HDR Imaging

Alright, finally I, too got into this HDR business having obtained the necessary software now thanks to a friend ;)

Lots of HDR stuff is roaming about on the internet. But you can have a quick look here to see what HDR imaging is all about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging

Well, mines should actually be called pseudo-HDR since they were made with 1 picture. A real HDR photo is done by merging 3 or more photos with different exposures; but anyways, these are just the preliminaries. Take a look...












The ones above were taken in Mount Davraz in Isparta, once nothing but a mountain, now a tourist attraction with many people coming from home and abroad.

This is Eğirdir in Isparta.

And this cat -or maybe a lion's cub lol- is relaxing in Ortaköy, Istanbul. I like this one especially... See how nonchalant he is.

For a long time I didn't know what to do with the original of this photo. It was terribly and horribly underexposed but now I am happy with its HDR-made version.


















And these ones above were taken from the beautiful South Campus of Bogazici University. Don't they illusively make it look like it is fun to study there :) (well, yeah, sometimes it is... ) with people lying on the grass, under the sun in a middle-age-like environment?

Let me know how you like them and I will return with non-pseudos, real HDRs done with 3 images next time.

Happy New Year or What?

Did anyone notice that streets of Istanbul do not seem to be in the mood for Christmas or the New Year this december? I was looking at my pictures of the previous years' december and I decided to put some here.



This one on the left is from last year's December. Love the colors and the depth of field.










The one on the right, depicting one of the most prestigious avenues in Istanbul, was taken on the same day.










Akmerkez was lit up like this. This year, there are just stupid billboards of a stupid TV channel.




Even our campus looked like this two years ago.
This year... Nothing!







Anyway, let's get out of this gloomy new year mood and have a look at some of my most recent photos:

A Surrealist in Istanbul

Yes, there is a surrealist in Istanbul, and I, as a realist, went to see it. This photo you see above is again a panorama, 3 photos merged from the Salvador Dali exhibition in Sakıp Sabancı Museum. There is a prize for the first one to find the guy who managed to get in each one of my photos and appeared 3 times in the photo :) The same 3 guys do not add much to the reality of the photo, but... uhm... wasn't that an exhibition of a surrealist? The photo needs to be surrealist, too!




And this photo here is a photo of a photo of Dali taken by Ara Güler. Isn't that fantastic?

Panoramas

I've put some of my best panorama works here. These photos you see here were taken without using a tripod and taking this fact into account, they can be considered successful (I do so anyway).
This one above is my last shot, taken in Uskudar. It seems a bit strange. The sun was shining brightly on the left side, so that part is overexposed. When there is that much change of light, you cannot avoid exposure problems. Those shots were taken with F9.0, 1/250 shutter speed and 400 ISO. 5 photos are merged. Actually, this one came out way better than I expected. It is so hard to merge 5 photos if you are not using a tripod. But me, and PhotoShop CS4 did a very good job here. The only problem was, as I said, the sun.

The next one is called "Sunset in Uçaksavar" since it was taken in Uçaksavar Dormitory. 2 photos are merged here.
This one was taken in Bebek/Istanbul. There are 3 photos here. And the EXIF values for this one are: F10, 1/250 shutter and 100 ISO.

And this one was taken from my window, in Isparta. This was actually an experimental shoot with my polarized filter, but they came out fine when merged. There are 2 photos here.



Here, 3 photos are merged. This is a scene from Antalya. I love the colors and the green leaves dancing at the bottom. This photo of mine might have been published, I don't know. Some guy messaged me for permission to publish it in a journal that did not even have a name yet. I said yes, on the condition that he would send me a copy of it. But then I could not reach him again. He disappeared and that's the end of the story.
The last one is a different one since this one was merged vertically. 3 photos here. This is Eğirdir Lake in Isparta. Love the clouds and the light beams here.

See you later with my super-extra-excellent works!

Bluer than velvet

This is what the color blue should be like...

Meet my 3-year-old model for a little while in my life. She had adorably blue eyes and in this photo, I tried to emphasize the blueness of her eyes by turning the photo to black and white and through 'selective colors' option in PhotoShop CS2, I strengthened the color. I am not a PS genius, therefore you can see the relics of my incompetence when you zoom into the photo. But otherwise it is not perceptible.

The original untouched shot has recently been published in a local newspaper (one that is highly esteemed) in order to support a column. You can see it here; scroll down the picture of the newspaper, it is right at the bottom.

Edit: You cannot see it anymore since the page does not show the newspaper cover after 1 month. But I have a copy of it in my archives.

Welcome

Hey everyone!

Welcome to my photoblog... Here, you will find photos I have taken and my so-great opinions about them: what I did, what I tried to do, what I felt, etc. Some entries may include nothing more than simply my ideas & thoughts, I haven't decided yet... Why bother with your personal thoughts or useless photos, you may ask. Well, you do not have to bother. Then, close this window, go out and take a walk, buy some flowers to your long-forgotten loved ones or do something that is beneficial for the whole planet. End this computer geek thing.

If you insist, take a look at the photos I have put as introduction. I deem those as my opus magnum - the greatest work of my whole career as an amateur photographer.

More to come...

By the way, I have not decided on the language, either. I might use English in all my posts, or sometimes I may use Turkish. Who cares if this is a bilingual (or even multilingual) blog? I think there are some things in life that you can only express with your mother tongue, and there are others that you want to use another language just because you think it grasps what you have in mind better, or maybe you just want to estrange yourself from what you have to say.

And... Just a reminder: The photos you are about to see here are ALL MY WORKS, unless I state otherwise. Ergo, they are all copyrighted by me and it is ILLEGAL to use them without permission.

Done.

Enjoy. And feel free to comment.