Crete in Infrared

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Today I would like to share infrared photo I took in Ammoudara, Crete during last summer. It's almost exactly same location as yesterday yet it looks so completely different due to using infrared filter which made the scene look surreal, maybe even a bit ethereal.

If you're interested in infrared photography yourself, make sure to read my free tutorials:

• Introduction to Infrared Photography,
• Post-processing Infrared Photos.

I would also like to take this occasion to wish all my readers Happy New Year! I hope it will be a brilliant year for all of you, full of great moments in your lives and full of amazing photos.

Technical details:
Camera: Canon 5D MK III (read my review here)
Lens: Canon 24-105 f/4 L IS USM
Focal length: 24 mm
Aperture: f/14.0
Exposure time: 10 s ("middle" exposure)
ISO: 1600
Number of exposures: 1
E.V. Step: n/a
Flash used: no
Tripod: yes
Filters: Hoya IR R72
Technique: infrared, luminosity masks
Software: Magic Lantern 2.3, Lightroom 5.0, Photoshop CC, Topaz Clarity

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1000 downloads of my HDR tutorial

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Exactly one month after releasing it to the public (really I shared it on 30th November!) my free HDR tutorial eBook was downloaded 1000 times. Yes - 1 thousand! After uploading it I got a lot of positive comments, some of you mentioning that it's one of the best HDR tutorials over the internet. It all makes me very happy because it means that a lot of you find it useful and helpful. And if you haven't read it yet, make sure to click on this link. BTW I would really appreciate your help in spreading the word about it - if you can, please share the link to this tutorial.

Now, it's time for some details about the photo from this post. I took it during one of many sunsets in Greece. Warm light looked really beautiful on the yellow grass - I especially like bottom left corner and part at the bottom of the right-most tree. Golden hour - yeah, it truly was one. As you can see I decided to use neutral density filter what resulted in quite long exposures, with middle exposure (0 EV) lasting 5 seconds. I did it on purpose to add some movement (in the leaves) to this otherwise static scene.

Technical details:
Camera: Canon 5D MK III (read my review here)
Lens: Canon 24-105 f/4 L IS USM
Focal length: 24 mm
Aperture: f/11.0
Exposure time: 5 s ("middle" exposure)
ISO: 100
Number of exposures: 7
E.V. Step: 1.0
Flash used: no
Tripod: yes
Filters: ND400 neutral density filter
Technique: HDR, tone-mapping, luminosity masks
Software: Magic Lantern 2.3, Photomatix Pro 5 (Contrast Optimizer), Lightroom 5.0, Photoshop CC, Topaz Clarity

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The Best Photos of 2013

Last year I did a short summary of year 2012 by picking my 5 top photos from that year (you can view this summary here).

Picking 5 photos by that time was quite easy as in 2012 I didn't take that many good photos (I was still beginner - I sort of still am). In 2013 I travelled much more - I visited Tatra mountains twice (in winter and autumn), Montpellier in France, Madrid in Spain, Crete and Santorini islands in Greece. I took several photos in Warsaw where I live as well. Apart from that my skills as a photographer and post-processor (is there such a word?) became much higher and so I ended up with more than 400 photos that had 5/5 stars rating in my private Lightroom catalogue. All of them from 2013! I love so many of these shots - choosing only 5 of them would be very difficult if not impossible. And not fair ;)

So I picked a few more... Below you will find a collection of 18 photos from various places in arbitrary order. Click on any of these photos to view them in large.

Neoromanesque crypt in Madrid, Spain. I loved textures and details in this place.

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Fortress in Sintra

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Today I would like to share a photo I took in February 2012 but I processed it just today. Well, I did processed it earlier but I never liked that older version and have never published it. This photo shows one of the most beautiful fortresses I've ever seen - Castelo dos Mouros (Moorish Castle) in Sintra, Portugal. Although these are just ruins, they are still very impressive.

I processed this photo using Contrast Optimizer, which since release of Photomatix Pro 5, became my new favourite processing method. I use it for the majority of my new HDR photos.

Technical details:
Camera: Canon 50D
Lens: Canon 10-22 f/3.5-4.5 USM
Focal length: 10 mm
Aperture: f/9.0
Exposure time: 1/640 s ("middle" exposure)
ISO: 250
Number of exposures: 3
E.V. Step: 2.0
Flash used: no
Tripod: no
Filters: no
Technique: HDR, tone-mapping, luminosity masks
Software: Magic Lantern 2.3, Photomatix Pro 5.0 (Contrast Optimizer), Lightroom 5.0, Photoshop CC, Topaz Clarity

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Golden sunrise

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So far there is no real winter in Poland (there is no snow and temperatures are rather high as for this time of year) so instead of uploading current photos, today I will share image captured at sunrise in the last winter.

