November - new records

November was 12th month in a row with all major statistics of this blog rising. For the first time I reached 5000 visits and 15000 page views in a month. What's more yesterday was the best day for this blog ever, because of my I don't like HDR post (what resulted in 1000+ page views just yesterday). It's pretty amazing to see some discussions it caused (eg. on Google+). Seeing traffic growing keeps me really motivated. Hope you...

Thoughts: I don't like HDR

HDR photo from 7 exposures, taken in Warsaw, Poland. It shows one of the buildings of the Warsaw University.Yes, I don't like HDR. And if you take HDR photos you know nothing about art. You should only use filters, flashes and nothing more. Well, maybe a bit of Photoshop (but not too much!).It's not my personal opinion but some of the statements I often hear and read regarding HDR photography.One other sentence about HDR I somewhat...

Before/after comparison: is HDR needed here?

Yesterday along with tutorial about circular polarizer, I posted a landscape photo showing sunrise on Fuerteventura island. It wasn't HDR. Many of you said (eg. on G+) that this photo doesn't really need HDR. Well, I'm glad you said so and I agree that this photo was really nice. However, today here is a HDR version of this very shot. To compare with non-HDR just move your mouse pointer over the image above. As you can see HDR...

Tutorial: polarizer filter - landscape photographer's best friend

Although some of you might argue that the best friend of landscape photographer is either a solid tripod or a 3-stop gradual density filter I believe that it is in fact circular polarizer filter you should always have with you when shooting landscape photos. It is the filter I would pick if I had to choose only one filter to have with me during any of my travels.In this short post I will try to write a few words about what is...

Kitesurfer and my article on HDR One

I really like shooting action shots from time to time. When I was on Fuerteventura I also had a chance to do this with so many water sports enthusiasts all over the place. Here is one of such photos. I used shutter speed of 1/800 s to freeze motion but now I can see that using even faster shutter speed would be a great idea.I would also like to share the link to my article on HDR One page: Understanding HDR. It details what HDR...

Reflection in pavement

One of the things I didn't expect to see on Fuerteventura was rain. And although most of the time I had beautiful weather with sun shining there was one day when it was raining pretty heavily. The worst thing was that on that very day I decided to go to La Oliva town to see a few interesting things there (like church with some of its parts built of volcanic rock and colonels' house). The good thing was that once it stopped raining...

Graphics programming vs photography

One of my few hobbies apart from photography is computer graphics programming. In the past I worked as a video game programmer and was also developing a number of indie and amateur game projects. One of the things I was (and well sort of still am) interested in was 3D graphics programming. It's pretty fascinating trying to recreate reality, use approximations to create something as similar as possible to what we see in reality....

Desert near El Cotillo

Here is a HDR photo I took near El Cotillo town on Fuerteventura. Not many colours but for some reason this is kind of landscape that I really really like.EXIF data:Camera: Canon 5D MK IILens: Canon 24-105 f/4 L IS USMFocal length: 24 mmAperture: f/7.1Exposure time: 1/250 s ("middle" exposure)ISO: 200Number of exposures: 3E.V. Step: 2 E.V.Flash used: noTripod used: noFilters used: noSoftware: Magic Lantern, Photomatix Pro 4.2.4,...

Tutorial: how to use Magic Lantern for taking bracketed photos

As for my other recent HDR photos I used Magic Lantern 2.3 for this one.I mentioned the fact that I use Magic Lantern firmware modification several times already. One of the most useful features for me are extended auto-bracketing capabilities. Both my Canons (50D and 5D MK II) can normally take only 3 exposures in auto-bracketing mode spaced at up to 2 EV. This is often not sufficient co cover whole dynamic range of a scene....

Jetty in infrared

Today I decided to upload photo from Masuria. Infrared photo from Masuria to be exact. Sorry for not writing more but I'm really busy in the recent days.EXIF data:Camera: Canon 50DLens: Canon 10-22 f/3.5-4.5 USMFocal length: 10Aperture: f/9.0Exposure time: 30 sISO: 640Number of exposures: 1E.V. Step: n/aFlash used: noTripod: yesFilters: Hoya IR R72Software: Lightroom 4.1, Photoshop CS5...

