Sunset reflection

I took this photo last year in Masuria, Poland. This shot would be impossible to take without HDR (or other techniques of extending dynamic range) because this scene had very high dynamic range. The was both very bright sun and dark forest in the frame.Technical details:Camera: Canon 50DLens: Canon 10-22 f/3.5-4.5 USMFocal length: 10 mmAperture: f/18.0Exposure time: 1/25 s ("middle" exposure)ISO: 100Number of exposures: 7E.V....

Street in Barcelona

Barcelona. One of the most beautiful cities I've ever been to. I'd love to go there one more time in the future. Especially as by the time I was there I was just starting with photography and HDR photography (many of my HDR photos from that time have that nice grungy feel to them :) ) so I don't have many good shots. And ones which are quite good were probably taken by accident.Here is one of the very few photos from Barcelona...

Thoughts: Reality is boring

Reality is boring. It might be controversial but that's the way it is. Let's face it. It can be beautiful (and often is!), I don't deny it, but at the same time we're so used to it that in many cases we, photographers, have to cheat to make it more appealing to the viewers. Otherwise many (or even majority!) of our photos would be mediocre, boring, lifeless.For that reason we shoot long exposure (or ultra fast exposure) like...

Hot news from Magic Lantern - improved Dynamic Range!

I didn't have a chance to test this update from Magic Lantern yet so instead of a test photo I'm posting one that is hot :) Literally.I'm normally not sharing any news from the photography world but I think this one deserves breaking the rules. Guys at Magic Lantern team have just managed to improve dynamic range of 2 cameras: 5D MK III and 7D! First one is now capable of capturing 14 stops of light (that's right - 14 EV, like...

Park Guell in Barcelona

Park Guell (in Catalan - Parc Güell, in Spanish - Parque Güell) in Barcelona. This park designed by famous Catalan architect, Antonio Gaudi, for his friend Eusebio Guell is the most amazing and incredible park I've ever been to. Full of fantastic and surreal structures, dream-like buildings, with fantastic view of the city of Barcelona it's really one of a kin...

Late walk in the ruins

I haven't uploaded anything from Lisbon for some time and I still have some photos from there. So today I decided to share a photo taken during golden hour inside ruins of Carmo Convent. I shared similar photos earlier but this one is a bit different.Technical details:Camera: Canon 50DLens: Canon 10-22 f/3.5-4.5 USMFocal length: 10 mmAperture: f/9.0Exposure time: 1/125 s ("middle" exposure)ISO: 100Number of exposures: 3E.V. Step:...

Reflection of a palace

This is not the best summer for landscape photographers in Warsaw (and tourists too) as many of the main attractions are completely, or partially, closed due to revitalization, eg. parts of Old Town, Pilsudski Square, parts of Royal Baths Park with Water Palace from the image above, west bank of Vistula River. Good thing is that most of them will be opened again in a few months and they will look much better. I wait for that...

Macro photo and 2 new HD wallpapers

I realized that I hadn't added any new wallpaper for quite a long time so today I uploaded 2 new images to the Wallpapers section. You can find their thumbnails below. I hope you'll enjoy them!Technical details:Camera: Canon 5D MK IILens: Canon 100 f/2.8 L IS USM MacroFocal length: 100 mmAperture: f/10.0Exposure time: 1/30 sISO: 100Number of exposures: 1E.V. Step: n/aFlash used: yes, macro flashTripod: yesFilters: noSoftware:...

Twilight

I took this photo in Madrid from the gardens in front of Royal Palace. One of the huge benefits of blue hour is that light looks really magical, almost surreal. You could think that I made this image oversaturated but the truth is blues in the original shots were even more vibrant and I had to reduce their saturation.Technical details:Camera: Canon 5D MK IILens: Canon 24-105 f/4 L IS USMFocal length: 67 mmAperture: f/16.0Exposure...

Magic Lantern - beyond 2.3... what's new?

This photo shows a small port in the town of El Cotillo on Fuerteventura Island.If you're a user of Magic Lantern (and if you're a Canon shooter like me I really recommend that) you might wonder when there will be new version as last stable version (that is 2.3) was released quite some time ago. In fact new version is here... everyday. You can get it here. These are so called "nightly builds" meaning that they are built everyday....

Hippo

Today photo of hippo from Warsaw zoo.Technical details:Camera: Canon 5D MK IIILens: Canon 70-300 f/4-5.6 L IS USMFocal length: 155 mmAperture: f/7.1Exposure time: 1/160 sISO: 500Number of exposures: 1E.V. Step: n/aFlash used: noTripod: noFilters: circular polarizing filterSoftware: Lightroom 5.0, Photoshop ...

Relaxing on the grass

This beautiful gorilla was enjoying his free time by relaxing on the grass and eating some leaves he found there. He was crowded by a large group of people but fortunately I was able to stick my 70-300 between them and take a few portraits of him.BTW after processing a few more photos taken with 5D MK III I have some further observations. The colour reproduction is slightly better than with 5D MK II (the colours are more natural...

Playful tigers

This scene might look like a fight but in fact those two beautiful tigers from Warsaw Zoo were only playing together. Have you ever watched kittens (or at least young cats)? If so it looked exactly the same. Some sort of wrestling but without desire to hurt the other side.Yesterday I mentioned fantastic continuous AF of 5D MK III. Another great feature is fast burst mode with 6 frames per second. These two features made it really...

Switch to 5D MK III

As some of you already know I recently switched from 5D MK II to 5D MK III after more than a year of using the first. Although you will have to wait for a complete review a couple of days I can already say that this camera is really amazing and a really big improvement over its predecessor. New AF system is fantastic. I was photographing some quickly moving animals with continuous focus and most of them turned out properly focused....

Reflection of sunset

Nothing spectacular today - just a photo of a sunset I took in Madrid. It was raining earlier that day so there were a lot of puddles. As there was no interesting view really I decided to use reflection as a foreground element.Technical details:Camera: Canon 5D MK IILens: Canon 24-105 f/4 L IS USMFocal length: 67 mmAperture: f/18.0Exposure time: 2.5 s ("middle" exposure)ISO: 100Number of exposures: 7E.V. Step: 1 EVFlash used:...

Water Palace

Today I would like to share a HDR photo of Water Palace in Royal Baths Park in Warsaw.Technical details:Camera: Canon 5D MK IILens: Canon 24-105 f/4 L IS USMFocal length: 24 mmAperture: f/5.0Exposure time: 1/125 s ("middle" exposure)ISO: 400Number of exposures: 3E.V. Step: 2Flash used: noTripod: noFilters: noSoftware: Magic Lantern 2.3, Photomatix Pro 4.2.7 (Details Enhancer), Lightroom 5, Photoshop ...

Montpellier Cathedral

I really liked cathedral in Montpellier - it's quite monumental, especially the entrance with very tall columns (you can see them in the photo above). And what's interesting on the left to it (in what seems to be extension of cathedral building) is situated medical university.I used UWA (ultra wide-angle) lens because there wasn't much space and I wanted to fit cathedral and its surrounding in a frame.Technical details:Camera:...

Tutorial: how to save disk space

You probably know this issue - you take thousands of photographs on each of your photo shoots. You shoot mainly RAW. You don't have time to delete all bad photos after copying them to disk. You quickly end up with a few TB disk being completely full. You know this, don't you?It's what happens to me every few weeks or months so I would like to share some tips with you what you can do to minimize this (or at least to slow this...