Since today is the beginning of carnival I thought it would be appropriate to post something connected to it. This is a friend of mine putting the finishing touches to his make-up that would go with his costume before he ventured out.

This was one of the rare instances of me shooting in jpeg format. Later, while reviewing I realized how much more ‘safe’ shooting in RAW is. Since I’m still not very good at getting proper exposures the original of this shot came out very dark. In RAW, the latitude for error correction is much greater, not so in jpeg. Still, I managed to get something back and I think the photo now conveys something of what I wanted it to in the first place. If you are looking at the focal length in the exif data and wondering where the rest of the image has gone, yes, this photo is cropped!

This can be a companion piece to the one I posted a couple of days [back here](http://www.visual.arthedains.com/index.php?showimage=160). It is from the same place but looking in the opposite direction. Don’t even ask me why I used such a shallow aperture for a photo like this. I think I shot this without thinking! And that tone is just the result of using a different white balance, cloudy in this case, as simple as that!

Oh, carnival starts here tomorrow so I hope I’ll be afforded some good photo opportunities! As they say here Kolle Alaaf!

Thanks for the nice comments yesterday, much appreciated. This is one of the few macro shots from the shoot along the Rhine. Again, I played around a bit with PP on this. Used selective color and contrast to make the leaf stand out better against what is a slightly cluttered background.

Yesterday, after days of dreary rain, the weather here cleared suddenly. To not miss the window of opportunity I immediately took off with my cameras and went towards the Rhine river. I got a few pics which I’m happy with. You can expect to see them over the next few days.

This one is from the top of one of the bridges over the Rhine. This photo has gone through substantial PP as I wasn’t happy with the way it had come out. Mainly, I increased the dynamic range to make the clouds stand out better, which was the original intention behind taking this shot. In the end, I’ve to say I like the way this photo has come out. When I started PP I had no idea I would end up with this!

Today, after a long time, I managed to go out and shoot something. This is the magnificent Gothic cathedral of Cologne, also the tallest Gothic structure in the world. It is one building that overpowers your senses with its sheer size. Even after being in Cologne for more than two years now I never got around to photographing the Dom (as it is called in German) properly. So I’m glad that I finally got some decent shots. This will be the first in a series of three shots. This one was shot towards late evening. I blew out the sky during PP to let the building stand out better.

The Dom has a lot of interesting history behind it. Including interruptions, it took more than 600 years for the building to be completed (1248-1880). It was even the tallest structure in the world between 1880 and 1884! It’s Sarcophagus of the Magi is thought to contain the remains of the Three Wise Men. It was hit 14 times during aerial bombing in WWII but managed not to collapse. And it also has the world’s largest free-swinging bell!

One suggestion, this photo is best viewed full screen. Press F11 to go into full screen mode (and press F11 again to exit it).

Quite surprisingly, this was selected as the photo of the fortnight in one of the photography forums I’m part of! Even without that this would still be one of my favorites as I’m happy with the way it came out. And oh, I think this is the first photo here with my recently acquired Minolta 17-35mm zoom lens.

As I mentioned yesterday the original idea was to post another macro of the bouquet. But I just wasn’t happy with the results I was getting after post-processing of those shots. So I decided to post this macro instead, from a different shoot. At least this came out decently.

A lab colleague was given a lovely bouquet. So I requested her to leave it behind for a day so that I could shoot it to my heart’s content! Being the nice person she is she agreed. So starting with this I’ll be posting some macro shots from that shoot. The extremely shallow dof in such shots is a pain to work with, especially without a tripod. But I liked the way this shot has come out. I hope you do too.

Inspite of some minor quibbles with the composition I quite like the way this shot has come out. It didn’t need much post-processing either except for some sharpening. The only thing I had think a little about was what white balance to use. I finally settled on this.

This is my Russian friend Katya. She had asked me to take a photo of her when we had gone to the Christmas market, a little more than a week ago. As I clicked the shutter some guy entered the frame…grr! I did take a couple more shots but I liked this one the best, in spite of the inadvertent entry. What do you think?

Luckily, this photo was not lost in the hard drive crash as I had processed these and stored them in a separate location. Oh, and a very Happy New Year folks!