”Goodbye To Budapest”

”Goodbye To Budapest”
©David A. Ziser

Today we bid our goodbye to the beautiful city of Budapest.  It has been a wonderful 12 days beginning with our Master Class almost two weeks ago and spending the last several days exploring this energetic, fun-filled, rich-in-history, beautiful city – most of it on foot.  LaDawn and I figure we have walked over 75 miles since we arrived here 12 days ago.

This is the view of our home away from home these last two weeks, the Gellert Hotel from the Pest side of the Danube, as we crossed the Liberty Bridge for the final time last evening.  The view is just as beautiful as the first time we cross it so many days ago. Even when we returned from dinner with our friends Roland and his wife Ilde late yesterday evening, the river was full of activity.  I had to wait several minutes for long boats, ferries, and tour boats to pass before making my exposure.

This image is an in-camera HDR photograph with my Canon 5D Mark III set to Auto HDR – I’m so lazy ;~) but it does give me a great result almost every time. The point about Auto HDR is the fact that the camera makes 3 exposures, the first at what is considered the best exposure, the second exposure is 3 stops under and the third exposure is 3 stops over. The camera then automatically combines all 3 exposures maintaining the mid-tones of the correct exposure,  the hi-lights of the underexposed, the shadows of the over exposed for the final HDR exposure.  I simply need to anticipate the slowest exposure as I’m hand-holding the camera for these images. In this case, the exposure ranged from 1/8 to 1/500 second to get to the final result.  I’m pretty good hand-holding my camera at the 1/8 second but still I needed the high ISO, as posted below, to capture the final image.

Camera specs: Canon 5D Mark III fitted with my Canon 24-105mm IS lens at 55mm, 1/60 second at F4.0, ISO 12,800. Camera on Auto HDR setting.

p.s.  I’ll plan a more thorough wrap up sometime next week once we get settled into our new surrounds at the Abbazia Country Club down in Nemesnep, Hungary.  We’re about a three hour drive and hope to arrive around 2 p.m. this afternoon. Here is a map to give you an idea where we will be staying. 

It’s a small village of only 146 people nestled among the borders of Croatia, Austria, Slovenia, and Hungary.  The adventure continues ;~)

David and LaDawn

”City of Lights"

”City of Lights"
©David A. Ziser

Even though the title belongs to Paris, Budapest is truly a “City of Lights”.  At night the entire city comes alive with light and energy.  This image captures that sentiment well.  I captured this image while walking back across the Gellert Bridge to our hotel just a few evening ago.  The lasers in the distance were spreading it’s beams across the sky.  To watch the display is to only see one beam at a time but with this in-camera HDR, the beams are multiplied five-fold giving a very dramatic effect to the sky.

Camera specs; Canon 5D Mark III fitted with Tamron 28-300mm lens at 28m, F3.5 1/40 second, ISO 12,800 Enjoy! -David

"Sunrise Over The Big Easy"

"Sunrise Over The Big Easy"
© David A. Ziser

This was the view from our hotel room window early Saturday morning. The sunrise gave us very strong and very vibrant colors in it’s earliest moments.  We are on the 19th floor of the hotel and with our room being in a corner of the hotel floor plan, I thought that including the left wall of the hotel in the composition worked quite well. 

I like how the lines of the wall lead you right into the horizon and the rising sun. But at the same time the viewer may resent the fact that I cut off the left side of the sunrise too.  The hint of the reflections in the windows carry the color into the building.

I struggled with the crop but I think this composition serves the image best.  Hope you enjoy it.

Camera specs: Canon 7 D fitted with Sigma 8-16mm lens at 8mm, F4.5 @ 1/13 second, ISO 1000.  Enjoy!  -David

"City Girl"

"City Girl"
© David A. Ziser

One of the photographic treats for me and my Digital Master Class this year was the fact that we headed down to Riverside Drive in Covington, Kentucky. From this side of the Ohio River we had a beautiful view of the Suspension Bridge and downtown Cincinnati.

