How to Capture and Post-Process Professional HDR Photos Using HDR Efex PRO

12 December, 2015 | Digital Photography School | 20 seen

In today's digital photography school tutorial I will show how you can take and make professional looking images using technology which is called HDR photography.

In fact before teaching you how to take and process a HDR images please take a note - I have been doing HDR photography less for one month. My findings so far are - like HDR is the best thing (I know as time will go I will probably change my mind and will go back to the routes, who knows maybe I will find a B&W the next BIG thing?!). I'm not a professional photographer, just a regular dude with a DLSR camera eager to learn some new things. I'm more than glad sharing my findings with you, my dear reader.

For this Tutorial I'm using: 

• Adobe Lightroom
• HDR Efex PRO
• Canon 1200D DSLR camera
• Sturdy tripod

Final HDR image created with HDR Efex PRO and fine tuned in Adobe Lightroom

I submitted the above image as day 63/365 entry image on my Flickr page. I gave it a name - "It is still Autumn", taken on November 26, 2015 in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia

Now let me show how you can take and create similar…

Dzveli (Old) Shuamta Monastery

11 December, 2015 | Churches and Monasteries | 56 seen

If you are traveling to region of Kakheti and your road is leading through Telavi town, there are few interesting tourist sites to visit and one of them is a very old monastery complex called Dzveli Shuamta.

For the first time I visited this site together vith my mom in the middle of October 2015. It was a rainy and foggy day so not very spectacular images this time, anyway Dzveli Shuamta still has one of the oldest Christian churches of Georgia – the triple-nave basilica that dates back to the 5th century. Two other cross-domed churches were built in the 7th century. The walls of these churches still have fragments of frescos and inscriptions made in the old Georgian Asomtavruli alphabet. The monastery is situated in a hollow between forest-covered mountains so that it has natural protection from three sides. The fourth side used to be fortified by a thick wall. A tradition has it St. King Tamar once spent 40 days fasting in solitude on Shuamta hill. Source: Kakheti.travel

Dzveli Shuamta monastery complex near Telavi

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Clay pots for storing wine

I don't know for sure the reason why those clay pots…

November 2015 Blog Traffic and Income Report 54,446 Users / $947.05

10 December, 2015 | Blogging | 8 seen

Welcome to the #23 traffic and income report covering blog traffic and earnings/expenses for November 2015. #23 means just one - one more month and it will be already two years since I have opted into thing called - making money from blogging. Two years are a lot of time, it's has been a long journey, but... I still feel it is day 2 or day 3.

I was doing separate reviews both for traffic and income until September, when I realized - how time consuming it is to provide 2 similar articles on related topic. Traffic and Income for a website goes hand to hand. You might wonder what stimulates me publish my traffic and revealing earnings for  the past 23 months already? The reason for publishing such reports and revealing secrets beyond the scenes are simple - Transparency matters. I hope my success or failures can give some ideas to you as well. 

Past November was just brilliant - for the very first time it cracked 50K unique users milestone and totaled in 54,446 unique users. Compared to October it is 36.36% traffic growth.

Blog Traffic November…

How to Make Homemade Dumplings from Scratch

9 December, 2015 | Food blogger | 7 seen

In today's food blogger series I will demonstrate how to make homemade dumplings from scratch. Well, almost from scratch, there are a few handy tools that might be very useful preparing this delicious food.

I love dumplings, in most cases dumplings is a cost effective solution when you are in hurry and really hungry. It hasn't been rare for me to visit local groceries shop at 2AM just to buy a pack of frozen dumplings. Today I will show how you can prepare dumplings at home. It's a really simple and doesn't take a lot of time or a lot of effort.

Ingredients for dumpling dough.

• 1 kg of flour
• 600 ml water
• 100 grams of butter
• 1 tsp (with top) salt

Rest the dough for 30 minutes :
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Total cooking time: 40 minutes

I took this dough recipe from a Russian language culinary blog: Заварное тесто для вареников и пельменей

Let's start cooking:

Tumanishvili Theater Cafe in Tbilisi

8 December, 2015 | Restaurant reviews | 13 seen

Some people visits theater to watch spectacles, some people visits to theater to enjoy a cup of coffee at theaters' buffet. That's exactly what happened to us in late November Sunday afternoon. After wandering around David Aghmeneshabeli avenue we headed here to enjoy cup of latte and try some sweets.

Entrance at Tumanishvili theater

You probably have noticed this lovely sculpture if wandered in this neighborhood - now you now - there is a lovely cafe inside and of course the Tumanishvili theater

Artistic interior 

There are few elements I really like here and would like to implement something from above scene in our rural house. The round dinning table is a must have.