Technical details:
Camera: Canon 5D MK II
Lens: Canon 24-105 f/4 L IS USM
Focal length: 35 mm
Aperture: f/7.1
Exposure time: 1/320 s ("middle" exposure)
ISO: 100
Number of exposures: 1
E.V. Step: n/a
Flash used: no
Tripod: yes
Filters: no
Technique: luminosity masks
Software: Magic Lantern 2.3, Lightroom 5.0, Photoshop CC

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Late sunset

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It was a really beautiful sunset by the lake and when it started to turn into blue hour, the colours became even more amazing - with all shades of blues, purples, oranges and reds.

Technical details:
Camera: Canon 50D
Lens: Canon 10-22 f/3.5-4.5 USM
Focal length: 11 mm
Aperture: f/22
Exposure time: 1.3 s ("middle" exposure)
ISO: 100
Number of exposures: 7
E.V. Step: 1.0
Flash used: no
Tripod: yes
Filters: no
Technique: HDR, tone-mapping, luminosity masks
Software: Magic Lantern 2.3, Photomatix Pro 5 (Contrast Optimizer), Lightroom 5.0, Photoshop CC, Topaz Clarity

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500k of Pageviews!

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Back in April this year I was happy to announce that my blog reached a great milestone - a total of 200.000 pageviews. By that time I couldn't expect that it will reach one more milestone this year - half a million of pageviews. But just 8 months later I'm super excited to announce that it actually did it. It just crossed a total of 500k pageviews! Wow!

It's pretty amazing, so I would like to thank everyone for your support. I would like to thank for your views, shares of my posts and comments (I get quite a lot of them recently), both here on Facebook, Google+ and ones you send via email. Without you, my dear readers, this blog wouldn't exist. I write content for others to read and if there was no one reading it, there would be no point in writing it :)

I also hope that next year I will manage to reach my next milestone - 1 million of pageviews and I hope that you will help me in achieving that.

Today, I would also like to share a photo I took during winter sunset in Tatra mountains.

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Dramatic sunset

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It was one of the most dramatic sunsets I've ever seen. It looked like sand storm was coming (but fortunately it was just an impression). It looked like the end of the world.

Technical details:
Camera: Canon 50D
Lens: Canon 10-22 f/3.5-4.5 USM
Focal length: 10 mm
Aperture: f/16.0
Exposure time: 1/100 s ("middle" exposure)
ISO: 100
Number of exposures: 3 
E.V. Step: 2.0
Flash used: no
Tripod: yes
Filters: no
Technique: HDR, tone-mapping
Software: Magic Lantern 2.3, Photomatix Pro 4.2.7 (Details Enhancer), Lightroom 5.0, Photoshop CC

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The Family

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I shared one photo from this shoot some time ago (you can see it here) but as I really love this scene and the reflection I decided to share yet another one.

There are two interesting things from technical point of view about this photo. First of all, I used very high ISO of 3200. As you can see final image does contain just a little bit of noise and as I previously wrote using high ISO values isn't something that you should be anxious about when using modern digital camera. High ISO is there to be used. It's not just a marketing slogan. On my current camera I used even higher ISO values like 12800 (and even 25600!) and still got results that I was happy with.

The second thing is that I used exposure of 1/100 s despite using focal length of 300 mm. It's due to image stabilization built-in the lens I used (without it I would need to use exposure of 1/300 s). Nowadays IS systems are really powerful. In case of this lens I was able to shoot in the dark and still get sharp enough images.

Technical details:
Camera: Canon 5D MK II
Lens: Canon 70-300 f/4-5.6 L IS USM (read my review here)
Focal length: 300 mm
Aperture: f/9.0
Exposure time: 1/100 s
ISO: 3200
Number of exposures: 1
E.V. Step: n/a
Flash used: no
Tripod: no
Filters: circular polarizing filter
Technique: n/a
Software: Magic Lantern 2.3, Lightroom 5.0, Photoshop CC

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Dramatic clouds

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Today I would like to share another HDR photo I took from Kasprowy Wierch in Polish Tatra Mountains. Most of the time I was there it was foggy (with visibility of just a few meters!) and raining but for about half an hour air was clear enough to let me take some landscape shots. And for even shorter period of time (something around just 2 or 3 minutes) there were some nice dramatic clouds just above the peaks.

