Welcome to the Schwarzwald in south west Germany! This is probably the most famous forest in Germany, and is the home of the traditional cuckoo clock. (It also gives its name to Black Forest Gateau, but opinion is divided on whether it actually originated in here.)

As you can see in the ‘before’ photo, it wasn’t quite as sunny as this image might make you believe: an ominous black cloud has been removed, and replaced with beautiful clear skies. I also changed the angle a bit to straighten things out

]]> http://www.discretised.com/2010/08/walking-in-the-schwarzwald/feed/ 2 http://www.discretised.com/2010/07/updated-look/ http://www.discretised.com/2010/07/updated-look/#comments Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:41:41 +0000 Michael http://discretised.com/?p=152 Welcome to the new-look discretised.com! This is part of the reason why I haven’t updated in a while, but I’m hoping to put my efforts back into photography very soon.

What’s new

There are several new additions to the site that you can take advantage of:

• New subscribe feature. You can now subscribe via email using the link at the top of every page.
• New photo options. When rolling the mouse over a photo, you’ll get a list of options at the top, which may include an option to view the ‘before’ photo (as it came out of the camera), or a link to a hi-res version.
• Paged photo posts. No more long, long web pages; each post is broken down into one page for each photo.
• New post types. In addition to normal photo posts, there will be news posts, like these (and perhaps more kinds to follow).

I hope to keep making improvements to the site. If there is anything missing that you think would be nice to have, then please let me know via the comments below, or via email to michael (at) discretised (dot) com.

EDIT: I just added a new photo-wall to the front page, in case you hadn’t noticed. I hope you’ll enjoy using it!

EDIT 2: You can now indicate which photo your comment refers to when posting a comment. Neat, huh?

Winter this year has been relentless. Only two weeks ago, things seemed to be improving; the sun was out, and the temperature was on the up. Then came Saturday. Around 15 cm of snow had fallen overnight, and temperatures continued to plummet to a breezy –9 C. It certainly made getting around a bit more difficult.

]]> http://www.discretised.com/2010/03/winter-morning/feed/ 2 http://www.discretised.com/2010/02/ulm-fasching/ http://www.discretised.com/2010/02/ulm-fasching/#comments Sun, 28 Feb 2010 22:52:26 +0000 Michael http://discretised.com/?p=126

Fasching is the German word for carnival, and it is celebrated in many German towns and cities sometime in February in the week before Ash Wednesday. The festival itself is supposed to banish evil spirits, and given the costumes I’d say they probably do a fairly good job. These pictures were taken during the Fasching parade, where the various organisations in Ulm (some of which seemingly exist only for Fasching) dress up and march through Ulm, much to everyone’s entertainment.

I’ve been experimenting much more with Photoshop recently, trying to get more artistic effects out of my photos. In order to draw attention to the centre figure, I blurred those behind him, and painted out a woman who was standing on the left.

]]> http://www.discretised.com/2010/02/ulm-fasching/feed/ 4 http://www.discretised.com/2010/01/washington/ http://www.discretised.com/2010/01/washington/#comments Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:28:50 +0000 Michael http://discretised.com/?p=93

Around August, when this photo was taken, Washington was teeming with tourists. You can’t see any in this photo (due to the size of the statue), but there were literally hundreds surrounding me, just out of shot. It was hard to pick out where people were from, but my impression was that a large proportion were American. It is as though the walk down the mall from the Capitol building to the Lincoln memorial is a kind of pilgrimage, each stone basted with sticky nostalgia. It certainly ‘feels’ American: everything has a sense of being new, more tangible, more immediate. It is, I suppose, where America was born.

]]> http://www.discretised.com/2010/01/washington/feed/ 0 http://www.discretised.com/2009/10/boston-at-night/ http://www.discretised.com/2009/10/boston-at-night/#comments Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:46:37 +0000 Michael http://discretised.com/?p=72

Boston is breathtaking at night. At the top of the Prudential building is the ‘Skywalk’, from which you can look around the full 360 degrees. The tall building in this picture is 111 Huntingdon Avenue, affectionately called ‘R2-D2’.

Taking good photos at the top was pretty challenging, since I didn’t have a tripod, and the glass reflects all of the light from inside the room, especially as it gets dark. This was one of the better shots, but it still needed some sharpening and colour enhancement.

]]> http://www.discretised.com/2009/10/boston-at-night/feed/ 1 http://www.discretised.com/2009/10/new-york/ http://www.discretised.com/2009/10/new-york/#comments Fri, 02 Oct 2009 22:50:34 +0000 Michael http://discretised.com/?p=42 Sorry I’ve not update in a while: it takes a bit of time to edit all the photos and upload them. Here are some photos from my trip to New York when I was in the US. Enjoy!

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The famous Grand Central train station in New York. While taking this photo I was approached by a policewoman and told if I wanted to take photos with a tripod I’d need a permit. Luckily I got the photo I wanted just in time.

This seemed to work best in black and white, so I played with it a little to get just the right atmosphere.

]]> http://www.discretised.com/2009/10/new-york/feed/ 6 http://www.discretised.com/2009/08/boston/ http://www.discretised.com/2009/08/boston/#comments Fri, 28 Aug 2009 17:33:25 +0000 Michael http://discretised.com/?p=26

This image captures the reflection in probably the largest skyscraper in Boston, the John Hancock centre. I was staying in a hotel just over the road, and I saw this image as I was walking past the building. The contrast of building styles in Boston is quite interesting, with a mixture of high-tech architecture like the John Hancock iteself and the more post-modern buildings reflected in this image, to the Georgian streets of Beacon Hill.

In photoshop, most of the lights coming from the inside of the building have been removed. Unfortunately the main lamp that is seen coming from inside was too difficult for me to remove. If you have ideas on how it can be done, let me know in the comments.

]]> http://www.discretised.com/2009/08/boston/feed/ 2 http://www.discretised.com/2009/08/potsdam/ http://www.discretised.com/2009/08/potsdam/#comments Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:38:53 +0000 Michael http://discretised.com/?p=9

Welcome to my first photo on the blog! This is the Sans Souci palace in Potsdam near Berlin. The weather was a bit strange all day, varying between sunny and cloudy. This was caught when the sun was out.

I changed the perspective slightly in Photoshop to get everything nice and straight, and increased the colour saturation to get the nice vibrant yellow on the façade.

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