Purgatorio

Forgive me for indulging in a little artistic flair with this picture, it is not my usual subject or approach, but there was something that intrigued me about this little place, especially the composition. It seemed right to give it an artistic 'moody' tone'.

I'm currently reading Dante's The Divine Comedy, hence the inspiration for this picture and it's title. I'm sure most of you are familiar with The Divine Comedy, but for those who aren't, it is a medieval work of a poet who travels to Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio) and finally Heaven (Paradiso). The poem begins in Inferno, which is the part I am still reading, and whilst learning how to keep myself away from Hellfire, I can only imagine what the next stage, Purgatorio, would look like. I think it would exactly like this though (I am kidding of course).

This picture was taken at the magnificent Zamek (Castle) Książ in Wałbrzych, Poland. It's long history actually predates The Divine Comedy (written around 1300), and has largely been the seat of German nobleman over the centuries.

There is no HDR here. I did take bracketed shots, but that was mainly to be able to get the right exposure, before the image got shaky (it was taken handheld). I shot it at ISO 640, but did little noise reduction, so the image did not lose it's grittiness and come out too clean. 'Til next time....

The Oldest Church in Town

Never is it lost on me that it has been a long time (over a month) since my last blog. I've been unmotivated and uninspired, and at the same time incredibly busy with photography work. I will post soon about what I have been working on project wise (interior design shoots), but for today I will post a picture from my latest trip to Poland.

As usual with my trips to Poland, there wasn't that much free time. There is normally a celebration going on of some sort, and this time it was about my Wife's sister, who was getting married. I turned 33 while I was out in Poland and taking a break from their hectic wedding plans, our hosts kindly took me to some old parts of Poland, which ended in visiting this Church in the town of Swidnica.

Not speaking as good Polish as I would like, I struggle to remember the history very well from my fleeting visits to places, but I was pleased to see when I looked this church up on the net just now, that it is called The Evangelical Church of Peace (what a name!) and is a UNESCO world heritage site. There is a great story to how this church came to be built, but I will save that for another blog post!

This is the main organ front, facing away from the altar, and from a photographic point of view, carries on my love of HDR photography. Luckily churches in Poland do not give you grief about using tripods, so I was able to take my time to get these bracketed shots, which made up this picture.

It would not be right to say hello and not blog again soon, therefore, I will be back with another blog post on Thursday.

Mountain Hut in Oil

Today's picture is a little bit of an experiment. I recently took advantage of Topaz Lab's half price offer of Topaz Simplify for half price in February, of which this picture is my early result. As you may know, I am always interested to bring an artistic side to my photography where possible, and the reason I do so many HDR's is because this naturally adds an artistic element. It is not the only type of processing I want to explore though, and I used Topaz Simply (and a lot of photoshop blending modes afterwards) to create this oil painting look for this scene.

I'm not 100% sold yet on Simplify's ability to transform your photographs into paintings, but I feel with a lot of work carried out in Photoshop alongside it, you can perhaps get the image close to what you imagined. I will keep trying of course, and post any other results after my forays into Topaz Simplify.

My wife and I (and dog) are taking a mini break in a Dorset cottage (I've checked, there's no flooding) from Thursday to Sunday, so this will be my last blog until Sunday. Hope you guys have a nice week, I will post some iPhone shots I take in Dorset onto Twitter.

Where the Kings Rest

Taking a break from my recent trilogy of Dubai pictures, today's picture finds us in historic Europe, more specifically the Polish city of Krakow. This is Wawel Cathedral, within the huge Wawel hill grounds, one of the key places for tourists to visit when venturing into this part of Poland. The cathedral is one of the most important historic buildings within Poland, being the burial sight of many Polish kings since the medieval age. More recently, it is also the resting place of Lech Kaczynski and his wife, who were both tragically killed in an air crash on 10th April 2010. He was the President of Poland at the time.

