Today another process post. These look to be quite popular, so I’m thinking of making Monday the process post day. What do you think? :)

Today it’s another shot from London. This was created using manual blending in photoshop and I used Color efex pro and Tony Keuper actions here.

So to get to this image:

I did the following. First I corrected the white balance in Lightroom and also toned down the highlights on the darkest exposure. Then I loaded all the files in Photoshop and continued as follows (layers numbered from bottom up):

1. 0EV exposure
2+3. +1EV exposure darkened by one stop and used to remove people from the stairs
4+5. +2EV exposure darkened by two stops and used to remove people standing by the railing
6+7. -1EV and -2EV exposures used to darken the lights
8. +1EV once again to brighten the dark areas
9. on this layer I retouched out the crane in the background
10. added contrast to the basic mid-tones
11. Color effex pro contrast to give more pop to the image
12+13. added glow using a blurred layer and brightened it using curves
14. added more saturation to the sky
15. TK actions vibrance mask to add more saturation to some parts of the image
16. brightened the image by changing the exposure

Continue to the full post to see the original RAW image.

I took this photo a short time before sunset, as the sun was just about to hide behind the mountains. The last rays of the sun gave a nice glow to the city and that’s what I was trying to capture here.

I had a “funny” experience while taking this photo. I was standing around one meter from Danube, totally focused on my camera and not looking that much on what was happening around me. I was almost alone on this small beach and the water was quite calm. So when a ship passed by, I took no notice and just continued to take photos. To my big surprise, the ship had a much bigger effect on the water than I thought, and when I finally noticed what was happening, I was already standing in a 40cm water. This wouldn’t normally be so bad, but I was in my trekking shoes and jeans and both were soaked immediately. One could call it a funny way to end a photography trip :)

This is a manual blend from 4 photos, all taken through a HOYA ND400 9stop ND filter. Photo taken across the Danube from Durnstein in Austria.

When shooting daytime landscapes I really like when there are some clouds. Even if they don’t look good, they still provide some shade and make the light more interesting. The opposite can be seen here. After weeks of 35+ degree weather and no rain, there were absolutely no clouds that day. Of course for the sunset they magically appeared, together with a very heavy thunderstorm :)

I really like how most of the ruins in Austria are opened without any limitations. You just go there and take photos. No entry, nobody to tell you what to do and similar. Of course all is at your own risk, but that the same even if there is someone. I was also surprised how all was nice and clean. Somebody must have been taking a good care of it :)

This is a manual blend from 4 shots. Taken from top of the tower of the Hinterhaus castle ruins above Spitz in Austria. I included a little behind the camera shot on the side. I usually put those on my Facebook page, but why not sometimes also show them here :)

Continuing with another shot from Austria. This was not a part of my recent trip, but I went there today. Hainburg is very close to Bratislava, so it took only a short while to get there. And since there is a nice hill right next to it, and you can get with a car to the top of it, it’s great for a quick sunset shooting. No luck for clouds, but still the view was really nice.

This is a manual blend from 4 shots.

There will be few more beautiful green landscapes now, as that’s what I took most photos in Austria. This is a view from another castle ruin (I visited three in those two days there), this one being the the Durnstein Castle. It gives you a very nice exercise to get up to it, but the view is worth it.

This is a manual blend from 8 shots. I actually took 12 here, two series of 6. One time for the scenery, and the second series with my hand in front of the sun, so I can remove all the lens flares the sun created. This photo was really not easy to edit :)