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I took the photo above over 3 years ago - but only published this version on Flickr a few days ago. Why the long wait you ask? Because I decided to re-process it recently. The photo has been one of those that has shown up on my Screen Savers from time to time and I always thought that I need to open it up again and do a different processing, because I never quite liked the original version I did:



It’s one of those photos were you see the potential but when you’ve been editing photos for a while, you also know that it could be way better and jaw-dropping. But with so many new photos taking up my time (I’m still processing those from my summer holiday...), I never went back to this photo. But it was always in the back of my mind, nagging me. So this weekend I decided to search my archive for it and see what I could do with it - it’s not just the fact that my tastes have changed but also that my processing knowledge has grown, as well as the apps I use (at the time I didn’t even know Photomatix existed!).

Like I said, it had been nagging me, so I knew a fair bit about how the final result was supposed to look like (kind of like when sculptures tell you the stone speaks to them or that they have to free that beaver from within that wooden block). I wanted it to be a bit ominous and for both the stone church and the clouds to have more structure to them. For this I knew that an HDR would probably be a great idea - of course I only had the single image but that’s okay, too, at least as long as you have a RAW file (you could do it from a jpg but I wouldn’t advise you to try). For this I fired up HDR Efex Pro, since I also knew that tonemapping was probably not going to be the final touch for the image (though it gave me some great results, too).
In the end I decided on this very dramatic version with some cross-processing applied and a very strong vignette applied, too, so that the clouds would be very dark and oppressing while still being very interesting (to me at least). But it also focusses the attention towards the church, which has a wonderful structured look and seems to almost glow in comparison to the sky.

The learning here is that it pays to go back to your favorite images from a few years ago (I know, you probably won’t like most of them and will cringe while looking at them). Because oftentimes they are worth a second look and a second try at becoming great and one of your all-time favorites!

How about you? Ever went back to an old image and made it something different?

Tweet As many of you are probably aware, yesterday night the Perseiden Meteor Shower was visible. Of course I had to go out and try to catch a meteor on a photo. Unfortunately, I didn’t but still I got several beautiful images of the night sky above our house and wanted to share some different images taken with different shutter speeds to show how much the shutter speed changes the lighting in a longtime exposure shot (and the ISO, too).

First of, the different in ISO on the lighting of the sky (please view the large versions to get a real impression of the differences). The first photo was taken at ISO 400, the second at 250 and the third one at ISO 100, as you can see the higher the Iso the more details and light you have in the photo (the 250 is a bit misleading because the camera was positioned slightly more to the right were there are street lamps). But with increasing the ISO you also increase the noise in the image, something that you will have even at a low ISo when you are taking long time exposure photos). Because of that I decided to try the bulb mode on my camera and do even longer exposures.


Bulb mode is the name for photos you want to take at even longer exposures than 30 seconds. With my camera, the Canon 7D, there is an entry for it on the mode dial like there is for shutter priority and aperture priority. When you choose that you simply decide on the aperture, which I set at f4 and then you simply hold down the shutter button for as long as you like. This is best done if you have a remote shutter release, which will usually have the option to secure it so you don’t have to hold down the button the whole time.
With that mode the following four photos were made. The ISO was set at 320 because I felt that gave me a good middle ground between noise and light sensitivity and the shutter speed fluctuated due to my holding down the shutter longer or shorter, since I didn’t time myself, I simply went by feeling. The first photo has a shutter time of 64 seconds, the second is 51 seconds, the third 77 seconds and the fourth 19 seconds.
As you can see, the difference in light and especially ambient light, something I cannot get rid of living in a small city and relatively close to the big airport in Frankfurt (half of our sky is almost invisible to the east due to the light pollution from the airport). I think the 60 seconds is a pretty good middle ground for my area, since the sky is still relatively dark and bluish (all of the shots here haven’t been processed or edited) but you see lots of stars and even a whole lot of small stars you cannot see with your eye from the ground.



One last tip if you go out for such shots: be sure to check your settings and take the lens cap of before you go out into the night.... I went out twice to take photos, the second time I forgot to take the lens cap of for the first shot - had I taken it off, I would have a photo with a meteor in it
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Tags: Photo, Exposure, Adivce

In November I did a one-week road trip starting in Atlanta, going to Gatlinburg, Charlotte, Charleston and Savannah. As you probably can imagine, I took a ton of photos on the trip. The hardest thing for photographing was the weather: pure sunshine with no clouds. This meant that the dynamic range was too much for my sensor, so I decided to use HDRs a lot of times. In the past I have used Hydra for this but sometimes Hydra does not give me the results I would like to have. Since I had a ton of photos on my Mac with three different exposures, I decided to try out Photomatix again. This was mainly because one photo didn’t come out in Hydra like I wanted it to look.
This were the three starting photos:


As you can see the middle exposure is not as popping as it could be (remember to click on an image to see a larger version). So I decided to try Hydra on it. This are the two results I liked best:

The first one is a simple overlay of the images and the second one it tone-mapped - although it is a bit too saturated for my taste. But somehow neither picture really resonated with me (especially since I was looking for the best look for the mountains in the background. So I decided to try Photomatix. If you have ever tried it, Photomatix has a lot more options for customizing the results of your HDR, which is a good thing but also makes it more complicated to use. Because of the many options, among others I got these results:

Neither one is really perfect... I decided to also try Photoshop CS3 but I haven’t saved that one because it didn’t look at all like what I wanted to have for my photo So I decided to try Photomatix again after I had decided to buy Photomatix to have more options for my HDR projects. The final result I came up with:

This week I was able to go out and photograph for the first time in over a month. It was an incredible feeling to be „out there“ again and being totally „in the zone“. I went to the Botanical Garden here in Atlanta. As always, i took lots of photos and I’ll publish a slideshow one of the next days but today I want to focus on something I realized once again when I was shooting inside the giant houses of the botanical garden: Flash changes a lot about your picture!
I was shooting handheld (I didn’t take my tripod to Atlanta with me), so I had to use the flash for some shots to get a sharp image. There is always a difference in picture between the two but I had one instance where the difference was truly astounding to me.
Here you have two photos that show exactly the same subject and perspective. The first one without flash, only natural light, and the second one with the flash of my 40D. Notice the difference in details but also in shading. A subtle difference is also the unfocussed part in the background. Notice the ground in the upper left area, it is much more pronounced in the picture with the flash.


I guess, what I am trying to say is that you should always try to be aware of the effects your flash will have on the look of your photo. It can make or break your shot if you aren’t aware of the effects. (Instant review on the display is a great way to ensure that it does not break your shot).

Tags: Flash, Hardware, Photo

Summary: A post on how I took this picture and made it look a lot better using selective coloring and cropping. Additionally, the picutre exampes will give you a good example of how the composition of a photo will have an impact on the overall impression you get from the picture.Reade More...

Tags: Photo, Processing, Comparison

Summary: A short exploration into the reasons why sometimes selective coloring will give you better results and also an explanation on how you can use this simple technique. Be sure to check it out to see the full before and after shots.Reade More...

Tags: Photo, Processing, Photoshop

Berlin Cathedral
Flickr link

Summary: Do you know those awesome architectural pictures you have - which would be really awesome if it weren’t for some object taking away from their beauty? Sounds familiar, right? But what to do about them? You can’t just go to the people using the crane and ask them to remove the crane for a minute... (if you DO go out and try it, please tell me about your results ).
I don’t know how you got rid of them during the film days but I do know how you can get rid of them in the digital age.Reade More...

Tags: Photo, Aperture, Processing, Editing, Retouching