Photoblog

This post was written on the way back home, after couple of hours in Korsør, Denmark, the place where the Great Belt bridge starts its journey to Fyn Island. We took an early train in a windy Sunday morning, hoping to get some dramatic seascapes featuring the bridge or its surroundings. The forecast was looking good: clouds, no rain, wind around 30 km/h, some sun only in the afternoon. Around 4 km of walking between the train station and the wild beach adjacent to the bridge. We arrived there and a very nice scene revealed in front of our eyes: some nets, probably placed by fishermen on some wooden poles and a foggy horizon, covering the island of Fyn. Birds were seating on the wind poles, not bothered by the wind. Some heavy and black clouds on the sky were marching fast in front of us. The water was wild and foamy, hitting with strength the bridge pillars. The wind seems strong but not too strong to be a problem. Ideal condition for long exposure photograp...

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...

Recently I heard about a new tool for Black and White conversion called Tonality Pro. It is on of the interesting product produced by the guys from MacPhun and it addresses only to Mac users. Tonality Pro can be downloaded and tried for free for 15 days. I will write this informal review having as a reference Nik Silver Efex Pro which is what I currently use for my black and white work all time. As Nik Silver Efex is generally recognised as a market standard and a product of high quality and maturity in the world of photography plugins, I must admit that the bar is very high for any competitor. Tonality Pro comes as standalone application or as plugin for Photoshop CC/Lightroom/Elements/Aperture. I am going to test it only as plugin for Photoshop as my workflow is entirely in CC, so going out in an external application and importing image back to CC does not really make sense for me.The first think I must say is that it is a bit slow. Both lunching it and applying some p...

When I got my D800, I was unpleasantly surprised to find out that the small and so reliable ML-L3 remote control is not working anymore on D800. I used it so much on D7000 but since D800 does not have a  IR sensor, ML-L3 is a no go. This is the first piece of ignorance from Nikon designers: why not include a IR sensor their top cameras (D4 has the same issue). Because they are greedy and they want usto pay for their overpriced accessories. So having just a week left before a holiday in Mallorca, I had to quickly get a remote control and after trying a Hahnel that did not even worked for the tests in the store, the guys replaced it with a Phottix Plato. Which worked greatly for couple of month, until this spring when it suddenly started to behave strangely. Right after taking an exposure (using or not the remote itself but with the receiver sticked into camera’s 10 pins port), the back camera controls including Review of the image and Menu stopped to work. Sometimes ...

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...

The highlight of our summer holiday was Isle of Skye. The beautiful island is the largest and most northerly island in the Inner Hebrides. It is quite easy to get there. We went by bus from Inverness in a 3.5 hours journey (a bus trip between Inverness and Portree costs 24 pounds). The first part of the way was rather boring along Loch Ness but after the road left the lake and continued through the mountains the view became much more entertaining. On the way back, we decided to take train from Kyle of Localsh, an alternative a bit more comfortable. During our 6 nights in Skye, we stayed in a very basic bed and breakfast. Nothing fancy, just a roof on top of our head, a shower after a tiring day and a full Scottish breakfast with lots of fried eggs and bacon. There are plenty of such B&Bs in Portree and in other places on the islands. Skye can offer both the feeling of a crowd holiday place, with lots of people doing the regular stuff like boat trips, enjoying...

We start the day in Eastbourne, again with traditional English food, served by the owner and his (maybe) Russian wife. Today we plan a trip to Beachy Head and Seven Sisters. Beachy Head is the highest chalk cliff in UK and a renewed place for suicides. There are two lighthouses there: one on the next hill,the older one, called Belle Tout, was built in 1834 but was moved recently to prevent being damaged by erosion.  The second one, a 43 m colossus was operational in 1902, being build to compensate for the lack of light given by Belle Tout in very foggy weather. Up there, its very windy, making impossible to keep the camera still on the tripod for a few minutes. We take couple of shots, mostly from a slope that is a bit protected from the wind and we head to Seven Sisters. Seven Sisters, now a natural park, consist of a series of chalk cliffs, having a very bright colour. They are used in movies as an alternative for the White Cliffs of Dover. We go up and down, on...

We started the day early in Torquay: another portion of bacon and eggs. Its 6:30 and its only us and some construction workers in the hotel restaurant. Its raining outside. Not heavy rain, but dense and depressing. Today we have planed to go to Teignmouth and we need to be there early to catch the high tide. The rain might make the trip a bit less fun. But lets hope it will be over in couple of hours or at least we can find a break in it. With our stomachs full, we take the train to Teignmouth. Due to some repair works, the train is not running directly, but a replacement bus is taken at Newton Abbot. So, instead of half an hour by train, the trip gets over an hour long. Thats how it is. We arrive in Teigmouth. It is still raining while we quickly head to the sea front. There is almost nobody there: very few people walking their dogs and couple of workers , doing some repairs around the pier. We mount the camera on a tripod, to shoot the pier. The rain is multiplied...

We arrived in Somerset Thursday noon, after a long trip: from Copenhagen to Weston-super-mare through Heathrow airport, Paddington (from where Carmen enriched her toys collection with a Paddington bear) and Bristol. Somerset was described by the ancient Welsh Celts and the Saxons as the Land of the Summer People.  Weston, one of the main touristic attractions in the county, is a picturesque seaside resort, with a wide beach (extremely wide when the tide is low). And the tide was very low when we arrived, with the new pier laying on the sand. You could say that it was sunbathing, but…there was no sun. Some hundreds meters away, three boats were aground in the muddy sands. Our hotel is an old  and extremely small building, with just few rooms, located perfectly at the seafront; and nobody at the reception for many minutes, even if we rang. We waited and waited until somebody came to tell us to return after 14:00 for the checkin and let us store the luggage behind ...

The end of year wrap-up continues with part 2. Lots of images that are so close to my heart that it was so difficult to decide between them. July: Finally a good image with Bella Sky Hotel. Taken in May, in a day with some crazy clouds, it turned out pretty well after post-processing. I often left the hotel with frustration as not being able to capture it as I wanted, but this time, the weather and light really teamed up with the beautiful architecture to create an image that I like a lot. Bella Sky is one of the finest pieces of architecture in Denmark: the largest hotel in Scandinavia, offering 814 rooms and a mind puzzling modern design by my favourite architecture firm in Denmark: 3XN. At some point I was planning to make a series featuring this building, but now I have the impression that I already captured its soul, so not sure I will have the energy to work at 3-4 more images with Bella Sky hotel. But you can never know. August: In August we spent...