven’t had before. It really helps to give you a different perspective.

Same with the top of the SNP bridge. I’ve been there many times, but never with the 70-200mm lens. So this time I took that, and zoomed in a little more into the city. And I think it worked out nicely :)

This time I also took my Manfrotto clamp, to try and work without a tripod. It worked out perfectly. I hanged it from the bridge and all the time I had absolute confidence that it would hold the camera. It didn’t move a bit when I touched it. You can see a photo on the side of how I had my camera attached.

This photo is a manual blend from 5 shots.