a30 April 2014

Please show unprocessed photo

Please show unprocessed photo

I guess you heard it at least once or twice about your photos: "I like your photo but please show unprocessed version" or "your photos don't show how this place really looks". Quite frankly I hate it. For me unprocessed version is like almost empty canvas or quick sketch for a painter. Something that is very initial version of the final image and isn't intended to closely resemble it so showing it to the viewers could give them wrong idea about finished picture. And when looking at the finished painting no one asks painter to show this sketch or asks him about brushes or colours he used. Because it isn't important. What matters is finished image. Same is true for photos.

That's why I never share unprocessed photos apart from my post-processing workflow series but its purpose is strictly educational and is targeted towards beginner photographers to give them some ideas and inspiration about post-processing. Unprocessed photo for me is like negative from film era - it more or less shows how the image will look but it shouldn't be showed to the wider audience as it needs developing. It's RAW material I'm using to form final image.

The problem with photography is that many people don't treat it like art, they demand it closely reflects reality. They think of photographers as craftsmen not artists. The problem is photography is art and always was. Even the word photography itself literally means drawing with light (from Greek: phōtós - light; graphein - to draw). And drawing (or painting) is widely accepted as an art form. Why should we photographers need to limit ourselves? I see no point in it. I don't want to be limited by anything other than my own creativity and my vision.

Finally what does it mean that something closely reflects reality? For me it would mean using only 50 mm lens, shutter speed of 1/30 s and aperture between f/2.8 and f/14.0 - these are equivalents of human eye. Using anything else, including sharpening, changing white balance, zooming in/out or even using faster shutter speed is not realistic. Not to mention black & white photography, long-exposure photography or even macro photography. Any change from this basic parameters mean that photographer doesn't capture reality but shows his vision of a scene.

Daily photo - Blue water

Ok, now it's time for a daily photo :) And to match topic of this post - it's highly unrealistic by definition as it is a long exposure photo taken in Mexico during sunset.

If you have read my recent tutorial about composing images (make sure to read it if you haven't) then you might be interested to learn how I composed this photo. I used golden ratio rule to put big rock in foreground in one of the intersections (bottom left) of the grid and a few other rocks in one of the other intersections (top right).

Also the rocks create virtual leading lines that draw viewers attention towards background.
Blue water


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a28 April 2014

Mr Death

Daily photo - Mr Death

I already shared some images from that ancient Maya dance show before, for instance here and just a few days ago here.

Today I would like to share one more image from this very show. Meet Mr Death himself! From what I understood he was some kind of shaman, doing all the magic during the show.

Maya Dancer

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a26 April 2014

Beginner's HDR photography tutorial. Part 4. Dealing with halo artifacts

Today it is time for 4th part of my HDR video tutorial. In today's part I'm talking about nightmare of HDR photographers - halo artifacts. I also show one of the ways of dealing with them.

Next parts will cover subjects such as creating indoor images, creating night HDR images.

Note 1: if you don't have Photomatix Pro, you can download free trial from here. It never expires but adds watermark to the final image (BTW if you decide to purchase Photomatix Pro, you will be able to get rid of this watermark from already processed images!).

Note 2: before you watch this part, I advise you to take a look at Part 3 in which I showed how to create realistic HDR images. If you're new to Photomatix Pro take a look at Part 2 in which I talk about Photomatix Pro, explain its interface and talk about core features (such as deghosting or alignment). You might be also interested in watching Part 1 in which I talk about HDR photography in general and give some reasons why do we need it.

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a25 April 2014

Post-processing workflow: Blue Sunset

before after

Introduction

Time for another post in my Post-processing workflow series. For more posts from this series go here.

Today I will show you how I did post-process one of my favourite HDR images taken in last few months. I took it very recently by Vistula river bank in Warsaw, Poland. Despite the fact I was still in the boundaries of the city and just a few kilometres from its centre I managed to find a place that looked like being in the middle of wilderness. There I waited for sunset. It was very short but for a few minutes colours were really gorgeous.

In this case Before shows 0 EV exposure images and After shows finished image.

BTW to learn more about HDR photography, read my HDR tutorial.

Editing in Lightroom

This time the only adjustment I made in Lightroom was lens correction and chromatic aberration reduction. After that I exported my 5 exposures to Photomatix Pro 5.

