Medium format photography, visual storytelling, and experiments in style – with a focus on people and places.
72 posts
Yesterday we took a day off from all that family-meeting-during-spring-festival business and took a almost two hour long walk on the famous Xi'An city wall. The Xi'An city wall surrounds completely the inner downtown area, which makes it a incredible 13.74 kilometers long. It was…
<figure class="post__image"><img loading="lazy" src="https://montras.io/media/posts/253/hengdian_fake_beijing_palace_by_yakobusan_d13l0as-fullview.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="600"></figure><a href="http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/66485188/">Hengdian Fake Beijing Palace</a> by =<a class="u" href="http://yakobusan.deviantart.com/">yakobusan</a> on <a href="http://www.deviantart.com">deviant</a><a href="http://www.deviantart.com">ART</a><br><br>This pictures was <strong>not</strong> taken in Beijing.<br><br>Confusing headline? You should have seen me when I was standing in the fake forbidden palace! <em>Hengdian World Studios</em> is the name of the crazy movie studio that 'rebuild' the forbidden city for cinematic purposes. And not only Beijing, but they also copied some buildings from Xi'An, Hongkong, Guangzhou and other cities. I didn't know this, but quite a few big movie titles were completely or partly shot here: Gong Li's THE EMPEROR AND THE ASSASSIN, Zhen Kaige's horrible THE PROMISE and last but not least Zhang Yimou's latest drama THE CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER. And countless chinese TV series, as it seems.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/yakobusan/471351091/" title="Photo Sharing"><img loading="lazy" src="https://montras.io/media/posts/201/471351091_cc70f083e2_m.jpg" alt="ChinaNext Entry #3" width="159" height="240"></a><br><br>So when I went to Lujiazui yesterday to take some new Pudong pictures for the ChinaNext competition, all of a sudden an idea flew to my head: Why not create a vertical panorama of the beautiful Jin Mao tower? So I took five images at full zoom and stitched them together in Photoshop CS3, which has a new and goddamn hard rocking Photomerging function. Do you like the result?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/yakobusan/468219100/" title="Photo Sharing"><img loading="lazy" src="https://montras.io/media/posts/196/468219100_7fd21c81e6.jpg" alt="55: Spaghetti!!!" width="500" height="486"></a><br><br>Since my guests always seem to like my spaghetti, I thought I'd post my recipe. Today my friend <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/theshanghaieye/">theshanghaieye</a> from flickr came over and took pics while my wife and I were cooking, so you can see the progress with images.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/yakobusan/243841124/" title="Photo Sharing"><img loading="lazy" src="https://montras.io/media/posts/193/243841124_32675c52d3.jpg" alt="Nikon D50: ordered!" width="500" height="380"></a><br><br>Since people keep telling me that you can achieve better HDR results by taking images with different exposures, I performed a test for this. I was quite surprised by the result. But let's begin with the setup.</p>
Zhouzhuang is supposed to be the most famous, or at least most beautiful water town in China. You may have never heard of it, but there is a chance that you have seen it already: It is used during the showdown of the third 'Mission:…
<p>NEW TUTORIAL FROM 2009 <a href="http://jakob.montrasio.net/2009/10/15/hdr-2009-tutorial-make-a-nice-hdr-image-in-10-minutes-or-less/">HERE</a>!</p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/yakobusan/434857499/" title="Photo Sharing"><img loading="lazy" src="https://montras.io/media/posts/186/434857499_8e16199d10.jpg" alt="Nikon D50 RAW to HDR tutorial" width="500" height="500"></a><br><br>Here it is, the promised Nikon D50 HDR tutorial or 'How To Make A HDR Image Out Of A Single RAW file'. Do you want to make a image like the one above? Then read my tutorial and try for yourself. Now I didn't teach everything myself, I learned a lot from 'stuck in customs', but there are some things I do different. Let's get started.</p>
Following the chinese tradition, we had a couple of wedding images taken yesterday. Funny, in China you have to shoot these pictures before and not during the wedding ceremony. They will give us three books, some framed images, invitations and whatnot for the money we…
<p><a data-flickr-embed="true" data-header="true" data-footer="true" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/yakobusan/430271521/in/photolist-FyLhH-Fw42F-FvZBf-Fw17M-FvX7h-FvXag-Fw4gC-Fw5xw-FvSud-FvTHQ-FuV4A-FuWBp-FupZE-FuUwm-FuWak-FuU3G-FuTAw-FuUbK-FuVJF-FuUAD-FuSsC-FuT9G-FuVcM-FuUNp-FuMZC-FuRLu-FuNQm-FuPBA-FuQ3m-FuPmS-FuPor-FuU4v-FuQkH-FuRVw-FuM9U-FuMLN-FuRbG-cMhSy-9DK9X-FuQhf-FuRwf-FuP5Y-FuSog-FuNQ2-FuSDR-FuLJo-E2fJv-qbfw7-ezJD9-ezJpS" title="Pudong leaks over..."><img loading="lazy" src="https://live.staticflickr.com/177/430271521_8b747797f6_h.jpg" alt="Pudong leaks over..." width="1600" height="1078"></a> <script async="" src="//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <br><br>Seit dem Beginn des neuen Jahres bin ich ziemlich ausgelastet und komme daher nicht so viel zum bloggen. Wenn die Zeit es erlaubt, werde ich meine Erfahrungen mit der Stadt Chongqing, 32 Millionen Einwohner, niederschreiben. Das war wirklich unglaublich... Aber im Moment bin ich schon froh, wenn ich abends mal eine Stunde Zeit habe, um ein bisschen mit Photoshop herumzuspielen. Auf der einen Seite startet grade der neu angelaufene Verkauf von Neumaschinen für uns in China, auf der anderen Seite muss ich mit meiner Frau unsere Hochzeitsfeier vorbereiten. Daher kann ich euch im Moment nur ein paar in letzter Zeit entstandener Fotos zum betrachten anbieten. Das Foto oben habe ich geschossen, als ein Freund aus Deutschland da war und wir die Sehenswürdigkeiten von Shanghai besucht haben.</p>
Image is a collage of different HDR settings, quite crazy layered. Anyway, as you can see, Pudong 'leaks' over to Puxi. Don't you feel, that more and more parts in 'old' Shanghai start to look like Pudong, too? There's a new area here in Zhabei,…