I have mentioned in the last couple of months how I am very influenced recently by the work of Serge Ramelli and Glyn Dewis, and that continues to be the case. Their compositing style of creating pictures has intrigued me to think where I can take a photograph during post-processing, and I have used compositing techniques to complete this picture. Whether you call it a photograph or digital art, does not matter to me.

You can see the original file below and compare the 2 pictures together by clicking on one of them, and then using the arrows to flick between them. The original below is still at the point where I have cropped, adjusted and prepared the file before exporting it to Photoshop. I didn't think it would be a good comparison to compare the finished version with the untouched RAW file.

Although the sky in the original is not bad, it lacks colour or character, so I replaced it with a red evening sky I pictured recently. As you can see, I have also eliminated (in a nice digital way) all the people within the picture. This was probably the most painstaking and pixel level work I have done in Photoshop yet. I then added the birds from a stock photo, carried out some adjustment work in Topaz Clarity, and finally added a colour filter in Nik Color Efex Pro.

I hope everyone is having a nice weekend. I am slightly concerned about the water levels outside my apartment (we are on the ground floor) due to the recent onslaught of rain we have had in England recently. I don't think I remember visiting a shop that sells sandbags, so hopefully it won't come to that. Will be back here on Tuesday with another picture from Dubai.

"We will find a way or we will make one"

Quote is from Hannibal (247-181BC)

Hedgerow City

Staying in Poland for today's picture (and close to Zakopane), this is one of those pictures that was taken on a whim. And what you might call a bit of a fluke. I had noticed this wonderful landscape scene on our way to Zakopane, while travelling in Poland last year, and had made a mental note to perhaps try and stop somewhere near here on the way out of Zakonepane, a few days later. Well of course I completely forgot about that mental note, so of course when we passed this landscape on our journey between Zakopane and Krakow, I rushed to get my camera out my bag (I of course was not driving) and took some quick shots out of the car window.

Most of them came out blurry due to the travelling car, but this one shot at a lower exposure and faster shutter speed came out pretty good. It's still not tack sharp, but it achieved the vision I had aimed for when picturing this scene. It would have been better if the sky was more interesting, but you can't have everything (though I'll keep trying)! This picture was processed with a mixture of Lightroom and Photoshop, with a lot of work done to balance out the light.

The Lake on the Mountain

You may have seen my tweet last night saying that my usual Saturday blog, has been delayed until Sunday (today), and with good reason. I could not be putting the time and energy that I am now into this blog post, if I was writing it last night. So I thought on this occasion, it was best to wait for it to be ready, before putting it 'out there'.

The scene you see above was captured in the Polish mountain region of Zakopane, during last summer. I have written before about the revealing of the landscape from the clouds, just as we made it to our planned destination. It seemed quite a miracle in a way, considering it had been nothing but dense fog on the way up, but even still, this moment was temporary and fleeting. There was another lake we really wanted to visit known as 'Mirror Lake' (it is a very common image on postcards of Zakopane), and we made it there late in the day, but the dense fog never left the lake, so there was no great surprises twice that day. All my pictures there are just a bit of water and stones, behind a massive layer of clouds.

For the photographers out there, you probably guessed that this was taken from a single RAW image. I had taken many bracketed shots in this location, but with the dynamic range able to be captured in a single image, you then have to decide if it looks best in HDR, or processed as a single photo. Despite some tutorials out there, I don't believe you can create the 'HDR look' in Lightroom, or other non-HDR specialist software. Even if you are processing a single RAW image, the only way I believe to get the HDR look, is to tone-map it in Photomatix, or some other HDR software. I don't think this shot would have worked as an HDR, and to be honest there was no need really. I was happy to bring the most out of the scene, without giving it that artistic look time.

I processed it entirely in Lightroom, and have displayed my setting below that I used to achieve the final image:

Bringing down the highlights and opening up the shadow areas, helps you bring out the most of the dynamic range, and I often adjust the whits and blacks to refine the highlight and shadow areas. It just helps bring the realism and contrast back. Clarity I think adds the drama to the scene, the highlight and shadow colour settings, give it the colour tone I was after. I have no hard and fast rule for sharpening, except for zooming in and dragging the slider along until I feel it is just right. I always add masking though, to make sure that it sharpens the necessary features, and not a blanket sharpening job.