Wide selection of alcoholic beverages 

Glass of good brandy / cognac perhaps is a good idea after or before spectacle. Although I prefer coffee and cola.

Posters and paintings

Tumanashvili's cafe seems a nice place where to enjoy a cup of coffee or try some sweets. Prices are pretty well above average in city. For two lattes, bottle of Coca Cola and a…

Tabor Monastery of the Transformation in Tbilisi

6 December, 2015 | Churches and Monasteries | 108 seen

You have probably noticed Tabor Monastery of the Transformation in Tbilisi if wandered around Abanotubani district - it's the one you can see up in the hill left from Narikala. The idea to visit this site arrived for me when some of the Georgia Expat Photographer club members posted a picture of this church.

I believe you can climb up here and have a lovely and a very spectacular hiking trip doing that, but for this time we opted for a more convenient way - a taxi. We took a regular street taxi and he took us up here, agreed to wait for 30 minutes while I will take photography here, and the took us back to the city for 20 Lari. 

And this is actually the way I suggest to you for getting here if you aren't familiar with area.

Tabor Monastery of the Transformation in Tbilisi

Tabor Monastery of the Transformation in Tbilisi

In the background you can see Tbilisi TV tower (on the top left) and almost all city of Tbilisi. 

Jesus Christ on the cross

Altar inside church

As I learned later this church has been built just recently (2012), some construction…

Painting Floor - Final Touch For Maximum Effect (Second Paint Layer)

5 December, 2015 | Home Remodeling | 1 seen

Right, we have arrived to the second post in my painting floor adventures from home remodeling series. Today I will show you how after adding second paint layer to our rural house's paint we achieved the maximum effect.

Paint work was performed at the start of July, 2015

Make sure you read other posts in our adventurous efforts of remodeling an old country house.

Floor ready for second layer of paint

Read more how I prepared this floor and applied base layer of paint here:

Floor waiting for a new layer of paint

As you can see in the background - it is a kitchen starting to get already a decent look

Applying second layer of paint

Wow,that's a dramatic makeover

Painted floor

Looks much better. Now our new temporary bedroom is almost ready, it's time to put in some furniture, finish kitchen works and start thinking of changing a leaky roof.

Wanderings In The Tbilisi Old Town (HDR Efex Pro)

4 December, 2015 | Digital Photography School | 16 seen

It was day 62 from my 365 photo challenge project and I felt I'm out of good photography locations. For couple of the last days I have been doing nice landscape photography in close to me locations, and it seemed that I'm out of options. I asked a friend (photographer) and asked could he give me some advice. He advised me to make a list with items to photograph, like birds, macro's e.t.c.

Still I felt I need to continue improving my landscape photography. Then another person asked have I tried HDR Effect PRO (For HDR photography I have been using just Photomatix) - my answer was no. 

And here did came the inspiration - I decided to head to the lovely Abanatobuani district in Tbilisi Old town and make some cool looking HDR's with public bath houses and hopefully some sun in the background.

I downloaded trial version of HDR Effect pro, took a tripod, fully charged battery and my Canon DSLR camera. Latter when doing post processing I was impressed of dramatic effect HDR Effect Pro created:

Abanotubani district in Tbilisi

That's a nice looking HDR actually. Make sure you are exposing property when doing bracketing. I did a…

Sachebureke Abanotubanshi (Cheburek Cafe on Abanotubani)

3 December, 2015 | Restaurant reviews | 54 seen

The other day we were just wandering around Tbilisi sulphur bath (Abanotubani) district doing some cool photography of probably most popular tourist spot in Tbilisi - Abanotubani district. During our wanderings we noticed small doors with title - Cheburek Cafe and decided to return to this place once photography session will be ended.

Cheburek Cafe is located on Grishashvili street 8, Tbilisi

Those of you who don't know what a Cheburek is, here is a good explanation from Wikipedia - Chiburekki is a deep-fried turnover with a filling of ground or minced meat and onions. It is made with a single round piece of dough folded over the filling in a half-moon shape. A national dish of the Crimean Tatars and traditional for the Caucasian and Turkic peoples, it is also popular as snack and street food throughout Transcaucasia, Central Asia, Russia,Ukraine, as well as with the Crimean Tatar diasporas in Turkey and Romania.

Cheburek is one of my favorite street foods and I was interested to learn more what kind of chebureki they serve at this place - for surprise of me -…

Fresh Vegetable Market Near Gori Highway

2 December, 2015 | Shopping Venues | 8 seen

I once had a friend visiting me from Canada, he was pretty much obsessed with eco friendly foods, I took him to the local Tbilisi Dezerter bazaar and told - hey look there are plenty of eco foods here. He took some carrot from local salesman and answered me - this probably is natural, but it's not eco!