As you can see I tried to compose this photo in such a way that both lift pillar (BTW this lift is used by skiers in winter) and one of the lakes were in the points of imaginary 3 x 3 grid. I almost managed to do this ;)

BTW I really recommend viewing this image in large as it looks so much better. To do that simply click on the image.

If you want to learn how to create such photos, read my free HDR tutorial eBook.

Technical details:
Camera: Canon 5D MK III (read my review here)
Lens: Canon 24-105 f/4 L IS USM
Focal length: 24 mm
Aperture: f/6.3
Exposure time: 1/80 s ("middle" exposure)
ISO: 200
Number of exposures: 3
E.V. Step: 2.0
Flash used: no
Tripod: yes
Filters: circular polarizing filter
Technique: HDR, tone-mapping, luminosity masks
Software: Magic Lantern 2.3, Photomatix Pro 5 (Contrast Optimizer), Lightroom 5.0, Photoshop CC, Topaz Clarity

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Before/after comparison: Welcome to Mordor

It's been a while since my last post-processing workflow so it's high time for a new one (for more comparisons like this one go here).

Today a photo which I called Welcome to Mordor (for details, like EXIF data, about original photo click here). The highlights in the 0 EV photo (Before) are completely blown out making the sky look almost completely white... Thanks to HDR I was able to restore them, including some beautiful sun rays. I decided to take only 3 exposures spaced at 2 EV in this case as the scene didn't have very extreme dynamic range.

BTW to learn more about HDR photography, read my HDR tutorial.

As usually, I started my post-processing in Lightroom where I corrected white balance, reduced chromatic aberration and fixed distortion on my source photos.

Then I exported them to Photomatix Pro 5 to fuse my 3 images there using Fusion/Real-Estate that was introduced in version 5. In the image below you can see my exact settings. Note that I used -10.0 for Highlights to restore as much as possible from them. I also set Shadows to 2.2 to brighten them up a little bit and finally I set Local Contrast to 2.9 to increase clarity of the image just slightly.

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Do we really need HDR?

Do we? Or maybe we don't? And we use it just because of some photography fad?

Many people claim that HDR technique is not needed. And by HDR I mean any technique of extending dynamic range - no matter it's true HDR (with creating 32-bit image), Exposure Fusion or Manual Blending. Or even using graduated filters. All these techniques serve the same purpose - restoring details and colours in darkest and brightest part of the image and thus "correcting exposure" of a whole frame. These are just different "implementation" of the idea.

Such people say that HDR is not true photography, it's fake, artificial, grungy... in general it would be better if there was no HDR photography.

But here is example that proves that HDR is sometimes really needed. Before photo is 0 EV exposure. Notice how bright the highlights in the sky are and how dark are the shadows. Details and colours in both these areas are almost completely gone. This exposure is rather unusable on its own. I tried using graduated filter here but the contrast between the sky and the rocks (which were very dark lava rocks) was so high that it didn't help much. I ended up with some information still being lost. So I ended up taking 7 exposures and after tone-mapping them in Photomatix Pro I got the After image. Details and colours in highlights and shadows are no longer lost.

Without HDR I would miss some nice photo opportunity. So it's not a fad. It sometimes can really help making your photos better but often it's the only way to capture good photo at all.

BTW sorry for not providing EXIF info today but apparently I accidentally stripped them off from this photo... I only remember I took 7 exposures here and middle exposure was several seconds.

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Colours at sunset

It was a really beautiful sunset on Fuerteventura island with some amazing colors in the sky. To show its beauty I decided to go with a very wide panorama - original image was close to 360 degree but I cropped it a little bit so it looks better on the blog.

In this case I really recommend viewing this image in large size by clicking on it.

Technical details:
Camera: Canon 5D MK II
Lens: Canon 24-105 f/4 L IS USM
Focal length: 24 mm
Aperture: f/7.1
Exposure time: 1/500 s ("middle" exposure)
ISO: 640
Number of exposures: n/a
E.V. Step: n/a
Flash used: no
Tripod: yes
Filters: no
Technique: panorama
Software: Magic Lantern 2.3, Lightroom 5.0, Photoshop CC, Topaz Clarity

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Thoughts: how to capture great HDR photo?