Editing in Photomatix Pro

In Photomatix Pro 5 I used Contrast Optimizer tone-mapper with following settings.
Editing in Lightroom

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a24 April 2014

The Maya Dancer

Daily photo - The Maya Dancer

I already shared some images from that ancient Maya show before, for instance here. It was the first time I photographed any show in fact. Any. It's just not my kind of photography you know (I'm dedicated to landscapes... even cityscapes are not what I really like). But I quite liked it although it was very difficult for me - the scene was very dynamic and rather crowded most of the time. It was also full of various colours, shapes and symbols that were quickly changing and transforming. There wasn't much time for thinking so I needed to trust my intuition. And I think my intuition was good as I captured some really nice and quite powerful images that I'm really happy with :)

Today I would like to share image of one of the dancers performing in that show. He was wearing bird mask and wings and looked really monumental especially in that magical colourful light.

I used Sony 55-210 tele zoom lens and was quite positively surprised by image quality. Of course the image isn't as sharp from my beloved Canon 70-300 L, but still is very good.

Another interesting thing is that this image was shot at very high ISO (3200) and still the image is completely usable with very low levels of noise. Of course I needed to apply some denoising but it's still pretty surprising how good sensor in this small Sony NEX-6 performs in low-light conditions.

Maya Dancer

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a23 April 2014

Photomatix Pro Presets downloaded 2000 times!

2000 downloads of free Photomatix Presets

Just a few days ago I announced that my free HDR tutorial has been downloaded 4000 times, and today I reached another milestone with my free content - my Photomatix Pro presets have been downloaded over 2000 times!

Note: If you haven't downloaded them yet, you can get my free presets for Photomatix here. It's a huge bundle with 100 presets that will work in both Photomatix Pro 5 and older versions (there are just a few version 5 exclusives). They are good for all types of HDR work so make sure to give them a chance.

Daily photo - Sunset over Warsaw

Today I would like to share another HDR image from Warsaw. It was very late sunset already when I took this picture but there was still some beautiful light on the buildings.
Sunset over Warsaw


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a22 April 2014

Tutorial: Photo Composition Primer

You know that - some images work perfectly and look very interesting but other images that are similar doesn't look that good and appealing. They may have same subjects, use similar colours but one thing might be different for them - composition. Composition is the key to create interesting and powerful images, ones that will attract viewers attention. Composition is the first thing you should think of when taking a picture.

In this tutorial I will try to teach you some most common rules of composition and give you some general tips on achieving better composition in your images. As a landscape photographer I will illustrate the concepts with landscape photos but most of the ideas described here can be applied to any type of photography.

1) We read images from left to right

What many people don't know is that the fact we read text from left to right (or from right to left in some countries and cultures) and from top to bottom means that we also 'read' images in the very same way. It means that we find the images that have 'action' in the right part more appealing and natural.

Now the interesting thing is that you can do completely opposite - i.e. to put something interesting in the left part - to provide some twist and make your image more intriguing.

2) Avoid center composition

One of the common mistakes that beginner photographers make is to put their subject in the middle of a frame. I remember making this mistake myself and putting horizon in the middle of image height. Unfortunately most of the images with center composition look boring and not really interesting to our eyes. That's why you should avoid this composition most of the time.

However, there are some exceptions when center composition works quite well. Some photos of flowers are one example. Another one is when there is symmetry and reflection (which are described later).

3) Rule of thirds

Rule of thirds is one of the most well-known and easiest to apply rules of composition. It is about dividing the image frame into virtual 3 x 3 grid where each of the cells has exactly same size. The idea is then to put your subjects either on the lines of the grid or in one of their 4 intersections.

This rule can be also applied to landscape photography. In such case you should put your horizon either in 1/3rd or 2/3rd of height of your image. However, sometimes it doesn't work well especially when sky is very boring but foreground is very interesting. In such case you can try putting your horizon in 1/6th of image height instead.

What's more not all lines and intersections work equally well. As stated above we read images from left to right and from top to bottom. This means that many images will look better if you put subject in the bottom right intersection of the grid. This works especially well for landscapes if you put some boat or rock there.

