Destination Budapest

So right about when this is posted to my blog, I’ll be in a train heading to Budapest. I’m spending the weekend there, relaxing and of course taking a lot of photos. So from Monday onward they will be on the site :)

Castle & Bridge

Always when I pass here I take this photo. I probably have dozens of variants of this shot. But I just can’t resist this reflection.

I went for 9 shots here, as first series I took with only 7 had the caste still overexposed. This scene really has a very high dynamic range, between the white castle and the dark underside of the bridge. I went very light on the post-processing again. I combined the shots in Photomatix, then corrected few spots in Photoshop, removed noise, sharpened image using Unsharp mask and added more contrast and brightness. That’s all.

New header

I think everyone who visited my page before has already noticed it, but if not, there is a new header image :). I’m trying to give this page a more unique look, which everyone can associate with it. I hope you all like it. Let me know your opinions.

Church of the Annuciation of the Virgin Mary

Maybe not the most artistic photo of the Church of the Annuciation of the Virgin Mary but I think it is a very realistic photo of this very beautiful church. I would love to have a different composition, than this classic centered one, but as this was taken through a gate, I had no other possibilities.

I went with 11 shots for this one. I wanted to get all the dynamic range that was available. Also I vent very light on the HDR processing, just Photomatix and than noise reduction and sharpening in Photoshop. I wanted to keep the look of the church, as it really is.

The bridges over Danube

I have only three from the five bridges in Bratislava in this shot, but there probably is no spot, from where I could take a photo of all five. But three is enough for now.

As I did quite a long exposure here, the water looked more like ice in the final HDR. So I masked in a lot from one of the original shots, to give it a little more texture. Also there are some mysterious blue dots in the bottom part of this photo. I have no idea what created them, as there were no boats or any light source there. Maybe because I took this photo from top of the UFO restaurant, I had to have some UFOs in my shot :)

Aupark Tower

Another shot taken from the top of the New Bridge in Bratislava. It doesn’t seem to be very high, but when you are there you have the whole city beneath you. Really a nice view. And another great thing is, that you can take the elevator almost to the top :)

Bratislava in blue and red

So much blue color. But I was expected it, as this was taken during the blue hour :). I wanted to take this photo for a very long time, but I was always waiting until I have a better camera. And now I have it, I went and took it.

I had problems focusing correctly, as I focus manually, and the camera was shaking too much. But somehow I got it right. For a while I tried to go back to automatic focus, but I use it only when handheld. Manual gives me much better results every time.