HDR

The North

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In the heart of Copenhagen lies the Fountain of the Storck. This is from the day that iPhone 5 was released in Denmark. All around the edges of this square people where standing in line with purple umbrellas and raincoats from Telia.

About the photo itself. I have taken this with my Nikkor 14-24mm in rain at 14mm. This is very wide on a full frame camera (Nikon D800), but the objective was to make the fountain seem almost as large as the big building in the back.

Processing wise I had some really nasty areas on the photo from the raindrops and I have had a lot of pain removing them. It is an HDR based on 5 images, but it is a fairly straight forward HDR. Being 14mm photo taken upwards, I had some pretty bad tilting lines, that I have work much on to straighten up.

Lake Matheson in New Zealand

“Get up before sunrise and walk around Lake Matheson at sunset. See Mount Cook mirrored in the lake“. Said the guide book. “Yessir!” I thought, and I wasn’t disappointed. When we got up and drove the few miles to Lake Matheson it was pitch dark. We almost hit a japanese guy running in black clothes with backpack on his back. We arrived at the view point at Lake Matheson exactly at sunrise. Within five minutes the japanese guy turned up too, and he too had a camera. We ended up being a small group taking photos of this beautiful morning. This particular photo is taken about 30 minutes after sunrise. I had expected a golden sunrise, but of cause the mountains give shade a long time. The golden light came later.

This photo is the photo that I have used in detailed HDR tutorial you can find here.

Sunset over field

A couple of weeks before the harvest, the fields looks lovely.

This is an HDR made of three shots (-2, 0 and +2). I took this handheld, because I didn’t have my tripod. To keep the shutter speed fast on all three shots, I raised the ISO to 1000, but kept the f-stop in the higher middle area, at f/13. I kept the f-stop this high to have everything sharp. The shutter speed for the 0 exposure was 1/250 sec. I had to try a couple of times to make sure I got a set, that didn’t have a shaken +2. Processingwise I used Photomatix to get my HDR. I got a nasty gray sky because I had no clouds in the sky, a bad side effect from making HDRs. In my HDR tutorial you can see how to handle a gray sky. When done in Photoshop I took the image back into Lightroom, where I raised the clarity and contrast a bit, did a little adjustments to the saturation of specific colors and finally added vignetting.

The spider at the gates of the old Citadel

In the middle of the old center of Copenhagen lies an old citadel. The military still uses it, but there is public access. This is the exit tunnel on a cold winter’s day. I only got 4 of my 5 shots for HDR, because I had to run for my life, because a car came.

This is an 4 HDR photo (-2 to +1). I have worked this image quite a bit. First I did two tone mapped images in Photomatix. When I got the first one I closed the “final touch” dialog (I rarely use that), saved the first tone mapped image. Then I simply press tone mapping button once more. This gives a wildly colored image, so I have to lower the saturation to somewhere in the mid 40’s, and then I lower the luminosity to the minus area. This really gets the grittiness out of the image. In some places too much, but this I fixed in Photoshop later.

In Photoshop I blended in the lamps from the -2 image, and the closest area to the lamp in front comes from the single tone mapped image. The double tone mapped was burned out. The same goes with the cobbles in the road down in the middle. They burned out too in the double tone mapped image, so I had to take approximately 25% of the single tone mapped. Then I had to extract blue colors in Photoshop to get the right light outside (mark the layer and CTRL + U. and select the blue color and lower the saturation).

Pink Clouds over Lake Tekapo

Lake Tekapo in New Zealand can be very windy, which was the case this evening. The day after the surface of the lake was like glass. On the left lies Mount John covered in trees. On the the top there is an observatory and a cafe. The cafe makes really good coffee and the cakes are worth the strain to get to the top of the mountain, just as the view is very rewarding.

This is a 5 shot HDR. I tone mapped it in Photomatix and then I blended the five original shots into the tone mapped image, by using Photoshop. There is no part I have blended in 100%. The sky is blended in various degrees with the 0 and minus 1 exposure. The same goes with the rocks. The trees on the left is more or less the clean tone mapped version. In the end I used a Topaz adjust filter to add a little warmth and sharpness to the photo. This step I could have done by using adjustment layers, and Unsharp Mask in Photoshop as well.

Finally I took it into Light room and did a few adjustments. The right hand side of the trees was too dark. I added a little light by using the brush tool, and then I added little contrast global contrast.

Up in the sky – Hyper speed

Going somewhere? It is from Sydney. Sydney has a great skyline and you can do all kinds of wonderful stuff with it. I got inspired by something I saw, shooting straight into the air with a wide angle. It really does things to the sky scrapers. I then added a little speed.

This is a 4 shot HDR – the fifth was shaken. I sat on the ground and shot straight into the air between some wooden pillars. I then did a standard HDR from 4 out of 5 shots, using Photomatix Pro.

I then imported the HDR and the 4 shots into Photoshop as layers, aligned the layers (because it was hand held). I blended a little, but not much. I then merged all layers to one layer. Duplicated that and used the filter radial blur, with a small setting, blended that in closest to the middle of the image and then I did another duplicate, and did another radial blur with more effect. That I blended in all around the edge. That made the strong effect of speed up into the air.

At last I did an additional Topas Adjust just to make it pop a little more, but I guess I could have done that with curves and vibrance too.

You can read about blending layers in my HDR tutorial here. Or the complete HDR tutorial here.

Lighthouse on the edge

Leaning against the fence I was just able to capture all of the light house, thanks to my 14mm lens. I made this from one photo. I tonemapped it using Photomatix and did a version in Lightroom as well. Both images I imported into Photoshop. I have used the Lighthouse, as a non HDR version, but the rest as HDR. I hope you like it done in that a bit unusual way.

Data: ISO 400, 14mm, f4, 1/320

The Beauty of Noravank

Armenia lies in a very seismic active area. They are the first nation ever (!) to become a Christian Nation, which happened around 300 AD. They have a lot of these small very beautiful compact churches spread all over the country. They are compact to withstand the earth quakes. Armenia is not only the first Christian nation, but they also invented color television and even more important: they invented red wine, some 8000 years ago.
This is the Monastary Noravank, one of the most beautiful monasteries they have got.
The photo is a single RAW file, taken with my old Canon 400D and the kit lens at 18mm. I did two virtual copies in Lightroom, and changed the exposure of the two to -2 and +2, so that I had exposures (-2, 0 and +2). I then worked on the noise and sharpened a bit, before I took them into Photomatix. I then took it to Photoshop CS6, used Topaz and did worked a bit with blending the exposures with the tonemapped image. And finally I cloned out a couple of things.

University of Copenhagen

This is the main building of the University from 1836. The University has fostered a few known people, one of the more famous is Hans Christian Oersted, who discovered elektro magnitism in 1820. This particular photo I took on 22nd of December 2012. I have been waiting to take it, but the square in front is always crowded with people, busses, cars etc. But this day, only one single car was there.

It’s a single RAW file that I have tonemapped to achieve this result.

Fountain in Kings Summer Castle

Being a Kingdom we have a number of castles in Denmark. This fountain is placed in front Frederiksborg Castle (Frederiksborg slot) in Hillerød.
This is a 5 shot HDR with a couple of additional shot to get rid of people. The purpose has been to make a very true looking photo.

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