In the image below I used rule of thirds to place horizon in 1/3rd of image height and also to put the end of the road in one of the grid intersections. Moreover, two other roads pass through bottom grid intersections:
Rule of thirds

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a19 April 2014

Path through Hala Ornak

Daily photo - Path through Hala Ornak

High Dynamic Range photo that you can see below was taken by me last autumn in Hala Ornak in Polish Tatra mountains. There were some beautiful colours in this scene which were enhanced even more due to use of circular polarizing filter. I composed this shot in such a way that the road is going through whole image thus leading the eye. I hope you like it!

BTW 2 new tutorials are coming next week so stay tuned :)
Path through Hala Ornak


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a18 April 2014

4000 downloads of HDR tutorial!

HDR tutorial downloaded 4000 times!

Mission accomplished, achievement unlocked... I'm very proud to announce that after 4.5 months since it's release at the very end of November 2013, my free HDR tutorial eBook has been downloaded 4000 times! This number includes only downloads from my website but as it is available in a few other places over the internet I might assume that actual numbers are even higher. Thanks for that! And keep downloading and sharing it ;)

Note: If you haven't downloaded it yet, you can get it completely for free here. Alternatively you can read web version here.

Daily photo - Golden sunset in Warsaw

Today Daily photo is somewhat different from my typical landscape HDR images. Normally HDR is used to get balanced exposure across whole frame with correctly exposed highlights and shadows. Today I used it just for purpose of restoring highlights leaving shadows rather dark. This created rather interesting atmosphere and made the light main actor of the image.

Also I'd like to mention that this photo was taken in Warsaw, Poland by Vistula river bank. What I really like about Warsaw is that despite the fact it's quite big European city (it's capital of Poland after all) you can still find some spots that look like they are in the middle of the wilderness. It's perfect from landscape photographer's point of view :)
Golden Sunset in Warsaw


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a17 April 2014

Gorgeous Sunset in Warsaw

Daily photo - Gorgeous Sunset in Warsaw

For a few days this week I had been planning some sunset photography in my home town but everyday it was raining and there was no sunset at all - just some boring ugly grey clouds covering whole sky and terribly flat light. But yesterday despite it was raining almost whole day just an hour before sunset the weather changed. I saw sky finally! There was hope! So I packed my gear and went to the Vistula river bank and waited for the sunset. And there it was with some amazing reds, blues and purples. It was really worth the wait!
And today the sun is shining since morning so hopefully there will be another gorgeous sunset. Yes, hopefully.

For below photo I decided to take a HDR panoramic photo to show almost whole sky. I also decided to close the frame on both sides using a bridge on one side and river bank on the other. This resulted in a nice panorama with 2:1 aspect ratio.

If you're interested in learning more about HDR photography, make sure to read my free HDR tutorial eBook.

BTW it was the first photoshoot I did with my 'regular gear' after testing my Sony NEX-6. And you know what - dimensions and weight of my Canon 5D MK III are now difficult to accept :) it's so heavy! But I can at least take a lot of shots with it on a single battery ;)
Sunset in Warsaw


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a16 April 2014

Up high in Tatra Mountains

Daily photo - Up high in Tatra Mountains

For today I had planned new tutorial about HDR photography but as I'm feeling a bit under the weather I have to delay it for a few days. Sorry guys.

So today I will instead just share an image taken from Sarnia Skała mountain in Polish Tatra Mountains. The photo was taken just a few meters below the summit but I didn't reach it as unfortunately I'm really afraid of heights. So I glanced at the summit, turned around, took below photo and started my descent :) the worst thing about this 'fear' is that I really like mountains and in the mountains heights are everywhere.

Ok, now a few words about the image itself. I'm quite happy with it because it has some nice diagonal layers which are almost parallel to each other. I also like light in the background as well as rocks there.

This photo is interesting for one more reason - it's one of the very few cases when I used Tone Compressor processing method in Photomatix Pro. Unlike two other tone-mappers, i.e. Details Enhancer and Contrast Optimizer, it is global tone-mapping operator. It means that it applies same 'adjustments' to all pixels (what makes the image look differently than typical tone-mapped photo). In case of two other methods, which are local operators, different pixels are treated differently.
View from Sarnia Skała


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a15 April 2014

Thoughts: Why is Pixoto dangerous?

Thoughts: Why is Pixoto dangerous?