Hope you have enjoyed that quick look into the making of this picture, I will definitely look to include more of them in future.

John Paul II Statue Krakow

Staying in Poland for the third picture in a row, today's photo is back in Krakow, the beautiful and culturally rich city in the south west. As I have written in a previous blog post, Krakow is heavily associated with the former Pope John Paul II, who indeed was Bishop of Krakow for many years before becoming Pope in 1978. He is honoured throughout of the city of Krakow, but I particularly like this memorial outside this mysterious church, which I cannot seem to find anywhere on online. Of course it will teach me to pay attention when I'm visiting, but then I am too busy normally taking pictures.

Fact: I had to wait at least 10 minutes to take this picture, due to a woman standing right in front of the statue, taking pictures on her mobile phone, and literally staring at them for about 2 minutes at a time. I have learned to be patient as a photographer travelling, but this this was a test of the highest order. She must have seen me standing there waiting to take a picture the whole time. Oh well, patience pays off and all that.

The Lakehouse

Here we go again Saturday night.....I thought about posting a picture of a singer in Oxford, due to the fact it is the UK X Factor final night, but that would perhaps mean losing any credibility I have. Therefore, I have decided to remain within the Polish National Park of Zakopane. I had to check I haven't posted this picture before, but it seems I haven't, so we are good to go.

The trek to get to this lake was about 3 hours of steep but beautiful adventure. It was taken near the spot of my Mountain Hut picture from a few months ago, and likewise is an HDR photo, created from 4 exposures. Topaz Adjust was also used to bring back detail in the mountain side and the lake.

Waterfall of Zakopane

Regular viewers (the 3 of you) of this blog may recognise this picture. It's actually a new version of this waterfall pictured in Zakopane, Poland. I posted an HDR version a few months ago, but I much prefer this non-HDR version, that I processed afterwards. It's much cleaner and sharper, and proves I didn't really need to 'HDR' this one. Having said that, I have taken some of the HDR version's elements and blended them into this picture, such as the water in the foreground, that was more brought to life with the HDR features.

Tip: Blending HDR elements into non-HDR pictures (and vice versa) can help give you the best of both worlds.

Back to the regular blogging schedule tomorrow. I have been a day late twice this week, because of metal and fatigue.

The Simple Life

Third Saturday in a row and still going strong. It's great fun being back to the regular blogging scene, it is the only way I get blogs done. When there's no structure to posting, it can take ages to make your mind up to post.

This is a simple picture, of a simple way of life. It was taken in Poland, at a village just outside the magnificent city of Wroclaw. I processed this almost entirely in Lightroom, with some minor clone stamping work done in Photoshop (to remove the engine on the boat). Obviously, I have got a little creative with the tone of the picture, but I like the fact that it is predominantly a light shade of green, rather than a green tree, with a blue lake, and brown sand, and so on. It helps gives the picture some coherence, if that makes any sense at all.

Hope everyone is having a nice weekend - 18 days until Christmas now, it always creeps up so fast! See you on Tuesday!

The Magic Kingdom of Krakow

Ok, so I may owe a slight debt to Walt Disney for the title, but I'm sure the Disney Magic Kingdom owes (at least some of) it's design to the magnificent churches of central Europe. All over Europe you can of course find magnificent old and new castles and churches, and Poland is no exception. The church above is St. Joseph's Church in the Podgorze district of Krakow, slightly away from the city centre. It was built at the beginning of the 20th Century, and is well regarded as a magnificent work of architecture. We were only passing by on our way into Krakow when I took this picture, so it was captured during standard daylight (there are some wonderful photos taken of this church at dawn/sunset), but I still could not resist firing off some bracketed shots to create an HDR, no matter if it is a fairly touristy shot.

