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.

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.

Crosstown Wroclaw

So the weather is finally looking like it is starting to turn into dare I suggest sunshine in England and I will hopefully soon have some pictures of glorious summer days and heavenly summer evenings to decorate this blog with. I did go out yesterday evening to take some shots and though I did get a few, I've decided to hold back on the immediate processing and perhaps wait until Thursday to share one. It was mainly as a scouting mission to be honest. As I have recently moved house to the other side of Newbury, I've been looking at locations I haven't seen before to get inspiration from, for when the skies are looking better. I got lost on my run along the canal the other day but it had the positive effect of giving me many ideas for photos when I return with a camera. I would just like to thank though, the people that were having a barbecue at the Thatcham Nature Discovery Centre on Sunday. Having to run (limp) past the glorious smell of a barbecue that I was not invited to, was not what I needed at the end of a tiring run!

Anyway, to try and get back the international feel (??) to this blog, I decided to post a picture from the Polish city of Wroclaw, which I took last year whilst visiting. I'm getting married in Poland this September in the hard to pronounce village of Krzeszow, which is a good hour or perhaps more from the city of Wroclaw in south west Poland. It is within stunning countryside though and I will post a picture soon of the Basilica we are getting married in, it is an absolutely stunning sight.

Germanic Poland

I've just been looking back at the blog posts for the last few weeks and realised there has not been many international ones. They have been quite local pictures and though that is obviously my best source of material for this blog, a website that is called 'The Photographic World of Pete Halewood' should have some more regular foreign destinations. Now I am not a professional travel photographer but I am ambitious enough to want to travel as much as possible and though I was downbeat a little while ago about my chances of travelling a lot this year, things have changed a little (I'll explain more about that in a future blog) and there might be opportunities now to go to a few foreign lands this year.

So that brings me today's picture. This was taken in the centre of Wroclaw, a city in the south west region of Poland. In fact it's so far in the south west that for hundreds of years it was part of Germany, where it was called Breslau. This picture shows the German architectural style in the background and the fountain in the foreground is part of the rapidly modernising aspect of the city. Wroclaw is developing culturally and economically at a fast pace and not only is it one of the host cities for this years Euro 2012 tournament but it will be the European Capital of Culture in 2016.

Mystery Building of Wroclaw

This picture will certainly teach to pay more attention on my visits out and about. Having in the past been a keen history student, I'm normally very good at remembering buildings I see and talking about them, but with so many sights seen in the 1 day I was wandering round Wroclaw in Poland, I needed the help of the internet to find out which particular building this was. And it's failed me big time! Even my last resort of visiting wikipedia has turned up nothing, which is entirely due to their 'blackout' yesterday (cheers guys!). But oh well, as they say, it's nice to have a bit of mystery in life! By the time I post this on Flickr later, hopefully I will have found out the name of the building, but many searches through Wroclaw's visitor sites proved pretty fruitless so I'm not exactly encouraged about finding it soon.

I posted many pictures of Wroclaw on my previous website, so many people will know how much I love this place. Despite my short time there, I picked up immediately on the culture, history and excitement of this city. It really is a rapidly developing cultural city of Poland, and has been awarded the status of being European Capital of Culture for 2016. So if you're ever in that neck of the woods, this is one place you won't regret visiting (note to self: should definitely have been a presenter on 'Wish You Were Here').

Wroclaw Side Streets

This is a glimpse of what you can find if you wander down some of the side streets in the fabulous city of Wroclaw, in south west Poland. I’ve spoken at length previously of how much I loved my time in Wroclaw and going back to these pictures does make me miss it even more. I remember wanting to picture this scene because it seemed so unlike a Polish city. It looks like something you would perhaps see in a country like Cuba or Mexico (Disclaimer – I haven’t actually been to those countries) but there were actually quite a few similar places in Wroclaw, looking a bit ‘Spanish’ to my liking. My Polish still isn’t fantastic but I’m sure any educated guess would conclude that this is a café / coffee house.