Enjoy These Photos…

Hey guys,

Sharing with you some of the photographs that recently caught my attention — mostly because they are very captivating.

First off, Scott Kelby has just posted some of his shots from Tuscany. He made it into a photo book layout, just like his previous trips. It got me excited for my trip next year to Italy for our honeymoon.

Next up, check out some great surfing photos at Clark Little Photography. I just love the colors of the water as well as the different views of the waves. I’ve never seen shots like these and I was amazed when I looked at the rest of his gallery.

And finally, check out RC Concepcion’s photo of his daughter Sabine. It’s gotta be one of the great photos of babies that just capture their awe and their emotion… I won’t say anything more because I will let you enjoy the photo –

Enjoy!

Photography, HDR and more…

As photographers, we never cease to learn. We constantly find new subjects to shoot, tinker with our gadgets to find new images, and we travel for inspiration. Here are some articles that I’d like to share with you…

• 21 Settings, Techniques and Rules Camera Owners Should Know — it’s always good to revisit the basics and understand how our cameras work so that we take full advantage of their features.
• Vision Driven Workflow (from pixelated image) — ‘Gear Is Good. Vision Is Better.’ That’s David’s tagline in his blog. Vision is what sets us apart from the rest. See how David used Lightroom to get to what he wanted when he took the photo.
• Popphoto.com’s Top 10 Wedding Photographers (I used the printer friendly version to see the whole list immediately )
• Everyone can be a Pro — an article from Presets Heaven that discusses how Lightroom has become a big part in helping photographers get the images they want (and more)… Part 1 and Part 2.
• Ring Flash vs Ray Flash Ring Adapter (from stobist.com): ever wonder if the Ray Flash is effective? Check out this video by photographer John Ricard who made the comparison between the 2 products. Makes me want to buy the Ray Flash now (since I can’t afford the $1000+ ring flash). While you’re there, check out the behind the scenes section of his site to see some videos of his shoots.
• Willy Straubhaar Photography: great travel photos here
• 5 Tips for Taking Great iPhone Photos (by Chase Jarvis): I love my iPhone and I like taking pictures with its built-in camera. Here are some practical tips from Chase Jarvis (an amazing photographer). Also, if you’re interested in wide angle and fish-eye lens for the iPhone, check this out.

Photoshop & Lightroom links:

• Textures Tutorial + Textures (by Stuck In Customs): I’m tempted to buy the textures and add them to my photography
• Soft Focus Effect in Lightroom 2
• Matt Kloskowski’s Guest Blog Entry at Scott Kelby’s Blog: Interseting discussion there on the ‘Destructive Workflow’

HDR or High Dynamic Range — this is becoming more and more popular so I thought I’d share some interesting articles here:

• HDR Tutorial (by Stuck In Customs): HDR is a bit popular now, so if you want to learn how to do it, there’s no better way to learn it from this popular site.
• HDR Tutorial (short version) over at abduzeedo.com (same author as the one above)
• HDR inside Lightroom (via LR Enfuse) Tutorial

And finally, some HDR contest time!

Over at stuckincustoms.com, there’s an ongoing HDR contest that will allow you to win a new 15″ Mac Book Pro! What do you have to do? Simple — just download HDR Max and then submit your HDR photo.

Enjoy!

Petronas Twin Towers

Sharing with you a couple of shots of the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The towers are incredibly tall and it’s very well-lit at night. It has a magnificent view of the city from the viewing deck too! While you’re there, make sure to drop by the shopping mall located at bottom of the towers!

The first shot was taken hand held. The light you see on top of the towers is caused by the spotlights. To avoid the camera shake, I bumped up the ISO to 800 and made sure I shot in burst mode.

The next shot was taken from the SkyLounge Bar at the Traders Hotel. If you want to hang out at KL and have a nice drink while enjoying the view, I highly recommend you go there. The only bad thing when we went there was it was warm and humid (well, what do you expect? )… it was still cool though.

All images were taken with a Canon 40D, 17-40 F/4 L lens.

Grand Palace Temple

While I’m still finalizing the edits of my Bangkok photos, here’s 1 of the temples taken at the Grand Palace. I started to adjust the image in LR 1.3 and since LR 2.0 Beta came out, I decided to experiment with the shadows. The final photo was done entirely in LR 2.0 Beta with final sharpening in Photoshop before I sent it to the web. Hope you like it. Comments are welcome.