It was nevertheless a difficult picture to process (as these tall churches often are), as it does feel the building has been compacted a little. I could fix this in Lightroom, but then I lost the pathway leading up to the church, which I had specifically allowed for in the composition at the scene. Sacrifices have to be made occasionally I guess, but the HDR work and a bit of Topaz Adjust has given me a result I was hoping for.

New Beginnings / The Wroclaw River

Saturday was a fairly new beginning for this site. For too long, I had not been giving it the attention it deserved, and my output of photographs this year has been relatively quite small. The odd thing as I said on Saturday is that my passion for photography is as strong as ever. I'm so keen to learn all the techniques I can on youtube videos and webinars, and having upgraded all my software recently to Lightroom 5/ Photoshop CC, I for the first time want to be an expert on these programs. I have been particularly been enjoying videos by Serge Ramelli and Glyn Dewis recently, and I highly recommend their photo tutorials. The photo community is indeed one of the most giving communities in the art world, and it sometimes astonishes me what you can learn for free, if you want to.

You may notice there is a new look to this website, and as well as having reverted back to my 3 days a week blogging, I would also like to state what this photography website is about:

*Regular HDR (and non-HDR) photographs from myself.
*Tips on taking and processing photographs.
*My view on recent topics in the photography world and software.
*Recommendations of great photographers and websites out there.

What it is certainly not:

*A means to slate any other photographers or photography companies (there's too much of that these days).
*A merry-go-round of ideas I say I'm going to do and don't.

Despite constant going back and forth (due to the whole and rather boring watermark issue this year), all my photos on here will be watermark and border free. I copyright my work, so am not worried about people using it for whatever use, unless it is a large clear case of profiting, despite copyright infringement.

I of course thank all the people who keep visiting this website, and I only hope I can make up for my lack of output this year, with my new 3 blogs a week scheme. It seemed a bit too much to blog 3 times a week before, but even if it is low on text, there will be no problem for me to post a picture at least every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

The Wroclaw River

The river that runs through the Polish city of Wroclaw is the River Oder (pronounced o-dra). This was a handheld HDR (you can just about get away with it in good light) and is taken from 5 separate exposures. As I said, I have been watching a lot of tutorials over the last few months, which has led me to experiment with a lot of non-HDR pictures. I processed this picture over the weekend, to bring myself back into the HDR processing world, which I love so much!

Tip: HDR pictures are always better taken on a tripod. I say that as a guy who hates carrying tripods, and accepts that it is simply not possible to always have one with you. However, though you can get fine handheld HDR's in good light, the slight movements of camera shake can show up when you view the images back on the computer. A set of motion-free sharp images gives you the best chance of producing a wonderfully sharp HDR image.

Village Life Poland

Another example of 'hyper-realistic' HDR, as I blogged about yesterday. Unlike yesterday's photo though, I did not 'hyper' the sky as well. It's dangerous territory I think to apply a global effect to any post-processing technique (sharpening being another example), but of course there are pictures it will work for.

This is from a village just outside Wroclaw in Poland. My wife does not actually like me taking pictures such as this of her home country, as she thinks it represents Poland in a way (she thinks) most people think of, which is under-developed and poor. Having been several times, I can promise you it is not like that, but in fact I love these old rustic buildings, that are so hard to find in England. They lend themselves so well to HDR, as there is so much detail to capture. Therefore, another good candidate for a hyper-realistic (must stop using that word) look.

The Wroclaw Saxophonist

Taking a mini break from the southern most part of Poland (and HDR processing) to the south-western city of Wroclaw. It was near this city that I was based for most of the recent 2 weeks I was in Poland, as it is the nearest city to my Wife's family in Poland.

I have visited Wroclaw several times now and thoroughly enjoy it each time. I have written about it plenty of times on my photographic blogs, but it always springs up new sights for me to photograph.

