Photoblog

What is Bund? The Bund or Waitan is a waterfront in central Shanghai and the one of the most famous touristic area of the city. Bund runs along the western bank of the Huangpu River in the eastern part of Huangpu District, from Yan’an Road (formerly Edward VII Avenue) in the south to Waibaidu Bridge (formerly Garden Bridge). Facts: The area along the river faces the modern architecture of Lujiazui in the Pudong District; making it one the most photographed vistas in China. The word “Bund” means an embankment or an embanked quay. The word originated from Persian word band, through Hindustani, having the meaning of embankment, levee or dam. There are various “bunds” in east Asia, probably named after the bunds/levees in Baghdad along the Tigris; the Baghdadi Jews, like the famous Sassoon family, might have given the name. This family immigrated and settled their businesses in Shanghai  and other port cities in east Asia in the 19th century. Lujiazu...

We are back from a great trip in the Northern part of Spain. There were 2 very intense weeks, with a lot of time spent in the trains and buses, with very good weather ( a bit too warm for this time of year) and with surprisingly few other photographers on the way. Our journey started in Bilbao, continued on the Basque coast in Sopellana and Bakio. On the way to Asturias we spent one night in Santander and then we explored the Asturian coast in Naves, Novellana, Villademoros and Luarca.  A few thoughts, while still fresh: the north of Spain is an area of exquisite beauty, where nature can be admired at its best. A blend of stunning beaches, tremendous shapes carved by the water during thousands of years, this area is an excellent location for an avid landscape photographer. On the other side, it is an area where non-spanish speaking travelers have difficulties communicating with locals and where infrastructure is really basic. It was not an extensive exploration by an...

This is an image that I processed using Photoshop CC, Topaz B&W Effects and Topaz Denoise. It is called “Tribute” as it is part of the Beisheim Center in Berlin, a tribute to American Art Deco architecture. I will start this review with a bit of background information. I am a long time user of various Topaz plugins. The first ever Photoshop plugin that I used was Topaz Denoise , which is still part of my current workflow (I remember at that point I was not even using Photoshop but Gimp and it was quite a struggle to make Topaz plugins working inside it). Later on, during the period when i was experimenting with HDR, I was a happy user of Topaz Adjust and Topaz Details. Now most of my work is in black and white, so I had explore more or less all the conversions techniques, from simple Film&Filter, to more complicated channel mixer techniques in Photoshop and more sophisticated plugins like Topaz B&W  Effects and Nik Silver Efex.   Also, it is ...

This is the tutorial that I wrote for 1X some time ago. The plan was to photograph a famous building while paying homage to the well-known architect who designed it. Everything was perfect, except for the stark, uninteresting sky. Don’t let a barren, blue sky ruin your otherwise flawless image. Here’s what to do, before and after you take the photo. Turning Torso, the tallest building in Scandinavia, is a famous architectural landmark in Malmö, Sweden. Renowned architect, structural engineer and sculptor Santiago Calatrava designed it, and it was inspired by his own marble sculpture of a human form called “Twisting Torso”. The spiraling, residential skyscraper is fully powered by locally produced renewable energy, and it twists a complete 90 degrees clockwise from top to bottom. I live in Copenhagen, Denmark, and because Malmö is just on the other side of Øresund Bridge, I was inclined to include Turning Torso in my long-term photo project “Geometry in Motio...

This week I have been invited to try a brand new plugin from Topaz labs: Clarity. In a world of photographic plugins clearly dominated by Nik Software/Google (both quality and price wise as most photographers would consider), it is good when some competition spices up the things. And Topaz Labs is an interesting competitor for Google, providing a large range of photographic plugins covering almost every area of image editing. I have installed Clarity, with some ideas in mind, based on the description that I received “quick and easy to enhance contrast and color without degrading the image with halos or artifacts”. The program is very easy to use. The interface is simple and self-explaining, letting aside some minor bugs that probably their development team is working at as we speak. There are only few presets available at the moment (some categories are empty, but we expect to see some predefined presets in those soon) but as with any plugin, I suggest starting from the scratch, pl...

Couple of days ago I have received a newsletter from the friends from Topaz Labs , featuring an offer for ViewPoint 2, software made by their partners DXO. I knew about DXO before from their well known DXOMarks, cameras and lenses reviews, benchmarking’s and ratings, but I was not aware that they are also producing photographic software’s. The geek in me was really curious and decided to give ViewPoint 2 a try. View Point comes as both Photoshop plugin and standalone application and according to their website: “The indispensable companion to your wide-angle lens, DxO ViewPoint fixes perspectives and easily restores the natural shapes of the subjects located along image edges.” As an architecture photographer I was getting interested to learn more about this, so I installed the trial version and watched a quick tutorial movie. Since I am a Photoshop user, I am much more interested in the plugin version, as it integrates much easily in my workflow, so this is what I have used for t...