Here’s yesterday’s sundown, orange painted on a blue sky. Art? No, not really, at least not my own 
I’ve omitted the white border and the image links to a full-size version. Feel free to do as I did and use it as a wallpaper.
The Song of the Day is “Orange Colored Sky” from Natalie Cole’s tribute album to her father “Unforgettable: With Love”. Hear a live version on YouTube, and while we’re at it, you may know it but I didn’t, Lady Gaga performed it also and I like it as well.
I have labeled this image “HDR”, but technically that is wrong. It is a fusion of three bracketed exposures, aligned and merged with masks in Photoshop. Pretty much effort went into making this as naturally looking as was possible and, frankly, I think it turned out pretty well.
The challenge here is to maintain the blinding brightness of the sun, but without having to sacrifice detail. This is a matter of carefully blending the original exposures and of using localized “Exposure” layers and curves to smooth out the sky. Basically we want brightness to fade out from the sun’s center along something like a Gaussian Bell curve.
HDR tone mapping programs like Photomatix Pro are pretty good at that and I could have gone that route, but as I had also to eliminate some lens flares, I tackled it manually.
Cloning out the flares was challenging as well. They were of course in the central clouds and there was simply no material to clone from. You may know that problem: if you get the right texture and luminosity, the color is off and vice versa.
The solution is, to do it in separate steps. I use a blank, transparent layer in “Luminosity” blending mode and I just clone from parts with the right texture and luminosity. In order to better see what I do, I have a temporary desaturation layer on top, i.e. above the target layer of my cloning operation. This works, because in the “Sample” drop-down menu of the “Clone” tool bar, I always use “Current & Below”. Thus I can use layers above the current layer to amplify aspects of the image, but this amplification is not taken up by the clone brush. When I’m satisfied with smooth textures, I remove the desaturation layer.
At that moment color is completely and irritatingly off. That was the reason for working under a desaturation screen in the first place: colors, especially saturated ones tend to give an impression of changed luminosity.
The final step is a second blank layer, but this time in “Color” blending mode. Here you clone from places with matching color, regardless of luminosity. If you want to, you can even use a light- to mid-gray layer in “Luminosity” mode above as a screen. Doing so you see only colors, no texture. A strong “Saturation” layer may help as well. Put them in a group, and then you can quickly turn the screen on and off.
In pathological cases it would be possible to refine the method further by using separate clone layers in “Hue” and in “Saturation” blending more instead of one in “Color”. Normally it will not be worth the hassle though.
The Song of the Day is “In The Morning” from the 2004 Norah Jones album “Feels Like Home”. Hear it on YouTube.
Today I was pretty satisfied with the idea to take one of yesterday’s images, the fence with the yellow stone and post. I knew I wouldn’t have much time for photography and I didn’t have a problem with that. After all, there are still some images from Aquileia, Italy waiting to be posted, two others taken this week, and I really could use a break as well.
It’s supposed to stay warm and sunny, only today some rain was forecast and rain we got. Not as much as the thirsty earth would need, but enough to give us an interesting spectacle in the sky.
More than three hours are between the Image of the Day and the rainy day sunset. Both images have been taken from our roof terrace, the first with the Olympus 45/1.8, the second with the Panasonic 20/1.7.
At first I was not sure if I should take them at all. I mean, from the terrace? And what’s the subject anyway? Turns out I very much like them both; like them for the light, like them for showing how it was. After all: that IS a quality
The Song of the Day is “The Storm” from Marcia Ball’s 2003 album “So Many Rivers”. Great music, hear it on YouTube.
Here’s one more from Sunday afternoon. I think the way the clouds are reflected and how the reflection melts into the sky is pretty interesting.
It’s not a square and I didn’t want to stretch it. It was just the only way to take an image of this building without having distractions in the frame. Any other angle wouldn’t have worked.
The Song of the Day is “You And The Clouds Will Still Be Beautiful” from the 2000 XTC album “Wasp Star (Apple Venus Volume 2)”. Hear it on YouTube.
Today it was pretty clear that the sundown would be spectacular, I just couldn’t decide where to go.
My first impulse was Faaker See, a lake very near Villach, where I know a place that’s ideal for picturing the setting sun. There is still ice on the lake though, and because I wanted reflections in water, I finally chose the bridge over the river Drau/Drava in Rosegg, an old favorite of mine.
The Song of the Day is “Orange Colored Sky” by Michael Bublé. Hear it on YouTube.
Oh and, just because I stumbled upon it, here’s one song more: a fantastic “Blue Moon” by an early Frank Sinatra. SCNR 
I’ve been in Carinthia one day earlier today, because I had to bring the car to a car repair shop.
The appointment was for 8:00, thus I started out early and also made some images. The Image of the Day with its perfect alignment of moon and the mountain Mittagskogel was one of them.
I used ISO 640 and by accident I kept ISO at that for the whole day. That’s the kind of stupidity that you end up with when a camera does not have reasonably intelligent auto ISO
Oh, by the way, you may remember that I wished Nikon would implement auto ISO in a way that takes focal length into account. Good news: wish granted. Bad news: so far only on the D4
The Song of the Day is “Fingernail Moon” from Annie Lennox’ 2007 album “Songs Of Mass Destruction”. Hear it on YouTube.
The rather mediocre image of the last post was even a heavy crop to get at least a resemblance of a composition. No, Sunday was not my most inspired day. I drove around, made some lake images and soon realized that I was just not in the mood.
In the end this is what I saw from our terrace. I liked the multi-layered sky, took a few images, and this is probably the best of them. Well, a sundown. But then, it just was not my day
“Burning Sky” is from the 1979 Jam album “Setting Sons”. Hooray, unlike all other songs with the word “sky” in the title, I have not used this song before
Hear it on YouTube. Oh and, btw, DxO had a hard time with this image, Photoshop was it in the end.
It’s Monday evening, I’m in Vienna again. I almost didn’t take photographs at all, I simply had no time. Wednesday night I tried to catch up, using some images made on Saturday and some memories from Italy, and now I’m trying the same again. Sorry, believe me, my life is more irregular these days than my blog
There is nothing remarkable in this sky, it’s only the fact that I took the image from our roof terrace the first evening that we stayed in the new apartment. So this time it really was “the other side”, although so many things were unfinished yet.
The Song of the Day, “Up In The Sky” from the 1984 Oasis album “Definitely Maybe”, appeared first on this blog in “336 – Split Decision / Up In The Sky“. Hear it on YouTube.
Yesterday was Monday. I took a single image in the morning, this one, and then I went back to bed for half an hour more of sleep. When I woke up again it was drizzling, and although the day ended bright and sunny, I found no more time for photography.
The Song of the Day is “Morninglight” from Amanda Jenssen’s 2010 album “Happyland”. I have already used it two months ago in “1749 – Morninglight“. Hear it on YouTube.
Here’s some more in that reckless spirit. In normal colors it didn’t do anything to me, but this is a sky like right out of Quake III Arena
The Song of the Day is the Soundgarden classic “Black Hole Sun“, today presented from Paul Anka’s 2005 album of mostly very good cover versions “Rock Swings”. YouTube has it.
Hell, even the album cover is a nice match