 
blue hour - národní muzeum
The series continues! Here's the National Museum - a site you can't miss as it dominates the hill at the top of Vaclavske Namesti, in the old town area of Prague.
I waited for about an hour for the light to fall right here - and yet again, they turned the lights on when i thought it was too dark. I only had time for two or three exposures in this position before the blue's became too dark.
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ISO100, 20mm, ƒ22, 30sec
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Uploaded on Dec 30, 2009
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eudaimonia
On the multiple recommendations to read "The Art of Travel", by Alain De Botton, I finally headed down to Waterstones and picked up a copy.
In the first couple of pages, it's talked about why we travel, and how we "...might be influenced by the simplest and most unexamined image of happiness; of how a lengthy and ruinously expensive journey might be set into motion by nothing more than the sight of a photograph of a palm tree gently inclining in a tropical breeze"
It's something that sums me up perfectly - i've just booked flights to Socotra Island, off the coast of Yemen, a destination i've wanted to visit for years, based entirely on a few photographs. I have no idea what to expect, but if it's half as beautiful as the pictures take it to be, it'll be well worth the hole in my wallet.
Oh, and that photo above? Taken along the Tongariro Crossing, on the north island of New Zealand. Slightly less expensive to travel to, but still beautiful :)
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ISO100, 70mm, ƒ9, 1/125sec
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Uploaded on Dec 29, 2009
5 comments
Heaven's Reclamation
I'm a sucker for a good landscape. It's the kind of thing that I can only describe as a feeling of "rightness". It starts with a sense of awe, bordering on disbelief. Then I need to remind myself to keep breathing. Soon follows the peace when you drink it all up with all your senses.
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ISO100, 17mm, ƒ7.1, 1/500sec
This was meant to be a HDR, but it was so turbocharged and contrasty, it just looked terrible. There's only minor use of the clarity slider here - the insane contrast is from a polariser... which when used at 17mm, does weird things with reflections anyway.
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Uploaded on Dec 28, 2009
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blue hour - Národní Divadlo
I'm back in Prague over Christmas, and so my Blue Hour series continues. I wasn't happy with how the last one of this building - the national theatre - turned out. It's taken 3 visits, but i'm happy with this one.
The problem i found with night-time water reflection shots is if you expose them too long, the reflected street lights drag your eye all over the place - it's terribly distracting. Even this one is a bit too long. I have a shot with a 1/8 exposure in which the water reflection is much nicer, but the lights were still warming up - you can see there's a slight green around the top of the theatre itself. Unfortunately, by the time the lights had warmed up fully, the sky had lost all its blue. They turn on the lights quite late :(
Very little editing here, too - just a crop and bit of recovery and cloning out some twigs which were in frame... otherwise, this is pretty much how it looks (at least, for a 5 minute window each day)
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ISO100, 28mm, ƒ8, 3.2sec
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Uploaded on Dec 25, 2009
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where a man sleeps
Sorting through travel images is so much fun - you get to relive the moments again and again... and if you've been spending a bit of time AWAY from the camera, hopefully it ignites the smells, tastes and odd memories that the camera can't capture.
Such as this photo - it's where Nguyễn Ái Quốc's body lies, better known as Ho Chi Minh. The whole process of seeing his body is creepy and ritualistic to the extreme.
First, your possessions are placed into special bags which you carry from the entrance to ... another entrance. While you walk from point a to point b, your group of 20 does this walk in two lines.
When you enter, you're not allowed to stop moving. The atmosphere is indescribable - the temperature, the lighting, everything has a certain eeriness to it. It's dark inside, with incredibly soft light only highlighting the vague outlines of what's where. You pass around the casket of Ho Chi Minh's body - basked in an orange light, not dissimilar to that of a fried food warmer, where you buy your potato cakes and dim sims. People slow down, so you bump into the person in front of you, and only then do you notice the 4 solemn guards surrounding the casket. It's easy to miss them - they're standing as still as statues in the dark, and the floor is recessed so you couldn't make a grab for the casket even if you tried.
And before you know it, you're out in the blinding sunlight.
Hey, at least it's free.
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ISO50, 23mm, ƒ11, 9 exposure HDR
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Uploaded on Dec 23, 2009
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