View allAll Photos Tagged getoutofyourcomfortzone
This is one of the famous night sky photography landmarks of Switzerland. So famous that it took me 18 years to motivate myself to go and shoot it! 😀
The weekend before I was crossing this place on my way to the usual weekend hike. That kind of created the impression that I should come and shoot this with some night sky. I stopped for a few minutes and looked for the composition and alignment of Milkyway and just said myself that “I will be back”. 😀
Switzerland is not a country where you expect to see clear cloudless sky very often. Specially during weekends. But this place is not too far from my home. Well; a country full of highways and 400 kms in length doesn’t mark anything too far to be honest. But this place is only an hour and half drive away. So I waited for the weekend; but the sky was not happy. But it was on a Wednesday. Sunset is around 21:20 now; so after finishing office around 19:00; I went out capturing this.
Initially I thought it would be lonely and it was but I was not alone. There was another photographer. Whom I asked to watch my camera on the long exposure of the foreground and took a couple of rounds with the car in front of the building. Thats right it was a measured car trail made by me! 😀
This hotel has an interesting history. It was opened along with the road of Furka Pass. Early 19th century around 1830. The means of transportation was horse carts that time. And Furka pass is steep and the glacier used to be just next to it. So for all rich travelers cross border, this was the perfect location to break their journey on their way to the dreamland of Switzerland. So the hotel was a pinacle of Furka Pass. Slowly cars started coming to picture. Initial cars were neither fast nor powerful enough to cross the mighty Furkapass in one go. So the demand of the hotel remained.
But slowly and steadily the cars started becoming fast and powerful enough. Road started improving. Visitors started commuting longer distances without a need to stop at the Hotel Belvedere of Furka Pass.
Eventually the mighty hotel of Furka Pass, a hotel that used to be considered as the magical place to stay once; slowly started loosing demand and eventually ran out of business.
Today it stands there portraying its past glory and eventually became one of the major photo stop of the region. With not many large towns around; it is dark enough for some night sky photography even though it is only a Bortle 3 sky.
I am not someone who is taking pictures of only night sky. I like landscape photography as well as photographing architecture. If the condition is good; I do try to capture some good night sky. But for me the sky is just an enhancer. It is not the subject. For me a good night sky is like a good golden hour where only the sky is not enough. It is the overall composition of the image. If I don’t have a dominant subject in the frame; I won’t take picture of an empty sky. Be that a gorgeous sunset or a stunning night ski! It is incomplete without a proper composition and other elements.
This place was perfect where I could enhance the scene of this iconic ancient structure with a beautiful sky which is extremely rare in Switzerland.
Now regarding this image; needless to say that it is a composite like most good night sky images are. If you are tracking the frame; you can’t have the subject in the same frame. On top you can’t possibly expect such differences of exposure (car light vs dim light of sky) can be balanced in one shot. So just before dark around 22:00 I captured a 4 minutes exposure of the hotel with a Canon R5 and a 17 MM Tilt Shift lens so that the hotel doesn’t look like falling down behind. I hate that in my architectural pictures. The TSE helps taking perfect images of the architecture. In between I also drove my car a couple of times to create the trail.
Then I just moved behind the hotel and captured the sky with a H Alpha modified D850 and the legendary Sigma 40MM F1.4. This was my first use of the lens and I practically blown away with the quality. Tack sharp at F2 with no coma even in extreme corner. Makes things so much faster.
Finally
Foreground
Single long exposure shot
Canon R5
Canon RF 17 MM TSE
17MM, F4, ISO 400, 4 Minutes
Sky
H Alpha modified D850
Sigma 40 MM F1.4 Art
16 light frames
F2.0, ISO 800, 1 minute tracked with Benro Polars tracker
4 dark frames
Later at home I took some bias and flat frames
Then used Sequator to merge the images.
And finally some classic editing in photoshop for the sky and an easy blending with the foreground.
Have a nice weekend.
