1746 – Mining For Gold II

 Panasonic DMC-LX5  1 Response »
Jul 312011
 

Do you remember the golden water in “1740 – Mining For Gold“? Well, I’ve tried the same procedure with some other images, some of them may turn up on days of need, but today I have something different.

Basically I have tried a few subjects to find out how they lend themselves to gilding. Of course I’ve tried a landscape as well, this landscape to be precise – and it didn’t work at all.

But then, I had already spent too much time with the image to give it up, and the first thing I did, adding a solid color layer in soft light mode and blending it into the dark tones, produced an interesting image. With some selective dodging and burning and with a selective blur I arrived at what you see, and what can I say, I like it! Here’s a full-size version without border. It makes for a nice wallpaper.

The Song of the Day is again “Mining For Gold“, either from the Cowboy Junkies’ original 1988 “The Trinity Session” album, or from the 2007 “Trinity Revisited”. Whatever you took as my recommendation last time, now it’s the other :D

Hear the original version on YouTube.

1724 – It’s Too Hot For Words

 Panasonic DMC-LX5  1 Response »
Jul 102011
 

I don’t know what the exact temperatures were, in any case they were beyond 30 degrees Celsius, and that’s enough for me.

After swimming for almost an hour (which did help, although not as much as one would believe), we went up into the mountains. There is a road that I didn’t know, leading to an inn at 1960 meters. This finally did the trick :)

Somehow the heat bogged me down and made me make a big number of completely irrelevant pictures. Here’s two of them. The image of the Day was made on the way up, the other is a view from at around 1700 meters. The view is towards Villach.

The Song of the Day is “It’s Too Hot For Words” by Billie Holiday. Hear it on YouTube.

1600 – Frozen VI

 Sigma 8-16  2 Responses »
Mar 042011
 

Sixteen hundred? Oh dear!

Meanwhile I am on the train to Carinthia, and here it is, as announced, the end of the “Frozen” series. I haven’t done this ever before, posting a series of images consecutively, one image a day, but in this case I found it interesting and convenient at the same time.

It was convenient, because I was busy programming and my mind was so occupied solving riddles, that I could hardly let loose and just see. I have made some images this week, one or two may even fill a gap further down the road, but in general I was glad to already have some material.

It was interesting on the other hand, because this is essentially the same background over and again, and all six images were taken during only 20 minutes, thus it’s the same weather and light as well. I have varied the foreground and the processing, and with that comes variation of the mood. Today’s image is sightly more dreamy, and it was actually the first of the series that I took. This is the kind of composition that I had visualized, the image that I was after.

The Song of the Day is still “Frozen” from Madonna’s 1998 “Ray Of Light” album, and looking for a variation on the video, I found that this is a much covered song.

Here’s for instance a metal version by a band called DISTANCE and, probably more in tune with today’s mood, an obviously privately recorded but surprisingly good voice over piano version by some Barrie Walker. Way cool!

1599 – Frozen V

 Sigma 8-16  4 Responses »
Mar 042011
 

Slowly this series comes to an end. This is the second to last. Here is a slightly more realistic rendition of the scene. I have hardly introduced colors and instead concentrated on contrast in snow and ice.

The Song of the Day stays the same, it is again “Frozen” from Madonna’s 1998 “Ray Of Light” album, but for a change the video today is from her 2001 Drowned World Tour.

1598 – Frozen IV

 Sigma 8-16  5 Responses »
Mar 022011
 

No time to think at the moment, so I’m really glad that the last weekend was fairly productive. Here is one more image in this series, another will follow for sure and that will probably be the last.

Well, you know the routine by now, the Song of the Day is again “Frozen” from Madonna’s 1998 “Ray Of Light” album, and the video, the video today is Live at the BBC.

1597 – Frozen III

 Sigma 8-16  1 Response »
Mar 012011
 

Just as I replied to Earl’s comment on the last post: I made hardly any images today, so here’s another one in this frosty series. You see, I definitely wanted to get the sun into the frame, and as always when using an ultra-wide, I tried different foregrounds.

Colors are more rusty again, but warmth was not intended :D

The Song of the Day is again “Frozen” from Madonna’s 1998 “Ray Of Light” album and the video is still on YouTube.

1596 – Frozen II

 Sigma 8-16  2 Responses »
Mar 012011
 

I probably would have had some images for today, and for sure at least one would have been better than that of last Friday, but somehow these images of yesterday keep me occupied. By now I have four of them processed and here is number two. The others will follow soon.

A cooler interpretation, the yellows shifted more towards green, but as I say so often, you really wouldn’t want to see what the camera saw, believe me :D

The Song of the Day is still “Frozen” from Madonna’s 1998 “Ray Of Light” album. Even the video on YouTube is the same :)

1595 – Frozen

 Sigma 8-16  3 Responses »
Feb 272011
 

When we returned from Slovenia yesterday, we took the mountain road via Passo di Predil back to Tarvisio. When we passed the small mountain lake Lago del Predil, it was already dark, but I recognized the ice on the lake.

Today I figured out what would be a good time to return, decided for 1 pm, and here’s the result.

This is one of the about 20 bracketed series that I took, the only one that I have processed so far. It’s a manual blend of three exposures, spiced up with three different versions from Topaz Adjust and plenty of other layers.

The Song of the Day is “Frozen” from Madonna’s 1998 “Ray Of Light” album. See a video on YouTube. That’s a line I’ve always loved: “You’re frozen when your heart’s not open”. True :)

1594 – We Came Along This Road

 Sigma 8-16, Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC  Comments Off
Feb 272011
 

Yesterday was beautiful, so so we decided to drive to Italy and down to the sea.

What we couldn’t see from the satellite image though, was the strong haze. There were no clouds, but as soon as we got out of the last tunnel and into the plains of Friuli, it was clear, that I could forget blue skies at the sea.

Thus we reconsidered, left the highway at the exit Gemona – Osoppo, and instead took a mountain road via Tarcento and Uccea, into Slovenia, and then back to Italy, where we joined the highway again in Tarvisio.

It’s a small road between high mountains and there was still some snow left. Not exactly what we had been looking for when we set out, but hey, you’ve got to be flexible :D

I’ve created a map on Google Maps. I haven’t done that in some time, but it is extremely easy, especially now that they have an algorithm to automatically follow roads.

The Song of the Day is “We Came Along This Road” from the 2001 Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds album “No More Shall We Part”. Hear a live version on YouTube.

1422 – Chasing The Light II

 Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC  3 Responses »
Sep 062010
 

I hope you don’t mind that I stretch a short moment into two posts, but Sunday was photographically unproductive, and besides, I really like these two images.

Juha Haataja recently asked about how much we rely on all the dynamic range our cameras can capture, and the point he made is right, normally what we get suffices, but these two images show why dynamic range is still important.

The image captured by the camera contained all the dynamic range that was possibly there to capture. Of course the sun will always burn out, but everything else was pretty accurate, only the distribution was wrong. I needed +2 EV for the ground in order to make it look like what I saw, and into that image I blended the original exposure. I could have used some HDR tone mapper to do the job, but for this kind of image I prefer to do it myself. The automatic algorithms are great, but they never get the sun right :)


Anyway. Raising exposure by 2EV brought up some noise in the landscape, but not too bad. This is of course due to the camera’s great dynamic range, and I guess it is these times when I really need the 14 bit capture. Forget about doing that with a JPEG.

The Song of the Day is still “Chasing The Light” from the 1989 album “Leningrad Cowboys Go America”. Hear it on YouTube.

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