Radio City

Sandmania — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 11:04:25 +0000

The Radio City Music Hall really is a stunning place and can be found in the heart of New York City. Its interior art deco style decoration and styling makes you feels as if you have ventured back in time to the olden days. ….. Super Art Deco

This was taken in the main lobby.

I also have a new tutorial out which covers the workflow on my Times Square image. You can find that here.

Posted in New York, Travel Tagged: hdr, New York, radio city, rockettes

New Tutorial

Sandmania — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 12:23:55 +0000

I was hoping to put this tutorial up a while ago, but never got the chance to complete it until now. I received a lot of requests from people who wanted to know the workflow on the Times Square image(below). It’s fairly similar to my previous tutorial (the first few stages relating to the camera setup and Photomatix processing are pretty much the same), although this one concentrates more on the post processing in Adobe Photoshop.

If anyone wants to practice with the original images, let me know and I’ll upload them. You can see my original HDR tutorial here.

* You can enlarge any of the screenshots in the tutorial, by clicking on the image which will take you through to the larger image. Click on the image to go to the tutorial directly.

Posted in Tutorials Tagged: hdr, tutorial

Floozie in the Jacuzzi

Sandmania — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 09:54:20 +0000

This was taken in the heart of Birmingham City Centre during christmas. The whole street was adorned with decorations + lights and like every year there was the prescence of the German Market. Huge hotdogs and chocolate coated strawberries were on offer.

I am a bit gutted with the composition on this one…I’ll have to go back there one of the days to get a better shot. I have another perspective of this which is in front of the statue which I’ll upload soon. The statue itself is known as the ‘Floozie in the Jacuzzi’

My HDR Tutorial

Posted in Birmingham, England, Travel Tagged: Birmingham, hdr, Travel, urban

Megalopolis

Sandmania — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 10:39:16 +0000

The metropolis that is New York.

I would like to thank everyone for your comments, emails and wishes while I have been away. I have been super busy over the past few months working on several projects, so spare time has been somewhat of a rarity. I’ll be going through my emails over the next few days and responding to them.

Amongst other things, I have been in the process of creating my own portfolio website which is still ongoing. You can see the temporary site here and the blog here. Its in the early stages, so still looks kinda plain.

Also before the break, I was hoping to upload my latest tutorial, although didn’t get a chance to complete it. It will be a walkthrough on the Times Square image, as I received a lot of emails and requests from people asking about the workflow and process it went through. It concentrates more on the Photoshop processing, rather than Photomatix, although the HDR steps are included. Watch out for that later this week.

My HDR Tutorial | My New York Set

Posted in New York, Travel Tagged: hdr, New York, Travel, usa

Reflections of a Sunset

Sandmania — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 16:09:44 +0000

I captured this on a beautiful evening one night in Birmingham, England. I had just been to a restaurant, only to find that it had overpriced food and small stingy portions…I should have just had a hotdog and fries.

Posted in Birmingham, England, Travel Tagged: brindley place, urban

Sim City

Sandmania — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 16:08:28 +0000

One of the wonderful views from the Empire State Building…this is looking South East.

Posted in New York, Travel Tagged: cityscape, New York

Times Square

Sandmania — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 16:07:13 +0000

Times Square….A dazzling display of illuminated neon signs and animated screens with an array of mindboggling colours, perplexing our eyes from normality into a visual feast….this place really is something else. I think I visited Times Square nearly every single day I was there…. its sooo hard not to.

I also had an unfortunate accident with my tripod here, whereby I placed it one of those grated areas without knowing and ended up with the head snapping off (camera was ok though) . After a bit of bargaining in one of the many camera shops there I bought a new one for a quarter of the price .

I was trying to go for a movie look with this image intially…but I kinda got carried away and lost and ended up with this. I am writing up a tutorial on this too…its fairly similiar to my previous tutorial, but this one will focus more on post processing in Photoshop (what I can remember that is). Much of the workflow/techniques I am sure many of you will have seen already and use/used them.

Posted in New York, Travel Tagged: New York, times square

Cocktails II

Sandmania — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:58:46 +0000

You can’t go wrong with relaxing in a chilled out place like this. I’ve not been around much for the past few weeks, but I’ll catch up with all your streams over the coming few days.

Posted in Birmingham, England Tagged: cafe, cocktails, England

Grand Entrance

Sandmania — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:57:26 +0000

Grand Central Terminal in New York sure is a photographers delight…. I must have taken about 100 or so images there during the one hour tripod permit I had.

Posted in New York, Travel Tagged: grand central terminal, New York

Spaceships of all shapes and sizes

Sandmania — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:56:20 +0000

Here is a much wider shot of the whole Eden Project complex. You can see the different biodomes here…the furthest one away is the Rainforest Biome with its tropical temperatures and the nearest one is the Mediterranean Biome.

The porcupine style windows building in the foreground is known as The Core and its full of weird and wonderful things.

It took me an absolute age to get onto the roof and had to overcome all sorts of tricky obstacles such as security guards and locked doors…nah I’m just kidding really.

This one involved taking 7 manual exposures and then using Photomatix and Photoshop to process them.

Posted in Cornwall, England, Travel Tagged: Cornwall, eden project