St. Stephen’s Basilica is one of the most recognizable buildings in Budapest after its famous striking parliament. It was also one of the first things I went to see after moving there. My introduction to the city sorta speak!
There is a nice view onto the city if you climb the stairs all the way up. But I’ll save that for another post:)
Palette of emotions
This week has been a little off in terms of posting. I’ve been posting almost everyday during the weekdays except for friday, the day I usually post. So I’ll be making up for it by a late sunday evening post.
This is Thomas from one of the best bands in the city, Sons of Granville. They’re really good live and I would definitely recommend their stuff. I was on my way home when I saw them busking on the street so I stopped for a few minutes to say hi and take a few pics. I like shooting them because they are very passionate about what they do and it evidently comes out through the expression of their faces and their body language. Most of my shots that day were of Thomas and I couldn’t really pick one so I decided to do what you see below. (Click on the pic to enlarge or download a slightly bigger version)
Share this:
An afterthought
I’ve been on fire this week posting every single day, so I thought I should keep it going. Yesterday’s post included a picture of a bagpiper and as an afterthought my mind went wondering and Scotland is where it stopped. This is a back alley in Glasgow. Far from being the most interesting picture to be taken in this wonderful city. But I still like it and find the scene cosy and green, very reflective of the city itself.
Share this:
The Robin Hood tax rally pt.2
I have a lot more pics from saturday’s rally so I thought it deserves another post. Here are some of them of all sorts of people who were there that day.
Share this:
The Robin Hood tax rally
Last saturday I was taking pictures at a rally organized by “occupy vancouver”. It started with a speech from an economist on the benefits of implementing the robin hood tax, followed by a rhythmic march around downtown accompanied by mesmerizing samba beats. As economics student I found the tax proposal to be interesting and would encourage others to read up on it.
This is a picture of one of the musicians during the rally. I always imagined that saxophone is one of the hardest instruments to play. The intensity of his face reaffirms this belief.
Share this:
Why so “unrealistic”?
“It doesn’t look real” or “It’s like a painting” are some of the common comments I get on my pictures. Most of the time they are intended as a compliment and that’s how I take it. But I feel like people have an old fashioned perception of how a realistic photograph should look like and I don’t always agree with how unrealistic people claim them to be. The reason for the look I get is High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography, which I use on a lot of my pictures. Our eyes are very unique in a way they capture light. They quickly adjust to very bright and very dark areas of any scene they set their sight on. Camera lenses however aren’t quite as awesome. There is always a trade off between overexposed and underexposed areas.
You can get around this by taking multiple pictures of different exposures. This allows to capture a lot of detail in both dark and bright areas that a single shot would ignore. Here’s a good example of what it really does. This is one of the oldest coffee shops in Ghent, Belgium. Scene of a nice, cosy looking place, which provides different levels of light, handy for our example. The lighting inside the shop is darker than it is outside. When I concentrate on the light outside almost all of the detail inside the shop is lost. If I adjust my exposure to address the inside then the outside is just blown out.
When you combine these 3 together you get the pic below (on the right). You be the judge of which one’s a better representation of the scene. I find the regular shot (first pic below) very boring and in fact untrue of the real scene. It doesn’t show all the things my eyes have really seen. It doesn’t show the lady by the counter in the dimly illuminated shop. I can barely even see what the inside of a shop looks like. There are no details to reaffirm the very old age of these fading green coloured doors.
