The Round Tower in Copenhagen

For today I decided to share another image from Copenhagen. It shows The Round Tower (Rundetårn) which is the oldest functioning observatory in Europe - it was built in 17th century by Danish King Christian IV. The tower isn't very high, it's only about 40 meters tall but it still offers very nice view over Copenhagen old town. Unfortunately when I was at the top, the weather was far from perfect with a lot of clouds and flat light so I didn't get any decent shots. Maybe next time :) Interesting thing is that to get to the top you don't have to climb any stairs. No, instead there is a spiral path which was built because the king wanted to be able to get to the top by his horse-drawn coach. Quite convenient I must say.

As you can see I felt a little artistic when processing this image. The light, textures and detail together with composition made me want to give this image a bit more "fine art" look - something that you can hardly ever find in my photos. I hope you like it.

Interesting thing is that it is one of my most popular images I've ever uploaded to 500px. It scored 99.6 and almost 10.000 views. Not bad at all :) BTW if you're on 500px make sure to connect with me. I started to use 500px more often once again and upload lots of images there recently.

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Throne Hall in Amalienborg Palace

Daily photo - Throne Hall in Amalienborg Palace

Time for another image from Copenhagen as you seem to like photos from that city (I like them too by the way). This one was taken inside Amalienborg Palace, which is home of Danish royal family, and shows one of the many chambers there - Throne Hall. King was sitting on the left and queen on the right throne. Thrones are also protected by two lions (fortunately they are just sculptures).

To get this photo I employed several different techniques: exposure fusion (to process ceiling, floor, walls, lion sculptures), tone-mapping (for thrones, windows and some other smaller areas), manual blending and luminosity masking to blend results of exposure fusion and tone-mapping and to finish the image. So it required quite a lot of work but I'm pretty pleased with the end result. I hope you like it too!

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Picturesque Nyhavn

Back from Copenhagen

I have just returned from a short trip to Copenhagen where I spent this year Easter so today will be short break in photos flow from Thailand. I think that sharing photos from various locations might in fact make my blog much more interesting.

I must admit that before my travel I was a bit sceptical about that city - I thought of it at as a rather boring place, with bad weather. But I was very positively surprised. It's a beautiful city with very unique atmosphere. Amazing architecture, very nice colours all over the place, it's very clean and it's very very lively (people are running, singing, kayaking, riding bicycles or simply sitting in the cafes and restaurants - there is so much going on wherever you look).

It also seems I was very lucky as I read that on average it's raining in Copenhagen at least every 3 days (what gives 113 days of rain per year!) but during my stay weather was beautiful most of the time with short periods of cloudy sky. But not a single rain drop!

Daily photo - Picturesque Nyhavn

Nyhavn is one of the most picturesque and colourful parts of Copenhagen that I managed to visit. Brightly coloured houses (some dating 17th century), reflections in the water, boats parked on both sides of the canal make it a really beautiful place. And a place where you want to spend some time.

 

Nyhavn, what literally means New Harbour, was constructed in 17th century by King Christian V as a gateway from the sea to the old inner city. Interesting thing is that one of the most famous Danish writers, Hans Christian Andersen, lived there for 18 years.

 

To create this image I took 5 exposures, 1 EV apart and used Photomatix Pro's Fusion/Natural to blend them. Thanks to using the fusion I got very natural result. If you would like to learn more about Fusion/Natural, make sure to read section of my HDR tutorial about it.

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