Bi-Weekly Photo: Segovia

Today's picture shows my hometown Segovia as seen from Valverde del Majano, where my grandfather lives (to be specific, it was taken from here). It's a bit hazy, and the shot is a bit wide (it was taken with my 18-135mm lens at maximum zoom), but it shows all the important details pretty well.

The tower in the middle belongs to the cathedral, and to the left you can see south-western side of the Alcazar.

Todays Bi-Weekly Photo...

... will be delayed a bit. I did not have time to write one. I'll post it this afternoon.

Bi-Weekly Photo: Experimenting With Long Exposure

One of the things I wanted to try when I bought the camera was long exposure shots, but I didn't try it until last December. I suppose I was too lazy to get out after dark to take some pictures alone. Fortunately, Pia saw a short clip about light painting on TV and wanted to do it herself, and since here in Munich "after dark" means at 4:30 PM during the winter, it was more like an afternoon walk.

In case you don't know what light painting is: if you have a scene with very little light or simulate that using a filter, you can capture that scene nontheless with a long exposure shot, where the shutter remains open for a long time period, "gathering" more light. If you take a strong light source and move it around the scene, that light source is "burned" into the image at every point it passes through, leaving a trail. This can be used to "draw" some interesting forms on your image.

We went to the park looking for a spot without too much artificial lighting and found this:

This was a rather quick shot (81s according to the Metadata), which is why the startrails are so short. It turned out to be one of the best shots, however. I still have a lot to learn about photography...

Here's one light-painted by Pia. I didn't manage to draw anything good...

PS: Yes, the white, red and purple spots on the image are hot pixels on my camera's sensor... It was the first time I used the sensor for long periods of time. I suppose it got a little hotter than usually, revealing the otherwise less obvious hot pixels.

Bi-Weekly Photo: Sunset in Segovia

This is one of my favorite pictures. I snapped it in the summer while taking a walk around Segovia (Spain), and I love it on my desktop's background.

PS: I won't have much time to write during the next few weeks. Exams are coming up...