Day #110 @ Photography Project 365

I arrived in Copenhagen Central Train Station at about 6 pm yesterday. I took the high-speed train from Stockholm, known as the X2000, which made it to Copenhagen in just over five hours. The train ride was pleasant and comfortable, and I even had a Internet access on board - I only had to pay 10 EUR for Internet access throughout the trip.

Having been to Copenhagen twice before, I am pretty familiar with the place. From the Central Train Station, I walked to the Scandic Hotel where I had a room reserved for the night. After checking in and freshening up a bit, I went out for dinner. I decided to call it a night pretty early because I still had the final leg of my journey home ahead of me.

This morning I went back to the Central Train Station to catch my train back to Munich via Hamburg. I made my ticket reservation while I was still in Helsinki and didn't have to worry about getting a ticket anymore. However, there was a long queue of people trying to get tickets - as shown in the first photo here. Many of them were probably in the same situation as I was - stuck in Scandinavia and making their way back home.

I soon made my way to the platform where the train was scheduled to depart from - shown in the second photo. There weren't that many people waiting at first but the number kept growing. The train, which was a German Inter-City Express (ICE), arrived punctually. Boarding was pretty easy and organized in spite of the large number of passengers.

There were many passengers without seat reservations and who were not able to get seats. They actually had to rough it out for about four hours until we reached Hamburg. Fortunately, I was still able to make a seat reservation when I purchased my ticket.

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Day #109 @ Photography Project 365

As soon as I boarded yesterday, I began exploring the ferry. First, I had to look for a place to store my suitcase. Fortunately, they have storage boxes where guests can put their belongings in for 2 EUR. Since I didn't have too many things with me, I was able to make do with a single box.

By the way, I got a ticket for the ferry but wasn't able to get a cabin when I made my reservation - everything was sold out. So, I was planning to either stay awake or loaf around the ferry all night along. However, I decided to try my luck and approached the information counter to inquire if they still had any cabin free. They put my name on the waiting list and in about 15 minutes I actually got a single cabin! The cabin I have is really comfortable, fits two persons and has an attached bathroom. I couldn't have asked for more. I slept very well last night.

The view from the ferry is fabulous! It's not everyday that I travel be sea and I've been using my time on board to improve my photography (although I only have my little IXUS with me). There's no shortage of opportunities for a picture of the day here. When I got up this morning, I decided to take some photos. While I wasn't up early enough to catch sunrise, the first photo here was caught about an hour or so after sunrise. It wasn't exactly the golden hour of the day but I think it turned out pretty OK.

We reached the Stockholm harbor at about 9:40 am. There was a bus from Viking Line waiting to take us to the city center. I had gotten my ticket from the ferry and was able to immediately board to bus. The drive took about 15 minutes.

The second photo here was taken right outside the Stockholm Central Train Station. I had to take the train to Copenhagen from here. As I had about two hours to kill, I decided to scout around Stockholm a bit and take some photos.

joel@shutteria.com

Day #108 @ Photography Project 365

It was announced this morning that the planned schedule for the reopening of the Helsinki airport had been shifted forward again. I decided I'm not going to wait anymore. As soon as I read the announcement, I planned my evacuation via sea and land.

I plan to take the overnight ferry from Helsinki to Stockholm, which leaves this afternoon, the train from Stockholm to Copenhagen, spend the night in Copenhagen and finally take the train from Copenhagen back to Munich (via Hamburg). If all goes as planned,my trip home will take just over 48 hours. This whole debacle made me realize two things: 1. how isolated and far away Finland is from the rest of Europe 2. how dependent we are on air travel these days.

At about 3pm, I made my way to the harbor, where the ferry was. The first photo was taken from the departure hall - we were waiting to board the ferry at that time.

While we were waiting, the ferry service operator provided us with some entertainment. I think that the theme of the ferry service and correspondingly, the entertainment, changes every now and then. This time the theme was South Africa. So, they invited a group of drummers to play us a beat!


