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.

"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.

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.

Revelations

Going back to the theme of mountain climbing from one of my previous blogs 'The Mountain Hut', today's picture was taken on the same day, not too long after that picture. I had already been and walked around these lakes and by this time I was heading for the next lake, some 2 hours walk away.

As I spoke about in that previous blog, the visibility was not great when we got to these lakes, so high up in the mountains, but there were moments when it just drifted off (or drifted 'around' would be more appropriate) and gave glimpses of the magnificence of the surrounding landscape. I had no time to set up a tripod for this shot, so this is a hand held HDR taken from 4 exposures.

I may try this as a non-HDR as well, as 1 or 2 of the shots were able to capture the dynamic range of the scene within the exposure, but I wanted to make an HDR out of this first and foremost, to bring out the texture of the clouds. Plus of course I always like that arty look, that HDR brings.

Mountain Hut

The 2nd offering from my trip to Poland and today's picture remains in Zakopane. I am by no means a mountain climber, but as you climb these high mountains there is a feeling you get which asks yourself if it will be worth it when you reach the top? This was taken on my first day in Zakopane and generally the weather was ok, but as we got near to the top of our planned destination, the visibility got less and less.

Having dodged Brown Bears, Wolves and Lynx's, we got to these lakes we wanted to see near the top of the mountains in this region, to see nothing much but the clouds right in front of us. However, rather magically, the mist began to clear after a short while at the top and suddenly we could see many spectacular sights all around us. One of my favourite 'revelations' was this little mountain hut, which I'm not sure what purpose it had (there was a visitor cafe hut just a little further away). It gave me all those wonderful mountain images in my mind though and was an obvious choice for an HDR photo.

Zakopane - A Photographer's Dream

There are not many places that can be called 'a photographer's dream'. Certainly Paris and Venice would be obvious examples, but normally the photographer has to work hard in any location to produce a worthwhile result. Certain locations though, give you plenty of 'raw material' to help you produce those great shots.

Zakopane is a well known beauty spot in southern Poland, and I was very lucky to get an opportunity to visit this special place, having spent the last 2 weeks in Poland. I have been interested in photographing Zakopane (officially called the 'Tatra National Park') since I watched a video of Charlie Waite, one of my favourite photographers teaching a class of Polish photographers. Here is a link to that video. In particular, after watching his video, I wanted to get close to the fast flowing streams that flow down the mountains of Zakopane, of which the picture above is the result.

It is an HDR taken from 3 images, and luckily I had the 'blurred stream' effect on all 3 RAW images. This was achieved by shooting at F/22 and ISO 100, but was helped by the misty and cloudy weather, keeping the light level low.

I returned from Poland very early this morning and have had my most enjoyable and (I believe) rewarding photographic trip of the year. Lots of photos to come...