Blue hour in Trnava

Two times 300 000

Just weeks from each other, my flickr account and my smugmug porfolio, booth reached 300 000 views. Thank you everyone for your support and your visits to my photos 🙂 Thank you 🙂

Blue hour in Trnava

It looked that I will have a ugly grey sky, but right around sunset the sky cleared nicely. This photo is from Trnava, a city around 30 minutes drive from Bratislava. It quite strange that I haven’t been there before, as I have passed around it maybe 100 times.

In this photo the St.Mikulas Church in Trnava.

HDR from three shots, taken with Canon 450D with Sigma 10-20mm lens, from a tripod.

 

Organ inside St. Egidius Church

I continued playing with the Oloneo HDR software. It really helps to add to a photo a very nice realistic look. Again I created a Photomatix and Oloneo version and blended them in Photoshop. Especially the light areas came out much better in Oloneo. I probably will continue on using it 🙂

This photo is from the St. Egidius Church in Bardejov in eastern Slovakia.

HDR from three shots, taken with Canon 450D with Sigma 10-20mm lens, from a tripod.

 

Blue hour in Bardejov

Another one from Bardejov. I was hoping to take a night shot from the tower, but they close the tower at night. So no luck there….

HDR from three shots, taken with Canon 450D with Sigma 10-20mm lens, from a tripod.

 

From inside the Church of St. James

A little different view on the altar in the Church of St. James in Brno. This photo was actually taken behind it 🙂

HDR from three shots, taken with Canon 450D with Sigma 10-20mm lens, from a tripod.

 

All aboard the night tram

For all my night shots, I use manual focusing. I really want to be 100% sure, where the camera focuses. So this time, I had to be really quick. When I got to the Malostranske namestie (Lesser Town Square) in Prague, the tram was already standing at the stop. But after all the photos, I have it already so learned, that I don’t have to look at a single button on the camera 🙂

Actually, my favorite part of this photo are the two guys sitting in the middle 🙂 They are not even blurred and I think they add more life to this photo. I also tried a selective color version of this, where everything except the tram was B&W, but will have to play a little more with that, so I will add it sometime later on.

I also remixed the HDR with the original 0EV shot, so this is maybe only 10-20% HDR, all other is a regular long exposure photo.

HDR from three shots, taken with Canon 7D with Sigma 10-20mm from a tripod.

 

Church of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary

Long time no interior shot, so here is one :). The Church of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary in Breclav is really beautiful one to visit. I can’t decide if it looks better from the inside or outside 🙂

HDR from three shots, taken with Canon 450D with Sigma 10-20mm lens, from a tripod.

And just to compare, here is how it looks from the outside 🙂

 

Inside St. Egidius Church

Great photographers at Google+

I’ve been playing around with Google+ the last few days and there are many of my favorite photographers already there. I definitively suggest adding them to your circles :). Here they are:

• https://plus.google.com/105237212888595777019 – Trey Ratcliff (StuckInCustoms)
• https://plus.google.com/108629717769018996477 – Girolamo Cracchiolo (Omalorig)
• https://plus.google.com/115360471097759949621 – Klaus Herrmann (Farbspiel)
• https://plus.google.com/108705174211639807508 – Brian Matiash
• https://plus.google.com/102871123574468799566 – Patrick Smith
• https://plus.google.com/118418436905562612953 – Lisa Bettany
• https://plus.google.com/107543460658107759808 – Terje Sørgjerd (TSOPhotography)

Of course there are many many more, by these are currently my favorites 🙂

and if you would like to add me 🙂 https://plus.google.com/112590242873326824500

Inside St. Egidius Church

So of course when I took photos of the St. Egidius Church in Bardejov, I had to take few photos from the inside. Again I had a strange timing, as when I arrived it was half an hour before a wedding started there. But as it was around lunch on Saturday, there were only few tourists and for the most of the 30 minutes I could take photos without anyone being in the way.

HDR from three shots, taken with Canon 450D with Sigma 10-20mm lens, from a tripod.

 

St. Egidius Church

Two days ago I uploaded a photo taken from the tower of the St. Egidius Church in Bardejov. This time I’m uploading a photo of the church :). I took this shot last weekend while visiting relatives there.

This was taken around 1 hour after the sunset, so still in the blue hour. The church was already lit up, but all the clouds have vanished. So I tried to use the best sky color from the original shots, to make it at least a little bit interesting 🙂

HDR from three shots, taken with Canon 450D with Sigma 10-20mm lens, from a tripod

 

Go into the light

or not 🙂 its your decision :). This is one of those more “artistic” shots I sometimes do :). I took it inside the tower of The Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in Brno. This small passage connects the two towers of the church. At that time I was the only one there, so I could take this shot.

I brightened the center, darkened the corners and converted to B&W, so the main focus is on the leading lines, which hopefully, should pull you eyes directly into the photo.

HDR from three shots, taken with Canon 450D with Sigma 10-20mm lens, from a tripod

 

Church of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary

Trees in HDR

Here is a little tip, how I edit trees in my HDRs. They are not the simplest thing to get right (or better said, looking good) and it takes some work.

This image shows three states. The first one is a standard photo (0EV), second shows the result as it came from photomatix and the third is the final photo. As it’s clearly visible, one of the things HDR processing does, it removes most of the shadow. This is usually what we want, as we want as much detail, also in the shadow areas. But with trees (and almost any vegetation) this is a problem, as it removes any texture from them, and all that remains is a big green mess.

Adding contrast helps a lot here, but what I do, is to mix the photomatix result with the 0EV or sometimes the -1EV or -2EV exposure, to restore parts of the shadows. Just layer the photos in Photoshop, with the photomatix result on top, create a mask, and with a soft brush at around 20-30%, brush few times across the trees.

This is very simple, and it really helps, so trees look better 🙂

There are of course other ways, and you photomatix result really depends on what setting you use.

Church of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary

About a week ago, I uploaded a photo from inside this church. This one is to show, why I had to stop by this church :). It’s really beautiful. I love the style, with all the brick walls. It’s so great for HDR.

HDR from three shots, taken with Canon 450D with Sigma 10-20mm lens, from a tripod.