Typical Pixoto notification after receiving an award.
Some time ago fellow photographer pointed me to an interesting discussion about Pixoto website. If you don't know Pixoto, it's yet another images sharing site but it works differently than Flickr or 500px for instance. After you upload your photo it starts to appear in 'duels' - it's displayed side-by-side with one more randomly chosen photo from the same category and other users have to choose which one they prefer. As your photo wins duels it gets points but when it looses a duel - your score decreases. At the end of each day the best photos (#1, #2, 5%, 10% best, 20% best etc.) are given an 'award' and your Facebook/Twitter friends are notified about that. Same thing happens at the end of each week (best photos of the week are awarded), month and year. And probably decade.

Now, back to discussion I mentioned at the beginning. One, quite well-known photographer, pointed out the bad things about Pixoto and it provoked me to share my point of view about it. Especially as some other people didn't agree with him, while I do.

The worst thing about Pixoto in my opinion is that it can give beginners or enthusiast photographers like me false impression that they are already great. And although for some this can be certainly true because some photographers are simply very talented, for the majority it's not. Photography, as any skill, is about making mistakes, learning on them, improving next time, making more mistakes and so on. It takes time to master it. Years. Life perhaps. BTW did you know that we need approximately 10 years on average to reach proficiency level in a given skill? What's worse you need talent and not all of us have it.

But when you receive an award on Pixoto you might start to think that your photos are great, almost perfect (they were awarded after all so they MUST be great). They make you believe you're great photographer and don't need to learn or improve anymore. You might stop making progress. And one day you might realize your photos aren't that great really. It might be painful. And the problem is virtually anyone can win some kind of award on Pixoto. Maybe it's not that easy to win #1 of the day or month award (my best result so far is #2 of the day) but you can quite easily get "10% best of the day" in a certain category (eg. landscapes or some more specific like... cat portraits :) ). Almost every shot I upload gets some kind of award and believe me some are simply not worth it - as any photographer I have better and worse photos. In fact I uploaded a few images I didn't like just to check if I'm right... and they also won awards.

So if Pixoto is that bad why do I use it occasionally? Because it's quite fun :) and if you treat it this way you can really enjoy using it (I love voting the image! :) ). It's not a serious photography competition and you can't think about it as such. It's just fun. And despite the fact it's not a real contest, it's somehow motivating and make you feel better. I use it especially in the periods when I'm not sure about my photography skills :)

In this article I don't try to say that uploading images to Pixoto (or any other site) is a bad idea or that if you win awards your photos are bad. No. I just mean that you shouldn't treat Pixoto as some kind of oracle which is always right and tells you the truth about your images.

Finally, it isn't the problem only with Pixoto. It's the same with Flickr and 500px. How many times have you seen mediocre (or even very poor photos) images in Explore on Flickr or on top places on 500px? Way too often. I saw people whose photos had score of 99.3 and more on 500px and which were poor from technical point of view (oversaturated or bad composition). Majority of comments were something like 'great photo', 'incredible image', 'wow' but there were a few photographers which mentioned technical flaws in that very image (it was some grungy landscape shot if I recall correctly). Unfortunately photographer didn't find them helpful, he found those comments offensive (but they were not)!

And remember: the fact that your image doesn't get a lot of votes, doesn't mean it's not beautiful. Art is not about votes or likes.

Daily photo - Tatra mountains

Today's article is a bit longer than I initially planned, so without further ado here is daily image - painterly high dynamic range photo from Dolina Kościeliska in Polish Tatra Mountains. Hopefully I will revisit this place in a few weeks from now :)
Tatra Mountains seen from Dolina Kościeliska


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a14 April 2014

Street in Lisbon

Daily photo - Street in Lisbon

Although, as you know, landscapes are my main area of interest in photography, I do travel quite a lot to various cities. And when I'm there what I like to photograph most are streets because a lot of European cities are very old and this means some beautiful buildings, great detail and fantastic textures - things that really shine when doing HDR on them.

Below photo was taken when I was wandering in Lisbon 2 years ago (I loved that city and hope to visit it again in the future!). I decided to use my painterly technique on it to make the textures look nicer and a bit painterly. It's especially noticeable on the pavement and road which look like taken from some illustration or drawing.
Street in Lisbon


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a13 April 2014

The Window

Daily photo - The Window

Time for a short break from sunset photos (although I still have a few hundred of unprocessed sunset photos... and plans to take a few hundred more in the coming week).