Hope you will enjoy the picture.
Any suggestions or criticisms are always welcome.
Every time I travel to a new country, I need to feel energy. I am looking for energetic moments of life ... my photography walks are dictated by those deep feelings... I’m mostly inspired by the light and composition. My vision of photography is all about composing a picture with my eye. I am looking for the perfect frame, the frame that suits me well givese the desire to take the photo. LIGHT is the tool I use to make my pictures. If there is no light, I feel sad and feel that the picture is not complete. A genuine picture is, to me, indeed a picture full of light and life. A life scenery will always have more impact on human beings than a landscape, even if the nature can be wonderful. Capturing humans is always more full of sens ♥️
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In times of war and unrest, even a few flowers can offer a glimpse of peace. It may not be true peace, but the feeling, however small, can still bring a quiet kind of comfort.
I visited the famous Keukenhof a long time ago. Twice, in fact. But somehow, I was never quite satisfied. The tulip gardens are undeniably beautiful, yet they never felt like the right place for photography. I always longed to explore somewhere beyond, perhaps a quieter spot on the outskirts. But back then, I lacked both the time and the information to find such a place. It wasn’t an era when information flowed as freely as it does now, with today’s detailed maps and live satellite feeds at our fingertips.
For the past 15 years, I haven’t returned to the Netherlands. Easter holidays always took me elsewhere, on more exotic journeys and somehow, a return to those tulip fields kept slipping away.
Due to some personal reasons, we decided not to take any long trips this year during Easter. Instead, the four-day Easter holiday turned out to be the perfect opportunity to visit the Netherlands and explore the tulip fields.
I received invaluable help from Avishek Patra and Abhishek Dey in finding the location. Credit goes especially to Abhishek Dey who not only provided the exact spot but also accompanied me during the shoot. Without their support, I would have been nearly 40 minutes drive away from the actual location.
So an early start and went there with beautiful light glowing the tulip field.
Extreme focus stacking has always been a bit of a panic-inducing technique for me. I don’t enjoy spending endless hours in post-processing, and when you're out in open fields, even the slightest breeze can ruin the possibility of automated focus blending. This time wasn’t much different.
I prefer being out in nature, capturing the moment to enjoy later. Not to be stuck behind a screen editing a single image for hours. Given that I already spend most of my professional life in front of a computer, the last thing I want is to turn my leisure time into more screen time. That’s probably why so many of my older extreme focus stacks are still sitting untouched on my hard drive. I can never quite motivate myself to edit them. Maybe one day.
That said, I have to admit, when it works, the result can be incredible. Focus stacking gives a perspective we don’t often see with the naked eye. It’s a bit like drone photography, still novel and striking.
This image, though, felt different. It became special, especially thanks to the help I received. I felt I owed it the justice of doing my best. So, I did sit down, put in the effort, and after quite a few hours, finally composed this shot. A 9-image extreme focus stack at 35mm.
Sure, it could’ve been better. A little more fog would’ve been lovely. A slightly closer windmill? Perfect. A more structured burst of sunlight? Absolutely. But given how unpredictable the weather is in the Netherlands, and how tough it is to find a location where everything lines up, I’m genuinely happy with what I managed to capture.
Out of six attempts, I only got this sunrise and one decent sunset. The rest? Windy, gray, and completely sunless, just endless shades of dull.
So, under these circumstances, I’m calling this one a win.
Special thanks to Avishek Patra and Abhishek Dey for helping out with the locations.
Have a nice weekend.
Hope you will enjoy the picture.
Any suggestions or criticisms are always welcome.
Make the conscious decision. It's rough but rewarding. Look forward to it. It'll put a smile on your face in the end. #repost from @thinkgrowprosper ____ #successquotes #changeisgood #embracechange #wednesday #ilikeitrough #lifestyle #lifehappens #GetOutOfYourComfortZone #pusharder #pushyourlimits - natural_ox
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