”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

My Budapest Master Class: Shooting At Buda Castle, Mighty Fine Photos!

Good Morning Everybody,

What a great second day  to our Master Class we had  in Budapest.  The icing on top of the cake was the beautiful walk back to the hotel and a full day of shooting and dinner at the fabulous French restaurant, Plavilion de Paris. Most of the class, including LaDawn and I spent a lot of time photographing every course that passed by our eyes (mouth).

Like I said in yesterday’s post – this is truly the city of lights for Eastern Europe!  This first image, below, is of the Parliament House, construction starting in 1885 and completed in 1902 and at the time was the largest parliamentary building in the world I s located along the Pest side the Danube River.  This is clearly the most famous landmark in the city with it’s 691 room and it’s magnificent dome can be seen from miles around.

A little further down the river is one of the eight bridges that span the Danube.  This is the third newest the bridge of Budapest the Elizabeth Bridge.  Along with all the other bridges of the city they were blown up at the end of World War II. It is bright white cable bridge and definitely sets itself apart from the landscape.  At night, it is just beautiful to see.

We had a great second day for our Master Class in Budapest, Hungary. Clay and I both started out with PowerPoint presentations to set the tune for the week and lay out the plan for our week of shooting.

After lunch we headed up to the Buda Castle quarter. This area spreads out over a large area with pedestrian walkways, small shops, museums, and the historic castle itself. It offers plenty of great places for photography. Let’s take a look at some of the images I captured during our visit.

Buda Castle Quarter – Great Location, Great Images!

Image 1:

When shooting outdoors I always try to make the sky as rich and blue as possible. The way I accomplish this in the first photograph below is by using high-speed flash sync on my 600 DX – RT strobes. That allowed me to use a smaller f-stop and a higher shutter speed to under expose the sky just slightly. The off-camera flash also allows me to put the dimensional lighting on the subject that I always want.

Camera specs: Canon 5D Mark III fitted with my Canon 24-105mm IS lens at 65mm, 1/1600 second at F9.0, ISO 200.  Lighting camera right, Canon 600 EX-RT speed-lite directly.

Image 2:

I love the backlit grasses at the location in which we were shooting. I asked our model, Anna, to get comfortable in the grass and backlit with her with the sun. Not only was she backlit but all the grasses were as well. All I needed to do was bring my flash in from camera left putting beautiful lighting on her face and shoot away.

Camera specs: Canon 5D Mark III fitted with my Canon 24-105mm IS lens at 58mm, 1/1600 second at F9.0, ISO 200.  Lighting camera left, Canon 600 EX-RT speed-lite directly.

Image 3:

I love this next photograph! Again, the grasses are backlit but I illuminated Anna a bit differently. In this image I intercepted the suns rays with my 84 inch Westcott translucent umbrella, I like to call it “the cloud”. That gave me a beautiful, soft, directional light falling on her face.

Since I had to open up for the proper exposure on her, the grasses around her not in the shadow of the umbrella went even brighter giving me and almost infrared look to the image.

Camera specs: Canon 5D Mark III fitted with my Tamron 28-300mm VC lens at 129mm, 1/320 second at F6.3, ISO 200.  Lighting camera right, sun through Westcott 84 inch translucent umbrella

In all of these images I’m sharing with you today (and yesterday) I'd like you to notice that I've maintained a loop lighting pattern on the face of the subject in each instance. It's the loop lighting pattern that creates the detail, depth, dimension, and saturation to the images I try to create.

Image 4:

In this next image we took a vantage point on the Buda side of the Danube River.  Budapest is actually two cities. Buda is on the western side of the river and Pest, pronounced Pesht, is on the eastern side. Both cities were united in 1873. Anyway, the vantage point from Castle Hill over to the Pest side of the Danube River is always a breathtaking sight.

This image was a bit of a challenge to capture. It was an extremely bright, sunny day. That meant that my exposure needed to be for the brightly lit areas within the composition. My subject was almost silhouetted in the shadows of the castle and was much darker.

I brought my flash in  from camera right and put my typical loop light illumination on the subject. With a little tweaking in Lightroom 5 I was able to raise a density of the shadows, add richness to the sky, and get this great image of our subject.