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Day #107 @ Photography Project 365

So, I'm officially stuck here in Helsinki! The airport is still closed and they keep shifting forward the scheduled day and time they're reopening. I need to find a way out of here.

This is once again a photo taken in the underground metro station. In post-processing, I converted it to black and white and increased the contrast.

joel@shutteria.com

Day #106 @ Photography Project 365

I was supposed to leave for Munich today but unfortunately, due to the volcano eruption in Iceland, all flights from Helsinki (and most airports in Europe) have been canceled. There is a ferry from Helsinki directly to the north of Germany but as expected, it's fully-booked. Looks like I'll be spending a few extra days in Helsinki.

This is a photo of an underground metro station in the city center. They've designed the place to look like a cave. My colleagues and I were in fact wondering if the walls were natural rocks or made of concrete. We came to the conclusion that they were made of concrete and designed to look like natural rocks.

joel@shutteria.com

Day #105 @ Photography Project 365

This is once again a photo taken in Helsinki. In Lightroom, I added a Sephia tone to the image and increased exposure to blow out the sky a little. The result of the latter step: a statue against a clean, white background.

joel@shutteria.com

Day #104 @ Photography Project 365

I took this photo of the World Trade Center in Helsinki City Center. Ok, this is one of many World Trade Centers but I still found it interesting.

I've to say that the unprocessed photo was just a snap shot but I'm indeed very pleased with this version here - the post-processed version. I used a Lightroom preset to give it a metallic tone, increase the contrast and add a vignette.

joel@shutteria.com

Day #103 @ Photography Project 365

This is a photo of the Helsinki Main Train Station. I went out for dinner with some colleagues this evening and the 20-minute walk involved threading through this place.

The Helsinki Main Train Station is nice. It's clean, not too crowded (or at least I've not experienced the rush-hour crowd) and there is quite a number of shops for just about anything.

joel@shutteria.com

Day #102 @ Photography Project 365

This photo was taken in the hotel room where I'm staying here in Helsinki. The desk has a lid with a mirror on the bottom side. The lid hides the cables and power sockets, which would otherwise look messy.

In this photo is a reflection off the mirror on the lid. In Lightroom, I used a high-contrast black and white preset to finish the job.

joel@shutteria.com

Day #101 @ Photography Project 365

I'm in Helsinki this week on business again. We were initially scheduled to have a 5-day workshop but due to cost reasons, our management decided to reduce it to three. This allowed me to spend Sunday at home in Munich instead of traveling on the weekend.

This is a photo of one of the shopping malls in Helsinki city center. It's a good place to have some food. In fact, a friend of mine introduced me to two restaurants in and around the area that are Malaysian-owned and obviously serve Malaysian food. Trips to Helsinki are going to be a lot more fun from now on.

joel@shutteria.com

Day #100 @ Photography Project 365

I've no idea what the local authorities are doing here but it does look like some mine amphitheater (though I seriously doubt that it's one). This photo was taken right in front of the main entrance to the Frauenkirche, one of Munich's most important landmarks.

I used a Lightroom preset to add a vignette and a cooler tone. 

joel@shutteria.com

Day #99 @ Photography Project 365

I bet you've never seen this in Munich. Well, you may at least recognize parts of it but you probably feel that it just doesn't seem to fit. Here's the secret: I superimposed the golden statue against from Marienplatz against the sky from Ammersee. Of course, I took both photos on separate occasions.

I've been trying to master layers in Photoshop for some time now. The (extremely) tedious part has always been erasing and getting rid of the unwanted parts (and pixels) in a particular photo. I've always thought to myself that there must be an easier way than to manually eliminate pixel by pixel. There are Photoshop plug-ins that apparently make this task easier but I've never tried them.

Anyway, I went through a "Photoshop Masterclass" DVD that was included in Digital Photo magazine recently and discovered some new tricks. Surprisingly, the lessons provided in the DVD always emphasized the manual pixel-by-pixel-elimination approach. However, they did indirectly highlight some tools within Photoshop that would make this task a lot easier.

