An Attempt at an HDR image...

To say it all this is the third or the fourth attempt at this same image^_^

I feel I can get a good HDR from it...
Someone would call it a false HDR as I was using only a 14.bit image... I really disagree Asit clearly shows more DR than the original Image (there are 3 different "exposures" of the same image!)
So... here it is

The subject is P.zza Maggiore in Bologna... the statue you can see in the middle of hte Photo represents Neptune... enjoy^_^

Some Lessons from a Pro..

NO! This is not about Photo tips... it's more about "creating a cover".

I believe it is easier to show than to explain.

I was "hired for free" at the thesis discussion of Univeristy pal as a photographer for the session.
I felt really honored for the trust he had, and so I happily agreed on shooting the session (182 photos!)

[YEAH I know I've not published anything in several months... But my camera has not settled on a shelf collecting dust!]

So this post is about the real difference a professional (or serious amateur) editor can make on a photo^_^
I'm not talking about photoretouching (ok ok there a little of it there) the real focus is on the "Cover" composition...

Cover?

Yeah! cover!
I've created a blurb photobook of the session and I needed a "pro" cover... so I turned out to my dear sis in order to have some work...

Ok so before starting the usual information from Exif.
Camera: Nikon D300
Lens: Nikon AF 50/1.4
ISO: 200
Aperture: f/1.4
Exposure: 1/25s

The real tricks behind this photo was to call my friend while the other were turned the other way toward the official photographer^_^




Obviously this photo was not "ready" for becoming a cover, moreover I did not tought it as a cover!
So I called for help and my dear sis come out with the following setup... just astonishing!



TO publish some more photos soon^_^

Sunset's Gradient in RL

If you have ever seen a graphic software you are familiar with gradients.
One ofhte most famouse on is sunset - sunrise gradient slowly going from red to blue.

Sometime you can have it in Real - Lufe too, i've discovered!

The following photo shows it. (it is not straight out of the camera! it has been sharpened and realigned and cropped... but nothing in the colours have been touched in PP!)

Image's Data:
- f/5.0
- 1/20"
- ISO 400

P.zza del Plebiscito - Naples

This picture has been taken in one of the main squares in my city.
It pictures one old church that is really similar to the Pope's one in Vatican (I do not remember which one has been copied by the other one^_^).

Once every year, near christmas, our government pays some artist to decorate this square.
This year they have chosen to decorate it with several neon light that write "I Love Differences" in several languages.

I was in the square with a couple of friends and decided to take this shot.

EXIF reads:
ISO 640
Exposure = F/22
Shutter Speed = 2s

Frankly?
I really can't imagin what I was thinking when I set up the camera!
Today I would have setted it:
ISO 200
Exposure = F/11
Shutter Speed = 20s

It would have been far sharper (and with less noise!)

a Sad Dog

This is my dog, the photo was taken some day ago (12th of March) when the new lens arrived.

I post this as in these few days the dog is suffering by some aches we cannot identify...
Nothing to worry too much about as it is only puking what he eats...
I remembered this shot and decided to publish it...
Heal yourself fast Ranma!

From the Image's EXIF:
Exposure Time: 1/39 sec.
ISO Speed Rating: 200

Obviously flash did not fire!

Here and Now (even better than last night)

Here I am in front of the PC.
Yesterday the light was off and I was playing to Battle For Wesnoth in my Linux box.

I find that game very intriguing... so I advise you to try it out (it's free!)!

My PC has one of those light emitting fan. I had never noticed the nice effects it have in the night.
Last night I tried to shot a photo of it...
With a screenshot of BfW it was not a reallyl inspiring one... so I got an idea.
Use the monitor of hte PC to display the image from yesterday and shoot another photo of the fan...
I would have done it on the instant but the battery was too low to shoot (not joking!)... So I had to wait...
For the second shot I have used the AF Nikkor 50mmm 1:1.4 I've bought used last week.

I've used a shutter speed of 1/25 and an ISO setting of 400 so I have succeeded in using f/4.0

Waiting for sunset

Here in ITaly we play rugby... just to say it all our most widespread sport is soccer, then you'll have many other more famous sports and in the end you'll have rugby... but we play it!