Camera specs: Canon 5D Mark III fitted with my Tamron 28-300mm VC lens at 129mm, 1/320 second at F6.3, ISO 200.  Lighting camera right, Canon 600 EX-RT speed-lite directly.

Image 5:

This last image below is strictly available light. I saw one of the students working with Anna and noticed the beautiful loop lighting illuminating her profile against the castle towers in the distance. I simply positioned the subject against the background that I thought best fit the composition and then shot away.

Again, a little postproduction Lightroom 5 sweetened the photograph to its finished result.

Camera specs: Canon 5D Mark III fitted with my Tamron 28-300mm VC lens at 55mm, 1/320 second at F6.3, ISO 1000.  Lighting camera right was just the natural daylight.

We finished the day about 8 o'clock in the evening and all made our way downhill to the beautiful and delightful French restaurant, Plavilion de Paris. Everyone had a great time reminiscing, joking, laughing, and enjoying each others company, the delicious food and wonderful Hungarian wines. It was a long day but one fantastic experience.

__________________________________________________________________

Hey gang, that's it for me today. We have a few more days off  in Budapest and LaDawn and I are going out and check out some more the sites. After a rainy and windy day yesterday the sun is out the skies are blue and we're ready to take on the city one more time.

Be sure to check in again soon because I can't wait to tell you about our shooting session at the Budapest Opera House. One fantastic and unbelievable location and one fantastic set of images – I can't wait to show you.

Viszlat  (VEES-lat) for now,

David

"The Perfect Evening"

"The Perfect Evening"
© David A. Ziser

This is a DAZ classic wedding image taken back in my Nikon days. Every time we are at Drees Pavilion, one of the most popular venues in the Greater Cincinnati, OH area, this is a “must get” photograph.  The timing is important though.  Wait too late and the sky goes coal black and you have no details in the shadows.  Take the photograph too early in the evening and the city lights are not all on, plus the sky is a bit too bright.

The image was made at the perfect time in the evening – the sky had taken on some richness and all the city lights were fully lit.  Nevertheless, this is still a high ISO, slow shutter speed shot which means that we need to take more than one or two to be sure the bride and groom hadn’t moved.

Notice, too, the veil blowing gently in the breeze, or so it seems.  Actually my assistant “floofed” the veil and dashed out of the shot.  I made the exposure just as the veil was settling back to the ground. This too, takes a few tries to get the veil just right, and adds a bit more beauty to the image.

Lighting is from my Quantum off-camera flash set to 1/4 power out of frame camera left.  The secret here is to feather the flash head off the ground slightly so you don’t over light the grass in the foreground.

Like I said, this is always a “best seller” and is not to missed when working in this location.

Camera specs:  Nikon D1x fitted with Tamron  24-125 lens at 28mm, F 4.0 @ 1/5 second (on tripod), ISO 400.  Enjoy!  -David

"It’s Vegas, Baby!”

"It’s Vegas, Baby!”
©David A. Ziser

We got into the city mid afternoon on Saturday and got settled into our hotel.  By the time we grabbed dinner and watched the awesome Fountains of Bellagio, we got back to the hotel pretty late – a little too late for us 3:00 pm with our body clocks still set to EDT.  Anyway, I was the only one to stay up a bit longer.  We have a great room with an amazing view. I love just relaxing and looking at the glittering city lights.  I couldn’t resist – I grabbed the camera, held my breath, and fired off a few shots from our window. This was my favorite. Camera specs: Canon 7D fitted with 18-200mm IS lens at 80mm, F 5.0 @ 1/8 second (handheld), ISO 3200.  Enjoy! -David

"Starry, Starry Night"

"Starry, Starry Night"
© David A. Ziser

This image is a variation on a theme from Wednesday post. The late evening, a cool breeze, crickets chirping everywhere. It's getting late, almost time to turn in. What does the image say to you? Read the post below to see why it was made. Be sure to view the image in it's larger version by clicking on it to see the stars in the sky. Camera specs - same as Wednesday - Nikon D1X fitted with Tamron 24-135mm lens at 24mm, F4.5 @1/60 second, ISO 400.