Believe me or not - but my friend was right, I understood that immediately. If you just like my friend are into eco thing - you wont probably find eco friendly food near Gori Highway (connecting Tbilisi with Batumi) some 60 km from nations capital. On the other hand if natural is OK then you can buy fresh vegetables here for sure.

In fact this is what we actually did after returning from a day trip from Borjomi - we bought a box with tomatoes (about 10kg) to latter prepare tomatoes in jelly (Check out my food blogger series not to miss an update on that)

Tomatoes for sale near Gori highway in Republic of Georgia

Negotiating a deal with local farmers

The thing I love in Georgia - you can always bargain about the price, so we bought a box of tomatoes for about 10 lari, instead of 17 lari. Depending how good…

Borjomi Cafe 1+2

1 December, 2015 | Restaurant reviews | 13 seen

If you are looking for a decent cafeteria in Borjomi I can recommend one - Borjomi Cafe 1+2 located close to the entrance of Borjomi park. I paid a visit here and tried different dishes in the middle of September 2015.

Borjomi cafe 1+2

This cafe is located just next to the entrance in Borjomi Park.

Borjomi cafe 1+2

Lovely interior at Cafe 1+2 in Borjomi

Khachapuri and Salads 

Although the prices here are about the average, taking into account it's good location and good service this is a place I can recomend once in Borjomi

Motsameta Monastery near Kutaisi in Georgia

30 November, 2015 | Churches and Monasteries | 112 seen

Motsameta monastery is one of the most spectacular sites I have visited while being living in Georgia. To get here yo will need either to own your vehicle or hire a taxi, probably there are organized tours as well heading to Motsameta monastery.

I first visited this site in Spring 2015, unfortunately it was already a night and I didn't see much nor photographed anything decent here, the next time I visited Motsameta was in Autumn 2015, together with my mom, this time I was better prepared and it was a day.

Rail tracks near Motsameta monastery

There is actually a train making a stop in front of the entrance at Motsameta monastery, the Train is connecting Kutaisi and Tkibuli

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Forest surrounding Motsameta monastery

From the main entrance you must go some additional 500 meters to actually reach monastery complex. As you go you are pampered with spectacular views like forest seen in above image

Motsameta monastery

And then you will notice a fragment from a fairy tail - Motsameta monastery standing still at the end of he cliff.

Valley surrounding Motsameta monastery

I'm not…

Water Reflections on Lisi Lake

29 November, 2015 | | 8 seen

She was free in her wildness. She was a wanderess, a drop of free water. She belonged to no man and to no city. - Roman Payne, The Wanderess

Spectacular water reflection photography done in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia on Lisi Lake.​

Water reflections on Lisi lake in Tbilisi

A perfect harmony water reflection

Mountain reflection on water

Boat deck reflection on water

Building reflection on water

Ducks

Cost of Living in Tbilisi (Republic of Georgia)

28 November, 2015 | Living in Georgia | 59 seen

This post is a result of an experiment I performed for one month in October 2015, I counted my everyday expenses and summed it up to see how much actually it costs to live in Georgia. This information might be useful if you are planing to move to Georgia or just to compare how your country stands to Georgia.

For tracking my (our) everyday expenses I installed Expense Manager Android app on my phone and entered spending just after purchases. 

Total expenses in October 2015

In October in total we spent GEL 4,385 which equals to $1,823 or EUR 1,708 (according to exchange rates on November 20,2015)

Now to clarify the results for this experiment I must mention that bellow listed expenses are for family of two + two cats.

Lets start with numbers:

We have a nice two bedroom apartment in almost city center (it's not Old Town, but still very good neighborhood). Apartments in Tbilisi are pretty affordable, you can get a decent apartment, equipped with fridge, washing machine and other …

Simple Aspic (Meat Jelly, Kholodets) Recipe

27 November, 2015 | Food blogger | 107 seen

In today's food blogger's series I will show how to prepare a really tasty and delicious homemade aspic out of pig's trotters.

I'm not sure how popular an aspic is in the Western world, but it is a super popular in post Soviet countries, and is served in every fiests. Russian have a name for it - a kholodets (Холодец).According to Wikipedia - Aspic is a dish in which ingredients are set into a gelatin made from a meat stock or consommé. Non-savory dishes, often made with commercial gelatin mixes without stock or consommé, are usually called gelatin salads. Nearly any type of meat can be used to make the gelatin: pork, beef, veal, chicken, turkey, or fish. The aspic may need additional gelatin in order to set properly. Veal stock provides a great deal of gelatin; in making stock, veal is often included with other meat for that reason. Fish consommés usually have too little natural gelatin, so the fish stock may be double-cooked or supplemented. Since fish gelatin melts at a lower temperature than gelatins of other meats, fish aspic is more delicate and melts more readily…