I often get questions like the one in this post title. How to capture great HDR photo? The answer is very simple. Simply capture great photo. Simple as that.

It might sound confusing at first so let me explain. Too many HDR photographers (mainly beginners) focus so much on HDR technique itself, tone-mapping, choosing right values for sliders in Photomatix Pro, on blending the layers properly in Photoshop that they forget about the photo itself.

They pay more attention to capturing as much exposures as possible or post-processing HDR photo than to the scene and frame themselves. If it's great, if composition is interesting, if lights and colours look amazing, if the subject is interesting too the final HDR photo will be amazing too. But if the source frames are boring, if the light is flat, the colours are dull or the composition is wrong, HDR won't help. It won't turn your photo into great one in such a case.

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Walking into the fog

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Not my typical photo for sure. This black & white image shows some tourists making their way towards fog on Kasprowy Wierch mountain. When I reached peak of Kasprowy Wierch, the weather was quite good allowing me to take some nice landscape shots. It was cloudy but visibility was very good offering nice views over valley of Stawy Gasienicowe. After about 30 minutes, however, the weather changed completely - it started to rain and some fogs appeared. I could no longer take landscape shots so I focused more on people and the conditions.

Technical details:
Camera: Canon 5D MK III (read my review here)
Lens: Canon 24-105 f/4 L IS USM
Focal length: 24 mm
Aperture: f/6.3
Exposure time: 1/125 s ("middle" exposure)
ISO: 400
Number of exposures: 1
E.V. Step: n/a
Flash used: no
Tripod: no
Filters: no
Technique: black & white conversion
Software: Magic Lantern 2.3, Lightroom 5.0, Photoshop CC, Topaz BW Effects, Topaz Clarity

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Inspiring other artists

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One of the great things about being photographer and artist in general is that you can sometimes inspire other artists. Quite recently one of my photos taken in Tatra mountains (you can see it above) in the very early morning last winter, inspired painter Alicia Elliott (https://www.facebook.com/TheLiquidflight) to paint below image.

And in fact I recently get quite a few messages that I inspired someone to take a photo or paint something. It's really cool and motivating. And it means that my photos are probably better than I tend to think about them ;)

BTW make sure to read my free HDR tutorial eBook, if you haven't already.

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500px vs Flickr vs Facebook vs Google+ - round 2

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Last month I wrote a comparison of most popular web services, where I detailed pros & cons of some most popular websites including 500px, Flickr, Facebook and Google+ from photographer's perspective. At that time I focused mainly on the image quality and exposure you can get on every website expressed in a number of views.

But quite frankly, the number of views on my photos on these websites isn't as important to me as is something else - how many of the actual viewers come to my blog from there. I'm mostly photography blogger after all. I write tutorials that I want fellow photographers to read, I share presets that I hope others will use in Photomatix and Lightroom, I share post-processing details and EXIF data to give beginners some ideas on how I take my photos. I do all this on the blog. Not on 500px, not on Flickr or Facebook. On the blog.

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Textures at sunrise

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Today I would like to share long exposure b&w HDR photo taken during beautiful sunrise on Fuerteventura. Although the colors were really fantastic I decided to convert this image to monochrome. Why? Because of details and textures in the rocks. They are really great and in colour version you miss them somehow.

Technical details:
Camera: Canon 5D MK II
Lens: Canon 24-105 f/4 L IS USM
Focal length: 28 mm
Aperture: f/8.0
Exposure time: 25 s ("middle" exposure)
ISO: 100
Number of exposures: 5
E.V. Step: 1.0
Flash used: no
Tripod: yes
Filters: no
Technique: HDR, tone-mapping, luminosity masks
Software: Magic Lantern 2.3, Photomatix Pro 5 (Details Enhancer), Lightroom 5.0, Photoshop CC, Topaz BW Effects, Topaz Clarity

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Tutorial: Create painterly looking photos

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There wasn't a single tutorial in a few weeks so today I would like to share with you a video tutorial on creating painterly looking images like the one above or the one here.

The process is very simple and it involves using only Photoshop, Topaz Simplify plug-in and some simple layer masking. What I wanted to achieve is to combine painterly look while retaining some of the detail and textures.

Ok, without further ado, watch the video below to learn exact steps:

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Milky Way

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It's not a composite (I don't like creating them honestly speaking) - it's a real photo. Single exposure taken in the middle of the night on Fuerteventura Island.

In this case I used Topaz Clarity (read my review here) to bring some extra clarity to the Milky Way.

