This week is mostly about bridges, as that’s almost the only thing I took photos of earlier this week in Budapest. Somehow bridges are my most favorite photo subject, closely followed by reflections. And here I have both. I really prefer to have a real reflection in my photos. And to be able to get one in Budapest, one really has to get up early. Already around 6 am the ships start to go up and down the Danube and the water traffic is quite in the way. But right around the sunrise, the water is very calm and reflects everything like a mirror.

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

I haven’t taken may photos of the Elisabeth Bridge in Budapest before, but this time I stayed close to it and the Liberty bridge on purpose, so I can get some shots of it. I have to say, I don’t really like the Elisabeth Bridge that much. It’s probably because I have seen a photo of a bridge it replaced (you can find it on Wikipedia, under the description of this bridge) and it’s just so much nicer and better looking than this modern variant. But still I got some nice sunrise shots of it and you will see them on this blog :)

This is a manual blend from shots, taken directly from underneath the bridge around 5:30 in the morning.

If you ever wondered (like I do every-time :)) if you should get up in the middle of the night and go out to take photos of the sunrise, the answer should be always yes. And I think this photo proves my point. You don’t get a sunrise like this each time, but once you get it, all those early mornings were worth it.

This is the Liberty bridge in Budapest, my favorite one from all the bridges there. I really had luck this time, as the sunrise was very colorful for over 1 hour, so I even managed to move few times and get different views. Btw. no blending made on the sky, it’s completely from the -2 exposures, and no added saturation in this photo, just contrast. This is a manual blend from 5 shots, all used mostly to brighten the bridge.

So I’m back from the short trip to Budapest. Again I had a big pleasure to meet up with Elia Locardi and Naomi Locardi and also hit some photo locations with them. For those who follow Elia, you have probably seen his latest The Moments between photo on his Facebook profile (https://www.facebook.com/elialocardi), so you are probably as much curious about his edit of this view as I am.

This is blend from 3 shots, where only very few small areas were blended. I spend much more time removing scaffolding and 4 cranes from the photo, as the surrounding area of the parliament is a construction site. I hope there are no remains of them in the photo.

I forgot to post a process post last week, but here is a new one for today. This time it’s the Pannonhalma monastery crypt in Hungaria.

So to get to this result

I took 6 exposures, just to be sure that the light are not overexposed. In the end I used files form -3 EV to +1 EV and had no need form the +2 exposure.

So in photoshop I did the following (layers numbered form bottom going up)

1. -1EV exposure
2. 0EV exposure to brighten few areas
3. -2EV exposure to darkend the ligts
4. -3EV exposure to darken the lights even more
5. -4EV exposure, created in Lightroom from -3EV, to darken few lights even more
6. Color Efex Pro contrast to brighten image and add more contrast
7+8. Blured layer and a curves layer to add more glow
9. Color balance to remove the yellow color cast
10. Added 0.7 exposure to brighten the image more
11. Added a little saturaton (around +15)
12. Pro contrast once more, there was still a little colorcast

You will also notice that I corrected the perspective using the Perspective Crop tool in Photoshop

Continue to the full post to see the original -1EV photo, as that’s the one I started with.