Well, I hesitated for a bit before really going ahead and make this post, I didn’t want to show the extent to which I went to make the sky that shade of blue, or the grass that green.. not to mention the sun which I created from a scratch But what the heck. Here are both photos, both in HDR but with no photoshopping whatsoever. promise.

The Original Picture

The Photoshopped Picture

Can you tell the difference? They’re identical! getlekom mako farg

Playing around again with photoshop and the camera. Click on the pic for a bigger version.

We have a reader, `zEzO !, who is a beginner in photography like myself. He has some photos he’d like to share with rest of us so we can all help provide some kind of critique. Here are his photos:

Look into the gallery and make sure post your comment, tell him what you think.

Hope this helps `zEzO !

A picture of Evian’s lakeshore. (yep in HDR )

We went to Evian and I made sure this time to visit their source of free Evian water. They park their cars infront of this little water fountain and fill up their empty bottles, costing them nothing but the gas money to drive up to this place. which is very near the center of the town anyway.

It doesn’t stop running, 24/7. fisag.

These 2 ladies were there filling their bottles. I asked and they didn’t mind me taking pictures.

Me, pouring and refilling the bottle a hundred times and it was COLD! just the way I hate it.. makes my teeth ache.

This is the Evian water museum.

Samples of the bottles old and new and their entire collection of Evian products.

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We went to Gruyère the other day. We go there mainly to indulge in cheese. They’re the number one source of the best cheese in switzerland and maybe all of europe. We go there prepared, we don’t eat anything heavy before heading to Gruyère. We order their raclette; a block of cheese they put under a some tiny cheese heater/griller (shown in the pictures), and their fondue which also is made of melted cheese. And for the dessert, we either order their hot chocolat viennois or their denmark icecream (I once ordered both and felt sick afterwards). Everything there is to die for. I’m gonna leave you now with the pics, 19 pics to be specific

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I used my wide angle lens again, I took this picture of the church (completed in 1272) while holding the camera well below my knees just to be able to capture the whole church, and I still managed to miss the top cross. oh well.

Now, photography gurus, I have a question for you, I can’t get the fuzziness out of the trees, and any moving object for that matter. I tried to sharpen the image, did the smart sharpen thingy but it didn’t help. Any advice? and yeah I’m asking coz I’m using HDR without a tripod.

The area where we’re staying are having some problems with the internet service and I’ve been cut off since yesterday. I can’t live without going online whenever I want to! I’m in Mcdonald’s now writing this post (Allah yadinya) I have only 30 minutes (7azarat ilfaranseyeen). I went to 2 nice places and took many pictures, I’ll post them whenever we get our internet back. for the time being I uploaded the picture above just coz it was my first decent pic of a bird. It’s flying over Lac Léman, in Evian to be specific.

Click on the image for a bigger & fuzzier version.

I wanted to use the Sigma lens yesterday and the sun was already fading away. Some pictures were much darker and I had to photoshop the hell out of them. I didn’t really like the end results, they were much better when I saw them in my camera’s screen than my laptop’s.

We went to Chamonix yesterday. There was lots of clouds everywhere so I couldn’t really take pictures of the mountains out there, Mont Blanc was there but we couldn’t see it. Mont Blanc’s peak (4,807 m) is the highest peak in all of western europe. I’ll leave you with the pictures now.

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Found this on the ground the other day while I was taking pictures. I don’t really think its a rose, or a flower for that matter, I think its probably something that fell off a pine tree or something similar, But I always wanted to use the word “petrified,” ever since I saw Harry potter and heard this word for the first time.

After 2 planes and a taxi we arrived at 9 something yesterday. We were all exhausted and wanted to sleep, but no, we had to get our rented car from europcar, and we did, then went to GÉANT to stock up on everthing. Then finally returned back home, where I happily drifted out of consciousness.

I went outside, After taking a 2 hour nap, and took some pictures of the cherry tree near us. Labeeba, These pictures are for you I was planning on taking pictures of that tree even before anyone told me coz the cherries looked great!

This is my first attempt at HDR.

Place: Our house
Time: 1:30 pm
Temperature: 46˚
Lens: Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro.

Click on the images to view the bigger versions.

Yeah and I did experiment a little with photoshop. Hope you like them

I just placed an order for 2 lenses on amazon. I bought both the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 and the Sigma wide angle zoom lens. I tried them both with a friend and I liked them. I’m hoping the 50mm would help me take indoor pictures when the room isn’t very well lit, I’m also hoping that I won’t be needing to doctor the images anymore so they won’t appear yellowish. I also liked how the lens focuses on the object at hand and gives this blurry affect to the backdrop, the blurriness is more pronounced with this lens than any other lens I tried.

I think I’m getting a good deal on the wide angle lens coz the package I’m buying also includes a vertical grip (is that what its called?), 2 extra batteries, a mini tripod and some other things.

Thank You ::: ShoSho ::: & HKR for helping me decide

My friend told me that its best to go vote either first thing in the morning or around lunch time. Thats when its supposed to be the least crowded. Thats what he said.. we’ll see.

When are you going to vote? it ends today you know..

Update:

Apparently my friend told the rest of Kuwait about the perfect timing too. Half the population of Kuwait was standing in my line alone, which coincidently was the slowest moving line of them all. The people behind me (2 old men) cracking jokes and counting every second did not help at all! I tried to drift away in thoughts so that time passes a bit faster but they were always there to pull me back with their endless annoying meaningless chatter!

Guy1: you know its taking 5 minute for each person?
Guy2: 10 minutes.
Guy1: yeah about 10.
Guy2: and we have about… hmm 1,2,3…. *counts* approximately 40 in front of us. thats 400 minutes!
Guy1: oh wow! 400 minutes are like.. hmm… 4 hours!!!

At that point I just wanted to get up and leave, But thank God I managed somehow to block them away for the remaining time I was there. 2 hours and 10 minutes later I was done.

Hopefully some of the people I voted for win.

I’ve always enjoyed intlxpatr’s dawn shots. I thought I’d give it a try. It won’t be a habit though, I’m not a morning person and the only reason I took those photos is because I stayed up and couldn’t sleep.

@ 5:55am

It was a beautiful morning and the weather was amazing!

@ 6:10am

We went to the Boat show in Al Koot Mall last friday. Now I know nothing about boats but I really liked it, I thought it was very nicely organized and the people seemed to enjoy their visit.

The show was divided to 3 areas, one was in the fountains’ area, they built a little wooden bridge on top of the water that takes you all around that section of the show (as shown above). It looked very nice. The 2nd area was in the Marina in front of the fountains facing the sea (shown below) and the last area was near starbucks, just outside the mall.

This boat looked amazing.

I want to try this one day.

The boat I liked the most!

One of the better moments I had in this show was with this picture here (I took around 7000 pictures just to get 1 right). I’m not really a fan of boats, can you tell?

You better click here to read the rest of this post and see the other pictures

Posted by Yousef

Tomorrow, the 5th of May, a photography exhibition will be held in Bayt Lothan till the 15th of this month. If I’m not mistaken this is an open invitation for the public. Have anyone gone before? I’m thinking of going.

Bayt Lothan’s website

Thanks INM.