To learn how to capture photos like the one above, read my tutorial about shooting stars.

Technical details:
Camera: Canon 5D MK II
Lens: Canon 24 f/1.4 L IS USM II (read my review here)
Focal length: 24 mm
Aperture: f/1.4
Exposure time: 10 s ("middle" exposure)
ISO: 800
Number of exposures: 1
E.V. Step: n/a
Flash used: no
Tripod: no
Filters: no
Technique: n/a
Software: Magic Lantern 2.3, Lightroom 5.0, Photoshop CC, Topaz Clarity

Continue reading for more details »

Topaz Clarity Review

In this case I also used Topaz Clarity to add some pop to the image.

As you could realize, I use a lot of tools during my post-processing. Apart from Photomatix, Lightroom and Photoshop which I use virtually every time, there is a bunch of other tools that are important to my workflow although I don't use them for all images.

Among such tools are filters from Topaz Labs including Topaz Adjust and Topaz Detail.

Recently Topaz added a new tool to their impressive collection, named Topaz Clarity. What this filter does is increasing (or decreasing) clarity of the image. If you're familiar with Lightroom than you definitely know about Clarity slider in it. It's pretty powerful, isn't it? Well, it is but Topaz Clarity puts increasing clarity to a completely different level.

User interface in Topaz Clarity is very simple and intuitive with presets on the left and settings sliders on the right.

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Christmas decorations

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Again a photo from previous year showing decorations in Warsaw Old Town. I will finally have to visit Old Town with camera in following days to capture something new (as I'm running out of images I'd like to share/process).

However, I have a small problem with motivation recently that makes me not want to capture nor post-process any photos. Of course, it happens to everyone from time to time and I learnt that the best way of dealing with this is to wait, make a few days break from photography and then return with some great images :)

BTW I would be interested to learn how do you deal with lack of motivation.

In case of above photo I used one of the many presets from my free Photomatix Pro presets mega pack.

Technical details:
Camera: Canon 5D MK II
Lens: Canon 24-105 f/4 L IS USM
Focal length: 28 mm
Aperture: f/16.0
Exposure time: 2.5 s ("middle" exposure)
ISO: 100
Number of exposures: 7
E.V. Step: 1.0
Flash used: no
Tripod: yes
Filters: no
Technique: exposure fusion, luminosity masks
Software: Magic Lantern 2.3, Photomatix Pro 5 (Fusion/Natural), Lightroom 5.0, Photoshop CC, Topaz Clarity

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Old boat

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Today I would like to share quite old HDR photo showing old boat. Sorry for such a short post but I'm rather busy today.

BTW make sure to download my free Photomatix Pro presets mega pack if you haven't done this already.

Technical details:
Camera: Canon 50D
Lens: Canon 10-22 f/3.5-4.5 USM
Focal length: 20 mm
Aperture: f/16.0
Exposure time: 1/25 s ("middle" exposure)
ISO: 100
Number of exposures: 7
E.V. Step: 1.0
Flash used: no
Tripod: yes
Filters: no
Technique: HDR, tone-mapping, luminosity masks
Software: Magic Lantern 2.3, Photomatix Pro 5 (Details Enhancer), Lightroom 5.0, Photoshop CC, Topaz Clarity

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Free Photomatix Pro Presets Mega Pack!

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Several times in the past I have shared my free Photomatix Pro presets.

Today I would like to share the biggest pack of Photomatix Pro presets yet. Dowload it here. For free - as always:

http://goo.gl/AoRU5r 

What's in the bundle?

• About 15 completely new and never released presets,
• All presets that I shared up to now (81 presets).

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Waiting for Christmas in Warsaw

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Christmas is a great time for all photographers as many streets in various cities are beautifully decorated making them look really magical with all those vibrant colours and interesting ornamentation.

I captured above photo last year in the early evening (during so called blue hour to be precise) in the Old Town of Warsaw. Conditions were pretty difficult as it was freezing cold (I could barely feel my fingers after an hour of shooting) but at the same time reflections on the pavement were absolutely gorgeous. And so were the colours. The city was quite busy at that time but using long exposure I was able to blur most of the people so they aren't very distracting anymore.

I processed this photo using Fusion/Natural processing method in Photomatix Pro (I used one of my free Photomatix presets) and finished it using Topaz Adjust (with another of my free presets :) ) and Topaz Clarity in Photoshop. As you can see from the EXIF just below I used as many as 7 exposures. It was necessary because there are both very dark shadows and very bright lights in this image.