So today I would like to share a HDR picture I took in one of the cenotes in Mexico. It wasn't the most beautiful cenote I've ever seen but the light entering through hole at its top was really spectacular with all those gorgeous sun rays and tiny birds flying "between" them. Really stunning. And for some reasons this place resembled scenes from Indiana Jones movies (or Tomb Raider game)... don't know why, but it looked quite familiar :)

BTW if you would like to learn more about HDR photography, make sure to read my free HDR tutorial.
The Window


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a11 April 2014

Rocks at Sunset

Daily photo - Rocks at sunset

Today I'd like to share one more sunset photo from Puerto Aventuras, Mexico (I took so many of them there...). I really liked shape of these rocks.

In this case I applied slightly different processing than normally. Although I captured as many as 9 bracketed exposures I decided to use only 3 brightest ones. I opened them in Photomatix Pro 5 two times and each time I used slightly different settings (but each time I used Fusion/Real-Estate processing method). With one image I focused on water and sky and with the other - on the rocks. Then I blended both resulting images in Photoshop CC and increased contrast and saturation a little bit.
Colourful sunset in Mexico


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a10 April 2014

Back & Running

I'm back & running

As you probably noticed I haven't updated the blog very regularly recently and when I did, I didn't post any new photos - just some screenshots. Unfortunately my PC had crashed (faulty motherboard, faulty GPU and faulty RAM memory - some crazy things happened to it...) and so I didn't have access to all of my photos so I couldn't process any new images. Now everything is back to normal so it's time for a new image today.

However, I have to admit that I rather enjoyed this short break from blogging (during that period I was active both on 500px, Facebook and Google+) and spent it thinking about my future both as blogger and photographer. And planning future trips. Hopefully you will see some of my ideas being implemented in not so distant future :)

Daily photo - Colourful sunset

Time for a daily photo - colourful sunset in Mexico :)

In fact it was already well after sunset when I took this photo and here's a small tip - most beautiful colours doesn't appear during sunset itself - they appear a few minutes after it ends. Same is true for sunrise - most gorgeous colours can be experienced a few minutes before it starts. Many people don't know about this and they pack their equipment as soon as sunset ends thus missing some great photo opportunities. Bear that in mind when you're out to shoot some sunset next time.
Colourful sunset in Mexico


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a8 April 2014

Adobe Lightroom Mobile first impressions

Adobe Lightroom Mobile

Today I was surprised to read the news that Adobe released Lightroom Mobile - project they announced quite some time ago - which is iPad version of Lightroom (I read somewhere that they're working on Android version too).

Without much thinking I downloaded it onto my iPad to test it out. First surprise - you need Creative Cloud subscription to use it for free. I have so it wasn't big deal but for those of you who haven't - it might be because as far as I know you won't be able to use this app without valid CC subscription - you simply can't buy it as a separate product! You also need desktop version of Lightroom installed on your computer because mobile version syncs with it.

It might sound like a step in wrong direction from Adobe but... do you remember all the hassle when Creative Cloud was initially announced? Many photographers, who use only Lightroom, claimed that for them this model is very unfair as it doesn't offer them as much as it offers eg. designers. Now - this changed. There is another product in Adobe's portfolio targeted towards photographers. And only them.

Impressions

Now let's go to some details. User interface is very simple, nice and in fact more intuitive than in desktop version. You can easily edit your photos in just a few clicks. The application is also much simpler than desktop version so it's easier to learn.

Lightroom Mobile lets you edit images that you either have already on your iPad or which you get from your desktop by syncing Lightroom Mobile with Lightroom desktop version. To do this you need to download just released Adobe Lightroom 5.4, create collection in it and set it as "synchronizeable". When you connect iPad to your computer, all images from this collection will be transferred onto iPad.

Once you have your photos imported, you can see them as a grid or you can edit them in some equivalent of desktop version's Develop module.

In this develop-like module you can not only flag your photos (Pick/Reject) but you can also adjust all basic settings like White Balance, Exposure, Highlights, Shadows, Saturation or Clarity. You just click on the name of the setting and slider appears to allow you make adjustments. You can also Crop your image.

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