Nobody knows where it's at

Finally I took some time off to go on an unforgettable road trip with a few of my friends to the busiest Lithuania's summer resort town - Palanga. Despite the 'road trip' like nature of the cruise, I still managed to make a few shots that I'd like to share.

The true highlight of the trip - an Audi R8. This is definitely a synonym for the word 'beautiful'.

One of the sights of Palanga - the pier.

The great view below the pier.

You have to give credit to Photomatix for this HDRI. Why? Because you cannot notice any big ghosting artifacts although the shots where all taken from hand. Photoshop CS3 could not handle the movement in the source images as elegantly as Photomatix did.

Where there's smoke, there's fire.

A little cute Yorkshire Terrier gazing.

„Võro liivaliin 2008“

On my last visit to my hometown Võru I had the chance to glance at the sand sculptures on the beach of lake Tamula. The sculptures were made during the International Sand Sculptures Symposium „Võro liivaliin 2008“ by various sculptors from all over the world.
What astonishes me is the granularity of the sculptures and persistence to rain, because when I got there they had already seen quite a few showers without losing their shape or even smaller details. But look for yourself:





To see all of the sculptures take a look at my Picasa album.

Mallard show off

Last Saturday I had a little stroll near my summer cottage, as the weather was quite muggy and sunny. At Perajärv (the hindmost lake of the two lakes very close together) I saw a nice duck family, which gave me quite a show so I had to take a few shots. It is a bit unfortunate that only five ducklings have survived out of 12 and all of them being female - life's a bitch.
But here are the pictures that I took:


↑ A mallard duck giving a little show off and on the next picture too ↓

Sunday night

The other day I had a short walk in the white midsummer night near campus. Of course I had my camera with me. Actually I had my tripod also with me - so it wasn't just a walk :)
Finally I came up with the following photos:

This is an HDR image from a single RAW image file. I really like the outcome.

The key to this picture is a long exposure time.

Here I have made a HDRI from 4 JPEGs.

Again a HDRI but this time from 3 JPEGs.

This photo is unmodified.

Here I have made a bit of exposure blending and then reduced color saturation.

A little HDR modification.
This photo has not seen a bit of editing. It's a pure camera trick called "zoom blur", but of course you could do it with a little digital editing too. It is done by zooming out while photographing with a long exposure time. Simple, but effective, isn't it?