Golden light

Rembrandt Plein

I went to Amsterdam on a business trip in september. One day I got up at 3.30 and walked all the way in from a hotel near by the airport to the center of Amsterdam. I hit the harbor when the sun rose – I have shown one shot from the Amsterdam Maritime History Museum. I took around 1000 shots for HDR that morning. In the beginning it was pitch dark and I had the camera on ISO 400. When the light grew brighter I changed the ISO to 100. I have had a hard time getting satisfied with many of the shots, but I have found that it has to do with getting the right mood in the processing and not as much the photos. This particular one is from ‘the way back’

How did I make this photo?

The photo is shot with a wide angle lens close to the ground. A wide angle lens is great, because it is sharp from very close up and all the way out to the horizon. When I came home and looked at this photo, the great sunlight at the end of the tunnel of trees didn’t come out so well. I have had the photo lying around for half a year, trying a few things, but not managing to achieve the mood from that morning. Finally I figured out, that a soft yellow light at the end of the tunnel of trees had been present, and that it had almost disappeared in the shots. So I emphasized it and that really brought the photo together.

New York Grand Central in Golden Light

Grand Central in New York – a must for photographers coming to New York. I didn’t have much time in New York, but I’m glad that I got the opportunity to see the Grand Central. It’s totally awesome.

About the processing

It’s a 9 shot HDR ranging from -5 to +3 with 1 EV step between each shot. My problem was, that the window in the middle has very strong sunlight coming in. So strong, that it spills over the walls and really ruins the photo. Even though I manage to capture all of the darkest and brigtest parts. In the processing in Photomatix, it turned out to be a gray and very ugly wall around the window in the middle, ruined by the sunlight. Even if the window it self is perfect. Finally I got the idea to use a ‘sunlight’ filter in one of my Photoshop plugins, to turn white grayish light golden and also reflect the golden color on the floor. That worked!

Late Summer Sunset

The late summer in Denmark is beautiful. This is after a great barbeque at my Brother in Law. They just bought a farm on a small island.

It’s a 3 shot handheld HDR. Instead of using shutter speed to bracket my three shots, I used the ISO. The brightest one was ISO 6400, which made it a bit hard to work with, due to the noise. I wouldn’t recommend doing ISO bracketing, when the ISO goes that high. I had to do it, because it was hand held and it was too dark to shoot the photo otherwise.

Peaceful Sunrise At Milford Sound

One of the most beautiful and dramatic fiords lies on the the west coast of New Zealands South Island. The sun rises and shines on Mitre Peak, which rises an amazing almost 1700 m straight out of the water, which I was told was the record. The weather changes a lot in Milford Sound and seeing it without a cloud is a rare experience. It rains up to 11 meters (!) per year here, which is makes this place one of the places on Earth where it rains most.

About the processing
This is 7 shot HDR photo merged together using Photomatix. I have worked a lot with the image. Created a new layer, fine tuned an area, and then blended that area into the main photo, then made another duplicated layer to optimize another area. I have used Topaz Adjust and Nik Color Efex filters with delicacy.

Cleaning up the photo
I have done a lot of cleaning up in the photo. There was a lot of dirt, leaves, insects etc in the water. This I have removed using the clone tool in Photoshop. It took some time, but it’s important to achieve the calm mood of the photo and the strong clear reflection.

Sunrise in Trysil

Norway just is beautiful, both in the summer time and in the winter time. I caught this one last week next to the ski-resort in Trysil. It’s a 7 shot HDR and tone mapped in Photomatix and later post-processed in Photoshop.

I found this peaceful area just behind the Trysil Mountain Resort Park Inn hotel. I could walk on a path made by skis. If I went of the path, I sank to the knee.

About the composition

Finally after 4 days the clouds cleared from the Sun and I got out take some photographs. In this one, I have got two major point of interest, one is the stone covered in snow and the other is the Sun. I have placed them approximately on one of the lines of the golden ration. Then I have used the shadows from the trees to create lead in lines. This is a neat trick that works well. And at last, I made sure that the left hand side of the snow takes up the same amount of space as the ski. That works well too.

Post-processing

The post processing is done as a tone mapped image in Photomatix, which I then took into Photoshop. I blended the layers, as I explain how to do in my HDR tutorial, and then I used a golden filter from Topaz Adjust. I had lost some of the golden light in the processing and reintroduced it. And the last things I did in Photoshop was to remove flares and a small rainbow looked too much like a flare. In Lightroom I increased the contrast a bit and the clarity to get more dynamic image.

Caught In Pixels