This wonderful scene presented itself as we were walking towards the Wroclaw Cathedral, a saxophonist playing his heart out to the numerous tourists visiting Wroclaw. It was a great place to ply his trade, against the back drop of the cathedral, and it was only right that I gave him some (well deserved) money, for the opportunity to take some pictures.

I always envisioned this picture as a sepia/black & white image, as I feel it gives an authentic and historical feel to it.

An Enchanting Part of Poland

Disney title perhaps? Maybe, I was indeed struggling to come up with a title for this picture, especially as the one that kept coming to my mind 'The Land of Krzeszow' had already been used on a previous photo. In the end I couldn't get away from the 'magic kingdom' feel to the picture (maybe that's just me), albeit this being a very real and wonderful place. Yes this is one of my favourite pictures to come out of my recent trip to south west Poland, and an idea I hope of how truly beautiful the landscape and scenery is in this part of the world.

It is has been quite a long time in the making this picture, even the last day or so I have been uploading to my HalewoodPhotographic.com site and then reloading it, because I have made tiny adjustments I think will improve it. I know it can be a dangerous game spending too long processing a picture, but in the end if your heart is telling you it can be improved, then it's best to go with it.

This is a single image taken hand-held from near the top of a hill that overlooks the village of Krzeszow in Poland. I didn't want to have to say it again on this site, but one more time, the wonderful holy building you can see in the picture is the Basilica of the assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Have I mentioned I got married there recently?

Gateway to the Basilica

The Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Krzeszow is not a name I want to keep writing (for obvious reasons!), but when it is surrounded with so much photographic inspiration, it's very hard to refrain from blogging about it. As the title suggests, this is the entrance to grounds of the Basilica, and as I was taking pictures around the ground that evening, I noticed the sunlight peering through the gate, which gave a fantastic effect against the lightly coloured gateway. The pathway you see in the picture leads directly behind the point of view towards the Basilica (this is shot from within the grounds).

This is a 5 shot HDR (-2 to +2) and was shot handheld with my D700, not easy to do, but as I have mentioned recently, I was having so many problems with my tripod keeling over on me in Poland, that I began to view it as a nuisance. I have since bought a new and much more professional piece of kit.

When I talk about HDR as I have above, and you are still not sure what it is, you can now read the 'What is HDR?' page on my official website HalewoodPhoto.com. This I hope gives you a good basis on what a HDR (High Dynamic Range) photograph is.

The Priest's House

The Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary has been mentioned a few times since I returned from Poland, but I haven't spoken much about the surrounding area. Within the grounds of the Basilica, there is another smaller church (although even older than the Basilica!), a mausoleum, a nun's house and also this, today's picture, the priest's house. If you were to turn 90 degrees right from this picture, you would see the Basilica right in front of you. I'm not sure if it has been officially declared it yet, but the basilica and the surrounding area is to become a world heritage site this year, a very deserving accolade and one I hope draws more attention to this spectacular part of south west Poland. I have been in the Priest's house on a couple of occasions, mainly to sign away any rights I may have had to allow a Church of England boy to marry in a spectacular Catholic basilica in Poland, but it wasn't that much trouble and of course I have no regrets.

This is an HDR picture made up of 4 exposures (the 5th and brightest exposure was useless and unnecessary), which I took handheld due to having tripod troubles. As this was evening, I had to crank the ISO up to about 800, but due to the D700's ISO handling ability, it wasn't a problem. That would not have been the case with my D90. The tripod troubles were caused by bolts coming loose and therefore having unstable legs, and since I have come back to England has busted completely (ball head broke). I don't want to get petty and name the make, but I can safely say that tripod was the worst money I have spent during my time with photography. I had it for about 9 months until it was unusable. The truth be told I shouldn't have bought it in the first place, I don't even like the way it works, but I thought it would at least give me stability for a while. I have now done what I should have done in the first place and bought a decent Manfrotto setup, which is ten times better and will hopefully be my trustworthy tripod for years to come.

Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Krzeszów

Easily one of the hardest buildings I have ever tried to photograph, the Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a very special place to me, as it was here that I was recently married. Yes it beats the local village church! Or I should say an English village church, because Krzeszow is only a small village, and this is how they do their churches! Ok that's not really true, it is indeed a rarity to have a Basilica this massive in a small Polish village, but sometimes that's where these grand holy places turn up. The area itself has switched hands a few times between Poland and Germany over the last 1000 years and I believe this Basilica was part of a Germanic state when it was built between 1728 and 1735. There is an old painting inside of the virgin Mary that dates back to the 13th century and is a holy relic.

As I said at the beginning though, photographing this building is a real challenge. I had a DSLR with my last year when I visited and didn't get any satisfactory close up shots. As you maybe able to tell, getting the whole building in the picture is very far from easy. I was lying down on the ground, nearly as far back in the grounds as possible to get this evening shot and you can still tell the distortion and warping issues you have (after correction I should add). Although I shoot with a full frame camera now, the only way you could make it easier is to shoot with a 14-24mm lens but I still think the distortion and warping issues with that must be immense. There are many single shots like this I have been working on with this church, and I'm sure more will appear but the thing I actually most like about this picture is the person you can see at the bottom and to the left of the Basilica. It gives you an idea of the sheer size of this building, and it was a joy to see my English guests for the wedding completely overwhelmed at the first sight of it.

One thing I did not picture and do not intend to, is the inside of this Basilica. Ok so you aren't supposed to take pictures inside, but nevertheless many people do. It's amazing outside but inside it is simply one of the most stunning buildings I have entered and though I am a photographer, I do not believe a picture could even nearly do it justice. I was delighted to see the photographer Jeremy Cowart express a similar sentiment on Twitter recently, that he couldn't bring himself to picture a sunset he was witnessing, because it was too beautiful and he couldn't hope to do it justice with a photo. That is how I have always felt about the inside of this building and it's great to know I'm not the only one thinks like that!

News Update!

Ok so it is not my intention to brag about any accomplishment I achieve within the photographic world, but like the Grass Snake I spoke about on Sunday, something happened yesterday that completely made my day. My Justice for the 96 picture was selected as the lead photo in an article by Liverpool Football Club entitled 'Eleven Stunning Pictures of Anfield'. This means that my photo is currently appearing on the front page of the website (see picture below)! It never bothered me, but I always thought it would be great recognition to get a photo of mine on the Flickr Front Page but to be honest, appearing on the front page of my beloved football club's website I will take over Flickr any day of the week, month, year and so on forever!

Here is the link to that article http://www.liverpoolfc.com/news/latest-news/eleven-superb-anfield-photos

Rural Poland

Getting closer to the Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary now, this is clearly different from Tuesday's picture, by being taken on more level ground. It was actually captured the evening before the last picture, but was nonetheless a great opportunity to picture the spectacular Polish landscape, this again being the village of Krzeszow. Whilst out in Poland, the weather for most of the time was very good. Unlike England, you get a much better sense of autumn out there, and indeed all the trees were starting to, or had turned, a beautiful shade of orange and red. With the sun being out a lot, the sunsets in the hilly landscape were quite stunning and I drove a short distance out of the village to get this picture over the misty autumn evening as the sun set.

I'm not always in agreement that you should take your tripod out with you on every photography trip. I often find it can be cumbersome and unnecessary, especially when you are working with daylight. Even HDR's in that case can be done handheld (of course there are other factors that affect that possibility), but with today's picture, a tripod was absolutely necessary. First of all, because the light really was quite low and any handheld shots would have been unsharp and potentially blurry, and secondly, because HDR was essential in this case, to capture all the light and tones of the landscape. So after experimenting with a few different compositions, apertures and ISO's, this is final image I think worked best on all fronts. I think this picture works in black & white as well, but I will perhaps save that one for another day.

Coming up on Sunday: I put my wildlife photographer hat back on, with a picture of a Grass Snake pictured at Cuckmere Haven near Eastbourne last weekend!