Stein am Rhein

Posted on November 28th, 2013

If you stay in Switzerland for some time, you have to visit this small town called Stein am Rhein, near the German border. It’s so lovely. But how to get a city place like this with a lot of tourists empty? First don’t go at weekend, and go when the weather isn’t in best condition. So you have not too many people in your pictures. And now it comes to the best part: Use a tripod, set your camera to fully manual and take a first shot. Wait until the crowded part of your first image is empty and shoot again. You don’t have to wait until the whole place is empty. You need each part only for one time clean. And now, you can, with the help of Photoshop, rubber out every person in your image.
If this is not enough, you can use in addition a fullstopper ND filter. Then you can take the images up to 30s each at noon and the people are nearly gone, because of their moving.
For this image I needed 4 series of 3 shots, a total of 12 shots and didn’t use an ND filter.

The little acorn so big

Posted on November 28th, 2013

It was at the days when I had a new macro lens. I was going out and took photos of every little piece I’d found. Like this small acorn which looks a bit like a mellon, isn’t it? I was so fascinated of the small world. I was beginning to see things I never realised that they where there. Since then I am walking around with a diffrent view and I see more things than ever before. And I can recommend you to do this too. Go out into the nature and search for beautiful small things you never saw in that kind and you will have a changed view of the world around you.
Hm, I think it’s time to do that again, go out and shoot some nice little pieces of nature.

The lake panorama

Posted on November 26th, 2013

On our tour through norway we passed a lot of lakes. There are so many lakes in this country, you can’t count it (oh, nearly a rhyme). Sometimes I needed to take a hard break, to jump out of the car, grab my camera and shoot some pictures. So was it at this lake. Because we were too close or the lake was too big, I decided to take a panorama 3×3 images for an HDR image. I retouch all my HDR images, after Photomatix has tonemapped, with Photoshop to fix all the ugly parts of tonemapping by hand. This means I need four images +2EV 0EV -2EV and tonemapped, which works well for single pictures. But if you stitch a panorama it is not working, because all panorama apps will stich every series different, so at the end you have 3 panoramas which are not congruent. Hmm, it would be very grateful, if somebody has an idea how I can do this exactly. So for the moment, this is only fake HDR of 3 RAW images stiched together.
Ah and I don’t know anymore which lake this was, my 5DmkII had no GPS tracking. But with my newer 6D this won’t happen anymore.

And now it’s gone

Posted on November 24th, 2013

Yes, this is my last picture of this dead tree. Short after this, in a stormy night, the wind has felled this beautiful dead old tree. Now I share this image and you might wanna take a look on it. So let us take a minute of silence in memories to an old tree … So that’s that, now we can enjoy the image

Castle entrance

Posted on November 23rd, 2013

This is an older image I took two years ago at the beginning of my testing phase. It’s the entrance of a castle near my home, called Kyburg. The goal was to get some starscapes with an interesting foreground. What I didn’t know, at that moment, was the immense light pollution here in central Europe. This and the bright moon eliminate most of the stars in the sky. But on the other hand, I’ve got a nice color gradient in the sky. It’s not a beautiful starscape but a colorful night image.
This is an image of 12 shots by 35mm 15s f/5 3200ISO with my Canon 60D.

The Geiranger fjord

Posted on November 22nd, 2013

On our tour through norway we stayed at the very beautiful Geiranger fjord. At the half way up to the pass at the steep slope, we stopped and enjoyed the awesome sight down to the fjord. On the left part you can see the end of the fjord and the village which gave it the name; Geiranger. It’s a breathtaking landscape in this area and I took an image series for this nice panorama picture.

The grove on the hill

Posted on November 21st, 2013

Sometime when I go walking with my dog, I take my camera with me. It was also a good decision on this day. The sun was near the horizon and produced long shadows and this warm light, which gives you a wonderful tone for the colored foliage. The dog was snooping around and searching his ball, so I had a bit time to take this magic moment into my photon trap. And if you search good enough, you will find little Bubu on the picture.

Bubu in the snow

Posted on November 20th, 2013

One very cold day I was walking with my dog and my camera in a beautiful snowbound landsacpe, as I saw a colorful horizont after sunset. So I kneeling down to take an exposure series as my dog exeptionally sitting down and waits for me. Normaly he is nervously snooping around. A small interesting point: it was nearly -20°C and he is a male dog and sitting on his … ouch!

Sunrise at the Klausenpass

Posted on November 19th, 2013

One night I thought it could be a good idea to take some starscapes. But where? It should be dark, with a nice landscape and not far away of a street. So the decision was driving up to the Klausenpass. Only 2.5h driving and a half hour walking was to much! The sun was coming up and there was no starscape time anymore. So I didn’t get any nightly images but instead a nice dawn.
This picture is a exposure series of 3 images with 2ev steps.

Field test nearby home

Posted on November 18th, 2013

It was a brutal cold night at the beginning of February. The temperature was below -20°C, what means ideal conditions to take some pictures outdoor in the night. Because I’m a photographer of steel! To be honest, I had only to walk 10 minutes to home But it was a test for the next night in the alps, where the temperatures would be lower than here. So you can’t see so much stars, because of the light pollution and the full moon, but instead you can see more of the landscape. This image is a stack out of 10 shots by 15s 16mm f2.8 and 400ISO.