Our national representative (Italy Rugby Team) plays in the 6 Nations' Tournament every year.
England, France, Galles, Ireland, Italy and Scotland meet each other in the field once every year... it's really a show time!

Last Sunday we went seeing the match in the house of a frien d of ours (Italy has lost! :() and after losing the game I realized there was an almost perfect vignette to portrait.

I've taken this shot in portrait and later cropped to have a landscape as I was not fully sure how the sun reflection on the cars would have been after working with GIMP...

To say it all the effect was awful... so I cut them out!

The original photo was taken with a Nikon d300 and the 18-200 VRII, it was taken at F/13 with a shutter speed of 1/200" and at ISO 200.

glasses

This photo is an experiment in aperture...
I wanted to get only the reflection on some glasses you can find in a Castellammare's Pub where we usually go Friday's night.

The read light is from one of the neon enhanced mirrors you can find in pubs (I really do not know how properly address them) but I've enhanced the red component in PP when setting up UFRAW to import the photo in GIMP (yeah I know it is not PS3... But I have got that^_^)

This obviously has cancelled exif datas. But If I remember well this was taken with the d300 with 18/200 VR with a shutter speed of 1/3" and an aperture of f/4.0 (some more than f/3.5 as it is not taken at 18mm).
Obviously it was shot with a low ISO setting (200 or 300 ISO... seriously no more than that!).

tree in the night

One night in Pinerolo I went out in the garden seeking for the umts line I needed to make a call...

Coming back I realized that the onwer of the resort had placed a spotlight just under a tree...

It was a really inspiring sight... so let the photo speak for me!

No exif comment for it.^_^ (joking^_^ f/2.8 and 1/10 sec)

Shining...

The first morning in the hotel in Pinerolo I took some shots of the path I needed to follow to break my fast!

Later on, reviewing the photos (more than 1200 shots in a tenday) I noticed that this hotel corridor remembered me the one from shining.

Yes the movie...

ok ok the movie one was different... larger corridor and different colors and the banding is lower... and is even far more darker than the overlighted corridors of the movie... but I got that feeling watching it...

Maybe looking at the photo you'll find out why (it is not a joke... it's a hope!^_^)

f/2.8 and 1/60 " are technical data of this photo (ISO 200 os 400 from the grainess of the shot!)

Selling Vegetables

Ok it has been a long time since last update... but job took me away from blogging :(

I contnue the Pinerolo's Reportage with a really beautiful vegetables' store.
It's not a temporary one! It is a normal store... a pure Brick one^_^
Here in Naples we do not have things like that... shure we have stores with boxes out in hte street (it's the norm for this kind of stores) but neither as tidily organize...

It looked nice!
And it wasn't attacheb to a wall or something like that, but it gone out of the portcully without even hindrance the casual walker.

This is really something we should learn!

1/200 secs of exposure and f/4.0 aperture for this shot!

A Fountain in Pinerolo

I was being in Pinerolo for a week when I saw this fountain really near the school..
I tried to shot a photo of it in ner sunset, but the tight timeline we had than did not let me wait 15 minutes more.
So the sky was too clear for getting a good image, but I decided to go on shooting it.
My idea was to not use the flash (No! I did not wanted to use the fill-in setting of the camera) and to go for longer shutter speed in order to get a creamy water effect.
To say it all it was an half success as there was not enough water to get maximum visual impact... but I had to go with what was there in that given moment :(

So I go with a f/2.8 and 1/4" not written down the ISO and the exif is not my friend this time...

P.S. The total absence of bokeh shows us the limit of compact camera. This was shot with my A630 Canon

I'll surely find another fountain to shot with the new camera^_^

Trees

Ok so now I have ended my photos of pieces of art...

The new photo is one of the walkways in Pinerolo. It is all aournd P.zza Garibaldi.
In spite being limited to a couple of hundreds of meters, it seems to be a good perpective example.

The photo was taken while searching for drum sticks (Yes! I like to play sometimes^_^) and I like the way trees, and their colors seem to close near each other...

1/200 and f/6.3 at ISO 80 to minimize rumor...
There are several light defects in this shot... as you can see looking at leaves up there.

Dreaming stair

I really do not know who has painted this and what is its title... but is a woundrous kind of painting in my opinion!