Enjoy! -David

Friday Highlights

A Great Friday Morning to Everyone,

LaDawn and I are packing our bags and heading for home. After a nearly a week at Photoshop World, and now another week in New York, I think we are both ready to head back home. We spent our last full day yesterday checking out the sights over at Brooklyn Heights - what a nice area to visit. Bert Monroy gave us the tip a few weeks ago when he came through Cincy on his Photoshop Creativity Tour - he is from New York originally. Brooklyn Heights turns out to be America's first suburb. It's quiet, full of shops and restaurants, and the view from the Promenade is best of NYC and the Brooklyn bridge. You can check out a short slide show of the images over at our sister Blog "Dave and LaDawn on the Road". In fact we have been blogging the whole week over there as well. (Two Blogs a day, not for the "faint of heart.") Take a look.

Before we headed out yesterday, we took a "time-share" tour. If any of our readers have had that experience you know what I'm talking about here. The sales person tries to sell you part of a piece of property that you get to use for a week, once a year. I don't want to spend a lot of time here describing the concept, but, just as a heads up, I'm going to spend some time on "Sales" next week and I will share some of my insights about yesterday's experience. Check back next week for the rest of the story.

Anyway, even though we had a terrific time here in the Big Apple, we are looking forward to heading back. I have the weekend off, but on Sunday we are heading for Columbus to prepare for an "all-day" program for the Professional Photographers of Central Ohio we will present on Monday - hope to see some of you there. Next week I will also be putting finishing touches on my week-long Digital Master Class that kicks off September 24. (Still 1 or 2 seats left - call Susan at 800.292.2994 if interested.) So I will see everyone back in Cincinnati.

How about a little news.

True Digital Infrared:
I have had this saved in my "Favorites" folder. I first saw the story month's ago, and now it's popped up again. Here is the scoop. Back in the film days I remember reading and seeing many articles and images on "Infrared Photography". Photographers were producing B&W infrared images by placing an infrared filter over the camera lens, and after a very long exposure and focus shift, produced very striking images where the sky was black and the greens were almost white. In fact Konica eventually developed a special high speed IR film that would help photographers get the same effect with much faster exposure times. It was kind of a niche product which some wedding guys used occasionally - with great results. So how can we do it digitally? There have been many tutorials on how to do it in Photoshop with "Channel Mixer" and the like, but the results has never been as good as the real thing. Enter Life Pixel, a service that will turn your digital camera into a REAL infrared digital camera for only about $300. I have seen the results of the conversion and they are amazing. I have been planning on making the conversion to one of my older Canon 20D's - I'll keep you posted. The Pop Photo blog just did a story about Life Pixel. You can check it out here. Life Pixel's web site and a short video can be viewed right here.

The Largest Photograph in the World - and it's not Digital:
I thought this was a great story - it's about six photographers who literally created the largest photograph in the world via the "camera obscura" technique. They call it the "Legacy Project" They coated a giant size piece of visquene specially ordered from Germany, with photographic emulsion, exposed it for 35 minutes, and then processed it in 1800 gallons of B&W chemistry. You can get the quick recap right here, but also check out the "Legacy Project" web site right here for all the details about the world's largest photograph - very cool.

Ansel Adams (or maybe his twin bother) Returns:
Wow! check out Clyde Butcher's work over at his web site. It is truly amazing. As I was cruising his site and there are quite a number of similarities between Mr. Butcher and Mr. Adams - large format camera, beards, beautiful B&W images, involved with environmental causes, and making an impact on the world. Mr. Butcher's work is simply outstanding. Please check it out right here. You can even sign up for his newsletter.

Nighttime Digital Photography
We all know 'Nighttime " photography is not the easiest to pull off particularly with the contrast range we are often faced with. The old film guys would over expose then undevelope to try to protect all the details in the shadows. Heck, Ansel Adams wrote a whole book on it. So how do we pull it off digitally? Here is an entire book on the subject. It is written by John Carucci. Read the entire review here. It looked good to me so I headed over to Amazom and just ordred it. I'll do a follow up down the road.

That's it for now, gang. I've got bags to pack and planes to catch. Have a great weekend. See you Monday. --David