Hut by the lake

Today a photo from Masuria (there are still more than 5000 photos from Fuerteventura waiting to be processed but I don't have time recently) taken in summer last year. I really like the warm summer light here.EXIF data:Camera: Canon 50DLens: Canon 24-105 f/4 L IS USMFocal length: 47 mmAperture: f/9.1Exposure time: 1/64 sISO: 100Number of exposures: 5E.V. Step: 2 EVFlash used: noTripod used: yesFilters used: noSoftware: Magic...

Tip: using HDR doesn't mean you can't use filters

Many photographers doing HDR photography don't use any filters on their lenses (apart maybe from UV filter used as a protection). However, it's a big mistake in my opinion. Why? As I said before, HDR is about light and detail not colour. So basically whatever you can do to enhance colour is good. When shooting landscapes I almost always have circular polarizing filter with me. It helps me in making the colours more saturated...

Desert or beach?

Corralejo beach on Fuerteventura island is not a desert strictly speaking (it's beach as the name implies). However, as it is just about 100 km away from the shores of Africa it was possible for the wind to "pick" some of the sand from Sahara desert and drop it on Fuerteventura. As the winds are generally the same as on Sahara desert, Corralejo beach really reminds a desert with its beautiful sand and high dunes. It is why it...

Sunset over desert

Here is another sunset photo from Fuerteventura island. To be precise I took it a few minutes after sunset. The sky had some beautiful colours ranging from reds and oranges just above horizon through purples to blues high in the sky. Unfortunately the clouds didn't want to cooperate and their colour is quite boring compared to the sky... but still quite a nice image.EXIF data:Camera: Canon 5D MK IILens: Canon 24-105 f/4 L IS...

One more night shot

Ok, one more astrophoto. From tomorrow I should be back to uploading some HDR stuff and some tutorials as well. In this shot I used slightly different exposure settings to the rest of my recent astrophotos. Instead of ISO 800 + 10 s combination I used ISO 100 + 30 s combo. This resulted in a slightly lower noise (although there is some due to long exposure of course). I'm really happy with the composition and colours.If you're...

Traces of aliens?

Ok, one more astrophoto. There are a few more left on my disk so I hope you won't get bored with them. Some HDRs will be uploaded soon so stay tuned.In this case I used focus stacking to create bigger depth of field. For details you can read my tutorial about this (or other tutorials in the Tutorials section). Otherwise with aperture of f/1.4 I would have either foreground or background completely blurry. I still regret not taking...

Milky Way over Corralejo beach

I really love shooting stars and here is one more photo of them. If you're interested in how I achieved such an effect read my tutorial about taking photos of the starry skies (part 3 soon!). There are much more tutorials in the Tutorials section of this blog.EXIF data:Camera: Canon 5D MK IILens: Canon 24 f/1.4 L USM IIFocal length: 24 mmAperture: f/1.4Exposure time: 10 sISO: 800Number of exposures: 1E.V. Step: n/aFlash used:...

Sunrise long exposure

It's yet another long exposure photo I took on Fuerteventura island. Honestly speaking, I have a problem with it - I like colours and the look of water but I find composition quite poor or boring. So why did I decide to upload it? After putting it on Facebook quite a few people liked it so maybe I cannot assess my work properly?If you're interested how to achieve such a look of water you can give my tutorial about it a try. Also...

New tutorials section

Recently I realized that I wrote quite a few tutorials up to date (more than 30!). Searching them on the blog wasn't very intuitive nor easy as it required using tags cloud (and it seems to be partially broken under some browsers :( ). So what I did today was to add new Tutorials section to this blog. If you want to read any of my tutorials you can just click on the link or on the button at the top of this page. At the moment...