Technical details:
Camera: Canon 5D MK II
Lens: Canon 24-105 f/4 L IS USM
Focal length: 28 mm
Aperture: f/14.0
Exposure time: 4 s ("middle" exposure)
ISO: 200
Number of exposures: 7
E.V. Step: 1.0
Flash used: no
Tripod: yes
Filters: no
Technique: exposure fusion, luminosity masks
Software: Magic Lantern 2.3, Photomatix Pro 5 (Fusion/Natural), Lightroom 5.0, Photoshop CC, Topaz Clarity

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Street in Montpellier

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Today I would like to share yet another experiment with painterly processing, it depicts one of the streets in the old town of Montpellier, France.

In this case after tone-mapping photo in Photomatix Pro, I applied one of my vintage presets in Lightroom (you can download my vintage collection here - for free). Then, in Photoshop, I used Topaz Simplify to get painterly look on the background (I left foreground virtually untouched). This way your eye walks into the painting. Especially when you view above image in large size (click on it to do that).

Is it still a photo? I'm not sure. I guess it's more fine art than regular photography but I must admit that I quite like it and given how many of you liked it on Google+ and Facebook, you seem to like it as well. It doesn't mean I will create only such works from now but probably will do so from time to time.

Also it seems that my free HDR tutorial eBook is quite popular with 200 downloads already in just a few days. If you haven't downloaded it yet, you can get it here: http://hdrphotographer.blogspot.com/2013/11/hdr-tutorial-downloadable-pdf-version.html.

Technical details:
Camera: Canon 50D
Lens: Canon 10-22 f/3.5-4.5 USM
Focal length: 22 mm
Aperture: f/7.1
Exposure time: 1/500 s ("middle" exposure)
ISO: 200
Number of exposures: 3
E.V. Step: 2.0
Flash used: no
Tripod: no
Filters: no
Technique: HDR, tone-mapping, luminosity masks
Software: Magic Lantern 2.3, Photomatix Pro 5 (Contrast Optimizer) Lightroom 5.0, Photoshop CC, Topaz Clarity, Topaz Simplify

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Angry sky above the peaks

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Although I'm not 100% happy with the photo above (as I would like to compose it slightly differently) there are a few things that are really nice about it - clarity and the look of the sky being two most important ones.

And why I simply didn't compose it differently? Well, it was a very windy day when I was there - the wind was very strong and really freezing so after just a few seconds of enjoying the views I had enough for that day :)

BTW it seems that my star photography tutorial, have just reached 10.000 page views! Thanks everyone for reading it. No promises made, but I'm looking into possibilities of improving it (similarly to how I constantly improve my HDR tutorial) to make it even more interesting and complete.

Technical details:
Camera: Canon 5D MK III (read my review here)
Lens: Canon 24-105 f/4 L IS USM
Focal length: 24 mm
Aperture: f/9.0
Exposure time: 1/500 s ("middle" exposure)
ISO: 320
Number of exposures: 5
E.V. Step: 1.0
Flash used: no
Tripod: yes
Filters: circular polarizing filter
Technique: HDR, tone-mapping, luminosity masks
Software: Magic Lantern 2.3, Photomatix Pro 5 (Contrast Optimizer), Lightroom 5.0, Photoshop CC, Topaz Clarity

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Magical Forest and amazing month

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November was a truly fantastic month for my blog with all major statistics increasing, making it record month with 14.000 visitors. Although it's still not that much it was a great improvement from 9.000 that I get on average (and from 11.000 which was previous record). So thank you everyone for your visit!

I hope that number of visitors will stay the same (or maybe even increase?) in December. Also with the increased number of visits come something else - much more people recently contact me via email. Some ask for permission to use my photos but other write very kind words about my work - it's really amazing and touching to hear that you like my photos. Thank you!

Also in November I published new version of my popular HDR tutorial, and later released it as a free eBook.

Finally, company that I work for, that is HDRsoft Ltd., released new version of Photomatix Pro, now in version 5. It was really amazing to be part of this project and it seems many of you like this new version as much as I do :)

Thank you everyone one more time!

As for the photo today - it's something different than I usually create. I opened one of my older HDR photos in Photoshop and started playing with it to make it look more painterly. I basically used Topaz Simplify and a few easy tricks to get this effect. I plan to write a tutorial about achieving such effect so stay tuned if you want to read it.

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