Great vacation and awesome pictures.

We are back from our small vacation. There was fabulous 3 days of relax in Georgia mountains. We lived in a beautiful house in Hiawassee, Lake Chatuge, Northeast Mountains, Georgia, USA (100 Miles North of Atlanta, GA). Thank you, Doug and Beckie :-) I don’t remember when I had a such relaxed rest last time:-)

Alex made some pictures of us and “Eye Candy” breathtaking mountain and lake views from the deck. All technical details you can read on Alex’s blog.

Enjoy the photos:

Continue reading Great vacation and awesome pictures.

First AKELstudio LIVE! masterclass went well. We did it!



It was not easy for Alex and me, because we are not a public people. But it was fun and gave us a great feeling that we did something useful:-) We are really enjoy every photo-session with water, because you never know exactly what will come up: every drop is unique:-) This is a very creative process with a lot of experiments.

As always, all technical aspects and full length video from the masterclass you can find on Alex Koloskov blog

Now I have some photos to share, including before and after post-production.

Mouse Over to see Before and After

Water splash photography masterclass

Water splash photography masterclass

Continue reading First AKELstudio LIVE! masterclass went well. We did it!

Water in still life, product and advertisement photography: Episode two (announcement)

AKELstudio is glad to announce a new upcoming tutorial, we are working on it right now. This is a second episode from our  “using water in product photography” series (the first one is here).

This time we used a carbonated water, pepper, colored lights and other ingredients:-). Enjoy a little preview, the first image form the photoset:

water-photography-tutorial

Water photography tutorial announcement

The tutorial with the lighting setup and a video will be released beginning next week.

Also, one more exciting news for our readers: The next photoshoot of the “water” series we’ll be broadcasting live form our studio!

The live stream will be available on Hi-def format (720p), accessible from any browser and even from smartphones: we’ll be using USTREAM service for the broadcast, there is a viewer available for both iPhone and Droid market.
Chat will be opened for all registered users: our photographer Alex Koloskov will be glad to answer all your questions real time.

Details will be available later, stay tuned!

High Dynamic Range images. HDRi before and after. Landscapes.











I like this type of articles a lot: before and after images.  Now I show you some outstanding HDR images we had done in a past. Do not do them much now, busy with in-studio work with the products, but I still enjoy working with HDRi.
I will not give you many technical aspects how to make HDR photos, but this is what our photographer Alex Koloskov has told me about how he shot these landscape HDR photos:

” I usually do from two to  four or five exposures for each HDR, decision s made based on how wide dynamic range is  needed.

For bright sunny day, where there is a deep shadows  and bright sky or water is present, up to five exposures may be needed to get the correct exposure for the whole range of brightness. On dusk and dawn, two or three exposure will be enough.

I rarely use auto exposure bracketing (when camera makes from 3 to 5 images for you form up to _3 to +3 f-stops), but rather shoot on manual, making more then 3 f-stops bracketing when needed.

The idea is to get correctly exposed the darkest and the brightest part of the image , the rest should fall in between.”

~Alex

For these landscape images I used Photomatix Pro 3 because I like some unrealistic effect it gives.
When I need more realistic images (especially for architecture) I like to use Photoshop,  selecting two or more files from a set of exposures to merge and create a High Dynamic Range image. There is even more accurate method: using masks, when I manually merge specific areas of the image by masking them and blending with another layer.

But again, for  these particular photos I used Photomatix Pro 3 plus some Photoshop adjustments.

Mouse Over to see Before and After

HDR photography before and after, Atlanta, GA

HDR photography before and after, Atlanta, GA

Continue reading High Dynamic Range images. HDRi before and after. Landscapes.

Mexican food royalty free stock images

Location: AKELstudio, Alpharetta, GA

Atlanta commercial photographer Alex Koloskov

You can buy these images on our stock photos web site AKELphoto

Mexican food photography for restaurant menu, Atlanta, GA

Mexican food photography for restaurant menu, Atlanta, GA

Continue reading Mexican food royalty free stock images

New stock images of Night Atlanta, GA

ou can buy all this images in High Resolution on our stock photos web sites:

Night Atlanta, GA stock images

Night Atlanta, GA stock images

Continue reading New stock images of Night Atlanta, GA

HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photography

New HDRi. Lake Lanier, Georgia

Lake Lanier, GA. HDR photography

Lake Lanier, GA. HDR photography

Continue reading HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photography

Not HDR. Before and after photos.

It is not real HDR images. It’s an advantage to shoot RAW.

What is the difference between JPEG and RAW formats? The main advantage of JPEG format is that images in JPEG are ready for print or can be uploaded to the web as soon as you take them off your camera.
If you choose to use RAW format, you can have a lot of fun manipulating your image.  I promise :-) . You may not know it, but camera RAW format is 12, 14 or even 16 bits per color (depending on your sensor), compared to 8 bits per color for a JPEG. What does that mean?  RAW gives significantly more room for adjustments, as it has more color information (this is a raw snapshot from a camera’s sensor), allowing more brightness, contrast, white balance, and saturation, without losing quality.   The final image will be converted (down-sampled) to 8 bits per color, because our monitors only support 8 bits per color anyway. Working with JPEG is like manipulating on a small web-size photo, compared to a full-resolution source and saving it to a small size afterward.

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Continue reading Not HDR. Before and after photos.

Callaway Gardens HDR images (before and after)

Callaway Gardens HDR photos

Callaway Gardens, Georgia

Piedmont Park, Atlanta, HDR photogrpahy

Piedmont Park, Atlanta, HDR image

HDR photogrpahy

I hope you see where is before and after:-)