Faust

Hey Geoff

You're welcome my friend. Im glad to help you.

As long as you take picture with a digital camera, the editing process with Photoshop (or Gimp or whatever) is highly recommanded if you want to improve your shots.

A tripod is essential in low light conditions... As much as a remote controler :-)

Hey Geoff !!

I respond your question here, it might help (maybe) other people...

The question :

Basically, my simple question is - when you take photos at sunset/sunrise, how do you get full light into the foreground whilst still maintaining the colours in the sky? I can only seem to get one or the other properly.

Basically, what happens is one of two things:

1. I either get a perfect pic of the sky/colours but the foreground is mostly black / too dark.

2. Or, I focus on the foreground, or slow down the shutter speed to get a nice clear photo of the foreground, but then the sky turns out too bright and it loses all the colours.

I see so many photos of a bright, clear foreground as well as a deeply colourful sky. How do you get the balance of both?

Well... I will try to help you the best I can with my broken English

This kind of situation appears regulary when you take a picture where the scene present at the same time very bright light and low light in a huge contrast difference. A high light (i.e. the sunset) and a very low light (i.e. the forground). The sensor of your camera is confused by this high light difference.

Most of the landscape photographer use a special technique called "Digital blending" or HDR (for High Dynamic Range).

Hiere is a site which explain it in a better english than mine :

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/digital-blending.shtml

The main principle is simple : take 3 different pictures on different exposure time or aperture (one normal, one underexposed and one overexposed), then, make them blending in order to get back the details in your foreground.

You need :

1/ a tripod (essential)

2/ photoshop and a minimum knowledge of the program

3/ a camera with the Bracketing option (if you don't have this option you have to take 3 different exposure pictures manually)

This technique is used in most of the big landscape pictures, even the super shot like National Geographic etc... If you want, you can also take more than 3 exposures (7,8 etc) and mixed them, the result will be even more spectacular.

Hope it helps my friend

Totally crazy !!! These guys are 10 years old ?!?

Wow this is VERY good

Ordered ! Thanks Jez, nice discovery

Holy cow !!!

Mastedon '3' (killer)

But really at a stretch I'd give this 65%

Same for me.

Pretty good album for sure but i'm a bit disappointed. And I seriously don't understand such high appreciations on melodicrock.com which rate the disc at 100% (??!!)... For me it's a very good album, of course, but "a bit" overrated.

Red Dawn is a pure classic AOR imho ! Larry Baud is an awesome singer. If you have to choose between those two bands, go for Red Dawn without any hesitation as Bernd said. Except for the singer, it's difficult to compair Red Dawn and Network, different style, even if both are melodic.

Red Dawn is very "keyboard oriented"...

A limited (2000 copies) reissue of 'Night Of Passion' (+1 bonus track) is avalaible at the webstore AORHeaven...

Any opinions on this new PT effort ? I have to admit that i'm not into this new one... I'm a bit disappointed...

This is totally surprising !!! I thought Marcie off from the music business after his operation... This news sound like an hoax but isn't... can't wait to see the result of a such reunion...

Edit : oh and yes, agreed with Ward on production, they deserve a recent sound production...

Andy Fraser "Fine Fine Line" (finally !!!)

Guilt Machine "On This Perfect Day"

Judas Priest "Priest... Live!"

The band is not dead... They will be back in november with a new album with... DC Cooper on vocals.

W.E.T. in november

Shadow Gallery "Digital Ghost" in november (with their new singer DC Cooper)

Transatlantic "The Whirlwind" in October

Wow this sounds kick ass so far. I am loving the samples. And Chris- Excellent art. I made one of them my desktop wallpaper....

Thank you mate I'm glad you like the artworks :-)

The album is quite awesome, it'll be avalaible on the US market on the forthcoming days.

(Don't miss the tunes Green and Cream and Season Of Denial, both killer prog tunes)

Guilt Machine "Season Of Denial"

Me too mate - Rubbish artwork don't ya think?

hahaha ! The guy who made it deserve to be in jail

GUILT MACHINE "On This Perfect Day"

Thank you !!!

A bunch of french naked girls and a ocean of beer for all !

the "Bad Image" album was horrible......the rest are pretty cool.

I do not agree 'Bad Image' is excellent (one of their best imho !!!)

My fave is Hands Of Time

Excellent band (but not on their recent stuff)

Pure esoteric hard rock sound

Yes ! He is the Evil ! Vade Retro !

Look at his little pointy horns. Devil he wants to ruin us all.

I've gone and bought the stupidly priced deluxe edition ..... it's Jez's fault....he just has a bad influence on me!!!

Hahahaha ! Bad Bad Bad Jezter !

But I think I will do the same and bought the same edition... Shame on me.

Anyway, it's Jez's fault... Don't ask why, it's always his fault LOL

yeh but apart from that!

It's nevertheless a pretty long and productive career ! Don't you think ?

been meaning to check out Stream of Passion and Ayreon... any good?

Both are very good. But Ayreon albums are his masterpieces.

I prefer 'Temple Of Gold' but this one is great as well

Indeed Never Satisfied and 'Don't tell no lies' are killer tunes

what else has Arjen Lucassen done?

Arjen is pretty well famous on the european prog/metal scene

Arjen has started his musical career in the 80's with Bodine

Since he has played in several bands like :

Vengeance

Solo career with 2 albums (unsuccessul and now collectors)

in 1995 he created Ayreon (pomp prog metal opera rock), an all star project with several musicians and vocalist (too many to mention but all the best included Jorn Lande etc)

He has also participate in many side-projects like :

Stream Of Passion, Ambeon and Star One

Guilt Machine is his new project with Lori Linstruth, Chris Maitland and Jasper Steverlinck

For more details the Wikipedia is exhaustive :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arjen_Anthony_Lucassen

Cool guy and awesome musician !

You may also wanna grab the Burglar soundtrack, where they (Robert Hart & DISTANCE) performed 2 really good songs.

Great music !

 

You may hear one of them here:

Wow thank you ! I didn't know this soundtrack. Excellent. I must find a copy, thank you so much for the information !