I had the class, the coaches, and the models take up their position along Riverside Drive. This gave everyone shooting a beautiful view of the city and an opportunity to get some great photographs for their portfolio.

This is one of my favorite images from last evening shoot. As dusk was transitioning in the evening the gray cloudy sky took on a rich blue color. The sky, contrasting with the warm city lights, gave me a wonderful background for this image.

Dawn, one of our models, had selected an outfit that fit the scene perfectly. I brought my light in from camera right, my Quantum flash shooting through my Zumbrella. I obtained the perfect look lighting on Dawn's face. Her pose and her expression fit the scene beautifully. I’m happy!

Camera specs Canon 5D Mark II fitted with 24-105mm lens at 95mm,  F5.6 @ 1/15 second (handheld), ISO 1600.  Enjoy!  -David

”Aria Arabesque”

”Aria Arabesque”
©David A. Ziser

Since I’ve got Las Vegas on my mind this week, I thought I’d post a photograph I made during last year’s Las Vegas visit.  The newest development in Las Vegas is the City Center – a veritable treasure trove of lines, shapes, and forms.  I just love walking around shooting this structure from all the angles.

This is an image of one of the buildings in the City Center, and to be honest, I’m not even sure which one.  What I do love about the image is the cool curved lines running through the image and how the one set of lines is juxtaposed from the second set. I also like the simple color scheme, and the dramatic lighting.

When you look at the camera specs below, you’ll see I was shooting directly into the sun’s reflection of the building.  The exposure really brought the rest of the tonal values way down, while still holding detail in the shadows, adding to the dramatic movement feeling of the image.

This image is just a fun play of line, shape form, and color  - I really like it.

Camera specs: Canon 7D fitted with 18-200mm IS lens at 90mm, F14 @ 1/1250 second, ISO 200.  Enjoy!  -David

"Evening Electra"

"Evening Electra"
©David A. Ziser

I enjoy shooting cityscapes.  Hitting a big city and just looking up presents such cool looking designs. By selectively cropping the image and with a little enhancement in Lightroom, you can come up with some cool abstract designs.

That was the case in todays image.  This photograph was captured on a visit to New York City about 6 months ago. We were strolling up Lexington Avenue about 8:00 p.m. and the city lights were just beginning to turn on.  I really liked the lines in the scene – the interplay of the horizontals, verticals, and diagonals.  That’s really all my eye saw in this image.

The sky was just passing from dusk to dark so I was able to catch just a bit of the evening glow in the sky too.  I think that’s what gives the image that “electric” glow.  A little density/color manipulation in Lightroom didn’t hurt either.  A trip to Photoshop to crop with “Perspective” on allowed me to make the sides of the build perfectly parallel with the sides of the frame.  Hey it was all in good fun.

Camera specs; Canon 7D fitted with 18-200mm IS lens at 140mm F5.6 @ 1/60 second, ISO 3200.  Enjoy!  -David

"High Ambitions"

"High Ambitions"
©David A. Ziser

I had just connected a 2 terabyte drive to our studio network with just about all my digital images on them going back as far as 2000.  Although all the files are backed up on DVD's and hard drives elsewhere, I still like them all available on our system.  The 2T archive drive serves that purpose.  Anyway, I was "rummaging" through some of the older files and found some gems for our "Image Of The Day" posts.  This one is one of my favorites.  It was made on a trip to NYC about 6 years ago.  I just loved the composition of the image - the soaring steel and glass reaching to the clouds just made a very strong visual statement to me.  I brought the image into Photoshop for a little straightening and color/contrast enhancement.  When I checked the EXIF data for the shot, I was quite surprised to see that it was made on my little Canon ELPH S110 camera I now remember having with me on that trip. Today's image is about cool composition, not gear.  I hope you enjoy the shot.  Camera specs: Canon ELPH S110 camera at 5.4mm focal length, F7.2 @ 1/500 second, ISO unknown (I suspect about ISO 100). Enjoy!  -David