Two very important tools are the magnetic lasso and magic wand. I've used the magnetic lasso in some previous photos before but this time I decided to go with the magic wand since the distinction between the object and its surrounding was pretty prominent. So, I used the magic wand to select a part of the background, right-clicked on the other parts that were not selected and chose "add to selection", and continued on until the entire background was selected. I then inverted my selection using the Select menu.

Now comes the new part, for me anyways. I clicked on the Refine Edge button towards the top of the window. By playing around with the feathering and expanding/contracting sliders, I was able to refine the selection (i.e. the selected object in this case was the golden statue). I chose the settings that looked ideal for me, copied the selection (i.e. the golden statue) and pasted it onto the image with the sky. Several further adjustments later, I got this photo.

joel@shutteria.com

Day #98 @ Photography Project 365

This is a photo of the New Town Hall in Marienplatz, Munich. It is a popular object for photography among tourists and locals alike.

We were in the city today and I brought my camera along to take some photos. As always, this magnificent building greeted me as I ascended from the U-bahn station. I have taken many photos of the New Town Hall before and I am more often than not pleased with the outcome.

The clouds in the sky today have played their role beautifully. They have given me much needed soft lighting and made a beautiful backdrop. I didn't have to do much in post-processing this time. I simply cropped the photo, and boosted saturation and contrast a bit.

joel@shutteria.com

Day #97 @ Photography Project 365

Spring is definitely setting in and I tried to capture its essence in this shot - from my apartment. I took an almost identically composed shot in the earlier part of this year when it was still winter. The dark bark of the tree against the bright walkway is still as captivating now as it was back then. Additionally this time, we have the blossoming flowers of spring, which gives the shot a more cheerful and pleasant setting.

In Lightroom, I increased the exposure to almost wash out the otherwise grayish walkway. I also increased the blacks to give the tree a dark tone that I wanted. Finally, I increased contrast further by adjusting its histogram curve to be more S-shaped.

joel@shutteria.com

Day #96 @ Photography Project 365

My wife recently ordered a Good News Bible from Amazon for a friend of hers and I have it photographed here.

To the get the red lighting effect, I used a colored flash filter - a red one. The result: a dark room effect.

joel@shutteria.com

Day #95 @ Photography Project 365

My wife was in the city today to get herself some niceties and pictured here in one of them - makeup.

I used one of the built-in presets in Lightroom to enhance this shot. I wanted to give it a 1920's look and feel, so I applied the antique preset. It made the photo warmer and brighter, almost to the point of overexposure. I guess most shots taken in the 1920's weren't perfectly due to technical limitation of that time but today we perceive some of these flaws as unique and almost enviable characteristics of photography.

joel@shutteria.com

Day #94 @ Photography Project 365

I remember that this tree looked exactly like this the same time last year! Just like then, it was decorated with colored egg-like ornaments for Easter.

In post-processing, boosting saturation helped bring out the bright colors in this photo.

joel@shutteria.com

Day #93 @ Photography Project 365

There is a garden close to our apartment where people can rent plots of land and well, have their own gardens there. This is a photo of one I found rather interesting.

The owner had obviously been working on his / her garden recently and had prepared it for the spring / summer. I'm no expert when it comes to flowers but I can quite confidently say that they are still small and the garden will look much better when they blossom.

I think the rooster looks pretty cool.

joel@shutteria.com

Day #92 @ Photography Project 365

The weather was pleasant today and I decided to take a walk in the nearby park. It is starting to get warmer outside and it sure feels like spring in setting in.

What better way to "capture" spring than with a photo of wild flowers. The sun rays added a glow to the flowers making them even more striking.


joel@shutteria.com

Day #91 @ Photography Project 365

My wife made some lovely bread for Easter! Unfortunately, this photo doesn't do it justice.

Food can indeed be an interesting subject for photography. I've never really delved into it though. Perhaps I should...

joel@shutteria.com