Tag Archives: photography

Dogwood52: week 8: Landscape: Wide Angle/Panorama

So, here I am again with the weekly challenge. This time it is about a great opportunity to explore panorama stitching and create a wide sweeping landscape.

I first tried from the balcony of my office room, played with Photoshop Photo Merge, and decided to use Lightroom to create the panorama – it seems to handle raw files better when it comes to vignetting. Then I started putting a lot of energy and time into this project and asked myself many questions, including about the ratio to use and found out that 3×1 is a good bet because we can find frames using this ratio. All camera settings are manual, including focus and bracketing was enabled to catch different exposures. But you have been warned, the pictures are great (in size) – please download them if you like 😉

Luxembourg Grund night panorama
Luxembourg Grund night panorama (full size image)
Mamer Schlass night panorama
Mamer Schlass night panorama (full size image)
Skate Park Hollerich 360 degrees panorama
Skate Park Hollerich 360 degrees panorama (full size image)

And here are some pictures captured while training for the shootings:

Getting warmed up for panoramic capture
Getting warmed up for panoramic capture (full size image)
Clutter on the table (full size image)

The panorama has just started; I will definitely make more, thinking of an album of Luxembourg panoramas.

Dogwood52: week 7: Portrait: Faceless

Tell someone’s story without showing their face.

I did find it extremely hard to be inspired, to capture an interesting context. I didn’t put too much effort into this and mainly worked on the future challenges instead; but here’s the result:

Kids playing, normal stuff Feet portrait Texting Couch potato

Respectively named:

  • Kids playing, normal stuff,
  • Feet portrait,
  • Texting, and
  • Couch potato.

But be prepared for something more amazing for week 8 😉

Dogwood52: week 6: Artistic: Candy

Your artistic interpretation this week should be inspired by something sweet. A great chance to play with macro photography.

But after strugging for week 7 challenge, I just realized I forgot to post this one! So there it is…

I had a lot of fun with candies; making close-ups, bokeh, macro and creating a scene:

Accident scene
Accident scene

And of course, the other pictures taken for the challenge:

Three candies playing bokeh
Three candies playing bokeh
Candies aftermach
Candies aftermach
Healthy candies
Healthy candies
Feeding time
Feeding time
Food time
Food time
Candy lover
Candy lover
A Rabbit's diet
A Rabbit’s diet

And we got a house full of candies after the shooting session 😉

Dogwood52: week 5: landscape: black and white

The challenge of the week is:

Look for a scene with great contrast that will make a great black and white.

I had this in mind when the challenge started so I started shooting pictures a bit early while doing other shootings. As a person keen on colorful stuff, it’s not that easy to think black and white; but I think I have managed to work on the topic a little bit and made a little pre-selection; also each picture has been given a name and is in the gallery.

The selected picture is “The end of the road trip”, a city landscape shot during a misadventure when the car engine started burning down. They say I am going too far with my bicycle activism :-). The good news is that no one was hurt and the insurance company took care of it.

The end of the road trip
The end of the road trip

Other than that, I have been playing with black and white transformation with many of my pictures, and decided to save a few of them after fiddling with the black and white mix.

Le Grand Dagoda Blanc, a K-Doll in Bertrange
Le Grand Dagoda Blanc, a K-Doll in Bertrange
A tree and playground at night
A tree and playground at night. Shot during the Dogwood52 artistic red challenge.
An evening at "Parc des Contades"
An evening at “Parc des Contades”
Two floating stones
Two floating stones
Somewhere over a monochrome rainbow
Somewhere over a monochrome rainbow
Water under the bridge
Water under the bridge

Now I’m looking forward to the candy challenge.

Dogwood52: Week 4: Portrait: headshot

This one was really difficult for me. It’s hard to find out what expression and posture to ask to people, therefore I have decided to publish a picture of Sheepie, my travel companion from New Zealand. I am so bad at have a lot of potential in portrait photography 😉

20160131_181643-HDR.jpg

Other candidates (includes my mother, a lovely bike found on the street, Sheepie and my work mate):
20160123 173256 Portrait of a bike Tri-angle portraits 20160129 123100 2 20160129 153912-HDR

Link to the gallery challenge.

Previous challenges:

Dogwood52: Week 3: Artistic: red

Topic of the week: Shoot whatever inspires you. Red should be the focus of the image. Don’t be afraid to be creative.

I’ve been having this red playground in mind for some time since I bike in front of it everyday. When I saw this week’s challenge, I hoped they wouldn’t remove the red lights; and they didn’t 😉 Also added a few other candidates for the challenge, all related to red and winter, as it decided to show up.

Playground at night

And the other candidates are:
Lit snowman Snowman sitting on a bench Snowman sitting on a bench A playground at night A playground at night A playground at night A playground at night

I really had a hard time choosing only one photo among the last.

Dogwood52: week 2: Traditional Landscape

This is not so traditional. I had originally planned to bike to Little Switzerland, but not only it was hectic at work, also the weather had been chaotic. This was the only evening it wasn’t raining and windy, and I didn’t wear adequate clothes to step into the tracks (covered with a layer of mud and another layer of water on top).

I decided to select this photo, not because I had no real choice, but because after fiddling with bracketing and HDR processing, it did really feel my state of mind when I managed to see the stars after several days of fog, wind and rain.

The color could have been a candidate for week 3 challenge, but I have something else in mind 😉 My camera aperture was locked in 1.4 as the aperture ring was blocked and I did not dare to fix it in the darkness and humidity.

20160108_185439-Edit.jpg

Other shots for the challenge:
20160108 183602-HDR 20160108 185439-HDR

Dogwood52: Portait: Self Portrait

The description was:

Start things off right with a “selfie”! Explore the self timer setting on your camera

Oh no! I hate shooting myself, that’s why I always stay behind the camera, but let me try anyway… Add to that the humid grass and the damp air. I used my remote shutter to shoot the pictures. My original plan was to lie of the grass and shoot myself in different position, but from the second I was set in position, I did feel the humidity going through my clothes. As soon as I got in front of the lens, I couldn’t have any natural smile anymore, and it got worse over the shots.

Since I love outdoors, I thought going somewhere green and wearing something green would be appropriate. I tried different poses, holding still or being active; then I didn’t qualify jumping as a portait photo, but it was a good exercice.

Selected photo:
dogwoodweek1

My favorite photo:
dogwoodweek1-alternative
But I did not qualify it as a portrait.

All candidates:
20160101 142234-HDR 20160101 142628-HDR 20160101 142724 20160101 142816 20160101 142833 20160101 142837 20160101 142842 20160101 142847 20160101 142911 20160101 143035 20160101 143039 20160101 143137 20160101 143213 20160101 143321 20160101 143426 20160101 143431 20160101 143435 20160101 143445 20160101 Edit