3 tips to capture water flow

Posted on July 26, 2014 by Alex

The fun part about shooting water shots is you don’t have to adhere to one method.

1 – Smooth water: this is the one with reflections you can get from anything over the horizon. You want to keep your ISO at the lowest (100) and shoot later on during the day when the sun is about to go down. The less light you have the longer you can keep your exposure on. You can use manual mode and have some very nice effects anywhere from 30 to 90 seconds.

2 – Rough water: to capture the action of the water such as waves and jagged water flow, you simple need to use a faster exposure setting. You’ll need more light for this, so make sure the sun is still visible. Set your ISO from 100-400 and snap away.

3 – Mixed: Sometimes you want to keep it smooth in the background and have some waves showing in the front. This requires taking multiple shots and blending them with layer masks in Photoshop until you get the desired effect.

Rapids Park Lasalle

This is a nice corner of Lasalle where you’ll see a lot of tripods and big lenses. Most photographers go there to capture birds, as there is a bird sanctuary island near by. People visit the park to enjoy some time by the water, surfing/kayak or even fishing. Although the later is at your own risk as water quality is questionable.

Storm over Montreal

Posted on July 23, 2014 by Alex

For those of you here in Montreal, you must have heard the crackling of the skies as the thunder storm is passing over our city. It’s been long overdue and I gotta say, I do quite like this type of weather. First it’s great for pictures (only wish it would pass by a little later during the 8-9 oclock timeframe for optimum lighting), the heat is greatly subsided and the water pouring down means I don’t have to water the garden later!

Here is a picture from a while back as I happened to be at the right place at the right time to catch this oncoming storm.

Old photo of Old Montreal revised

Posted on July 21, 2014 by Alex

Double tone map action

As the title implies, you first process a 3 exposure tone map image as you would normally do for an HDR. Then you would process it again. To do this prior to version 5 of photomatix you would need to just press tone map again after processing the image. Now with the new version there is a button for that “Double tone map”. This brings out greater textures and makes it look a bit surreal. I would advice using it lightly and only on architectural/heavy textured shots.

Old Montreal in the rain

Here is one of my first photos when I just began taking photos about 2 years ago. It was a rainy day and I was excited to take pictures with my new camera and see how they develop in this weather. Turns out HDR works quite well, giving the type of textures and mood that I was looking for.

Fast track about 1 year later and I just had to see what it would look like given the techniques that I know now.

Wallpapers now available

Posted on July 16, 2014 by Alex

Download free wallpapers

Hey all! You can now download high res versions of each image you see in my gallery. Simply hover over them and click the download icon. Enjoy!

Tied up

I’ve captured this one night by the old port as the big merchant ships where docked right next to the walkway. The walkway is open for pedestrians to pass through but if you’d like to capture a different angle, well that requires a bit of ingenuity.

Keeping it Fresh

Posted on July 9, 2014 by Alex

Finding the right angle

What I find it’s come down to, especially when shooting in the city where many people shoot, you must find something unique and interesting to differentiate. It’s not an easy task but a fun one! Take into account the light of day, the angle of the shoot and anything moving. When you combine the three you are sure to have something different than the usual.

From the top

This was shot at one of the most popular public destinations in New York, the Empire State building. The lineups and journey up are a little long but if it’s your first time, worth it. At the ticketing checkpoint, they do not allow tripods to be taken up. First I was a bit surprised but as we got up I started to understand why. You could barely move through the sea of people making 86th floor a total mob scene. Luckily I was able to squeeze into a couple of spots and take a few shots. Total time spent at the top 5min! If you go I suggest opting for a different time slot, when there is not as much traffic.

Week of celebrations

Posted on July 4, 2014 by Alex

Processing night scenes

You’ll notice that as you combine your 3 exposures in photomatix, the saturation is greatly increased and people start to look more like ghosts since it’s a longer exposure than day shooting. Two easy fixes for that. Select “remove ghosts” (I suggest with ‘the selective deghosting tool’) from the menu before processing. After the process simply decrease the color saturation and you’ll start seeing more details.

Happy 4th of July to my friends down south

This is actually a picture I took on the first of July, here we call it Canada day. But the mood is all the same. Everyone is out celebrating and having fun. Don’t be fooled by the picture, we don’t actually have real beaches in Montreal.

Some unexpected places

Posted on July 3, 2014 by Alex

A lot of times I go out shooting not knowing where I’ll end up. I’ll have an idea of a place I’d like to visit but from there on forward any area to explore is fair game. In this case I was pleasantly surprised by how beautiful and quite this hidden part of Montreal was. Truly one of the hidden gems of a rising metropolis.

Happy Canada Day

Posted on July 1, 2014 by Alex

Accelerate your work flow in Photoshop

Instead of starting over from scratch to create each effect independently, I like to use Photoshop actions. I have created a series specifically for post HDR sharpening and another one to take off the noise. This significantly reduces my workflow to just about minutes. Ofcourse I do some individual touch ups afterwards but that’s cake.

Canada’s roots in the old port

The old port is one of the oldest parts of Montreal so it comes as no surprise that you can witness the architecture left here by the French. Only wish they hadn’t stopped at the old port. Can you image Paris’ beauty on our streets?

Heat warning over Montreal

Posted on June 30, 2014 by Alex

Turn all files to HDR at once

Sometimes I like to see what all my photos in a series look like in HDR. For this I use “Batch Bracketed photos” function in the left panel when you launch Photomatix. Two things I set:

1- ‘Tone map and Details Enhancer’ click and select your favorite preset (I use my own), this will be applied to all images.

2- ‘Select Folder’ choose the folder your files are in but make sure it’s only the sequential bracketed files (remember -2,0,+2) as it will process through 3 at a time. Then the proceeding three and so on.

Click run, sit back and relax. You may want to get some coffee in the meantime as depending on the folder size it could take a while.

A bit of water to help cool things down

As I sit typing this with my AC at full blast, it is a nice change to have the heat back. Besides the obvious vitamin D boost, the heat is great for some scenic sunsets. And so here is a panorama from the Lachine Canal here in the west.

Between two rocks, Luck prevails

Posted on June 29, 2014 by Alex

St-Lucia

I wanted a family vacation that would be different from the usual Caribbean hot spots and so St-Lucia came into the picture. As the airplane was landing, I can already begin to feel a bit excited. The landscape is so foreign to what I’ve seen before. A lot of mountains, lush tropical trees and views of prehistoric land. Almost felt as if I was in Jurassic park for a moment. So we took the bus about an hour’s drive to the top of the island, where my resort was located. The roads on the way, where something else! But I’ll get in to it a bit later.. For now all that matters was the great views from the upgrade room and the great food at Captain Morgan’s restaurant.

Captain Morgan’s pier

The restaurant is quite a lovely with a great views over the waters towards the capital of the city, Castries. As I was dinning and reaching into my pocket for my phone, I could hear the clink clank of my room safe key as it fell between the cracks and unto what I thought was the last I’ll see of it. I motioned towards the attendant and told him what had happened. He said he would take care of it that they’ve installed a base just for that reason.

Well I couldn’t wait, I had to go down for myself and try to find it in the pitch darkness. Surely couldn’t be any harder than using my phone’s flashlight. As I started to inch my way towards the spot and trying to stay inconspicuous so know one would know.. I hear from the level on top “Excuse me sir”. I look up and one of the server’s tells me that the attendant had already found it and brought it back to my room.

Later when I came back to thank the attendant, he told me the key was hanging between two rocks!