I really like its colors, and the nearly impossible light cut near the base of the stairs...

This painting too comes out of hte teaching school in Pinerolo, of course^_^

3d Painting

This was in the Aula Magna of the business teaching school in Pinerolo...
There are two photos of paintings I'll show you this week (after a week without Computer as I've broken down 2 Notebooks and a Desktop).

This is an interesting idea... I do not know if this is classified as painting or sculpture... as it is not flat.. is 3.D so the shadows you see are real shadows not something paint by the artist... it interesting as the painting change slowly during the day (not only in colors!)

So this get the "interesting piece of art 2007" Award... Friday you'll see incredible colors award^_^

Cloudy Sky

It was one of hte last days at the teaching school of Pinerolo...
That day I had to give lessons on something about accounting to make a road test of what I had learnt.

It was a hot day, but the sky was cluody... ok sort of cloudy...

I publish this picture (taken straight out of the camera with no PP!) as it has one of the best sky I've seen!

Mole Antonelliana (2/2)

And now the inside of this mounmental building... but in a different way!

But something more of the usual shots from inside a building...
I'm sorry not showing you the bautiful bar with changing lights... but my Canon was not able to focus and expose properly without flash (or a tripod I did not have) and the flash would have spoiled the light effects...

Instead I prefer to publish two photos of a model inside the building that can make you feel how tall the building is. Moreover this part of the building was lighted enough to have some good photos.

The first one was taken at f/2.8 with a shutter speed of 1/60" (with flash!)


The second shot is from the same model but let you understand how the building is inside ^_^

Same shooting conditionsas the shot above...

1 note!
If you look at building's center there's an elevator... it's a frightening device made of glass that let you see all of the building decorations while it is rising... I suffer from acrophobia (fear of heights) so meybe using the elevator wasn't the wisest thing to do^_^

No! I won't post any picture from the top of the builfing as I went there in a sunny day at noon so there was a too strong light to shoot good photos :(

Mole Antonelliana (1/2)

In the next couple of posts I'll show you another great thing you can see in Turin: The Mole Antonelliana.

If you want to know technical data you can go at a wiki site, so do not ask me to tel lyou when it was built and how much it is tall.. .I will only say that it is not a modern building and that it is very very tall^_^

Trough this shot I tried to show the overwhelming sensation it creates...

Just sorry for the corner of the near building... I did not saw it before shooting...

Exif tells me it was taken at f/4.0 and a shutter speed of 1/640...

This is the shot as it was taken... I could have PPit to saturate the sky (getting more blue out if it^_^) while using duplicate levels to make the building clearer and brighter while cutting off the building corner...

I prefer not to apply PP (as for all the photos of this blog till now) to show what I get out of the camera..

The Police Live 5 e 6

This time I prefer letting you compare two shots I've made at the concert.

The first one was taken at 200 ISO while the latter was taken at 2 stops higher: 800 ISO.

Surely the latter is more grainey but it let you see the people that were present at the live.
Moreover in this way you can assess how much distant I was :(

Maybe I've said it before, but this live has benn the one I ve seen farther in my life... but it was one of the most involving too...
A really meaningful experience^_^ and looking the second picture you can imagine why^_^

A great event with many many people all singing the same sogn with sting... each was following the same drum or guitar solo...

These are the last two shots of the live I'll publish on my blog...
And reviewing he various shots for selecting the ohotos to fill the six "slots" I decidd to dedicate to this event I made some considerations.

Above all I'm happy to have bought the new Nikon d300. It has a far better dynamic range and its performances are better at higher ISOs. This alone should help me take some beautiful shot at next gigs.
And.... damn! I'd prefer to sit nearer to the stage! It should have been unbelievable^_^
Surely we were in a more confortable positions but there in the front there was the real show!
And it's incredible to say that in spite of this consideration that was one of the best live I've ever gone to!

The played all the masterpieces and they got all new arrangements so there was that strange sensations that all of them were both new and old at the same time!

It was a nice day not too cold and not too hot, we slept in a good real B&B and altough the car injection broke while we were going to Turin we hve succeeded in driving it back in Naples after seeing the live... great day... great experience.. great memories (and you'll see some other shots from this travel!)