La Sovata

After the mountains we went to a salt water lake spa resort called Sovata. Sun was bathed, beer was drunk and food was sampled. Lovely!

Ceahlau

It had to happen at some point. After years of seeing it in the distance and claiming I could hike to the top if I wanted to, this year I actually did. It was a lovely but hard trek from 800 to 1800m. Well, it was for me anyway ;-). Cursing occurred on many an occasion. But I made it to the top and took some lovely pictures along the way. This particular one is a pano of 20 shots. Approx. 270°. I really like how it came out. Hope you like it as well.

Taormina

The view from the funivia (cable lift) station in Taormina center, conveniently located on top of a hill, towards Letojanni.

Lido la pigna

This was where we spent most of our beach time. Beautiful cove and brilliant restaurant on the beach! Good times...



The balcony

Yup, the view... :)

That time of year

We just got back from a BRILLIANT holiday in beautiful Sicily.
This was the view that welcomed us as we came out of the airport in Catania.
Yes, my jaw dropped slightly as well... :-)
Many pictures of this holiday are sure to follow.

Planetary experimentation

I've wanted to do this for quite some time now. It's officially called a polar panorama but also named spherical or planet panorama. It's a 360° panorama of the Platz der Republik in Berlin. On top, you'll recognize the Reichstag and on the left is the Bundeskanzlerei or the washing machine as it's popularly known.
In total 42 shots went into it and after about 8 hours of crunching, this is what I ended up with.

Layered perspectives

Sardinia again, on the way to the hotel from the beach on our second evening there. The sunsets we saw on the island were magnificent, but I'll get to those in a later post. For those of you interested, it's an HDR of five exposures from 1 raw file with a bit of magic sauce afterwards. The iPhone version is here.

Tramonto in Sardegna

And thus, we finally arrive at the pictures of our second week of holiday which we spent in beautiful Sardinia. Seriously, if you ever have the chance go there! It's truly wonderful.
The iPhone version is here.
Dusk is a difficult time to shoot.  New York State colleges have online classes in photography to learn new tricks.

Sun rays over mountains

As I was working on the panorama in the previous post, I noticed that this picture looked quite nice when under exposed by two stops. So this morning I did that edit and this is what came out! I'm very pleased with the outcome.
The iPhone version can be found here.

On the other side

This is the view on the side opposite from the previous picture. It's a panoramia composed of 17 hdr's based on 5 exposures each so basically it took me nearly half the day to get this result. The final tif file ended up at a whopping 1.25 Gb! :-s As with the previous picture I've uploaded a large-ish version to my skydrive for better effect.
Hope you like it, because I am quite happy with the result.

Porto, take 2 or was it 3...

Anyway, I've been editing again this weekend :-).
Enjoy!
All of them are in Porto obviously :-)

Man's best friend

Also from our trip to France.  Pet owners, veterinarians, and students in vet tech schools will especially enjoy this photo. She was walking with her owner down the beach while he was digging holes with some weird looking contraption. I loved the way she just sat down and waited.
iPhone version is here.

Cape white nose

We've spent a wonderful day at the côte d'opale with a couple of friends yesterday. Going from Cap Gris Nez via the beaches to Cap Blanc Nez. This panorama is a crop of a stitch of 22 pictures. The whole pano in Tif format is a whopping 700 Mb... yes, I was slightly shocked indeed. :-)

And with that he's back in business!!!

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Joost has re-entered the building sporting a brilliantly shiny new D90 and lens.
Once all the little problems with the camera have been worked out I'll be even more happy :-)
But I have been out and about with it and this would be the first of many pictures to be posted here :-) Enjoy!

Old and new

I have posted a picture of this location before as well, but definitely not like this version.
This is a stitch of 25 separate pictures. I'm quite happy about how it turned out!

Happy new year!!!

Yes another year has passed by with its ups and its downs. I wish all of you the very best for 2010 and that it may be a better year then the previous one!
This picture was taken as you can probably guess in Romania and the ones of you that have been following this blog a little bit, will even recognize the location :-)

Waimes again

The day after, the weather was not so brilliant, but that also made for some great misty pictures as you can see :-)

Wonderful Waimes

Last weekend, Iuliana and I went to a family get together in the beautiful village of Waimes in the Ardennes. Beautiful nature walks and loads of fun were had. Other pictures to follow.
Oh yes, it was doubly good as I could use my father's backup camera... a Nikon D200 :-D
Great to finally hold a decent camera again...

Crimson beach

Both the previous pano and this one have been taken with Stijn's Samsung digimax A50.
For this picture I set it to the appropriate "Sunset-mode" which turned it more red. It's a bit over the top, but I do quite like the result I have one more that I'll probably post later.
For now, off to the beer-fest on grand place :-)
Ow yes, the iphone version is here as usual.