Gone – A Pseudo HDR

Gone

Oh I do miss summer or even just spring. I still have snow in my garden and there is ice on lakes and in the fiord. This is absurdly late, compared to normal winters. You know, it has been snowing for a couple of hours today. So this photo is an archive photo from last summer. I had just got my first full frame DSLR and took it out for a walk down by the fiord, in my hometown Roskilde. I came by this jetty with a pair of shoes on it, but nobody was around… Strange.

About the processing

This is a single exposure RAW file, that I did a minus 2 and plus 2 virtual copies of in Lightroom of. I then exported the three photos to Photomatix. A problem with HDR is that it often gives a grayish color to the sky, which is quite odd, because much of the rest of the image often turns out quite colorful. So I had to go back to the single exposure and process the sky individually, and then merge that into the rest of the image. I had some quite bad noise problems with the shoes, because they were in shadow. But using by some heavy noise reduction both before exporting to Photomatix and later again in Photoshop they ended up quite good.

The Frozen Setting Sun

The Frozen Setting Sun

The sun right into the camera? 9 exposures with 1 EV step between each. I was just on a small business trip to New York. I managed to get time to go to B&H and get myself a Promote control. For some reason I can’t buy that in Denmark. The Promote control should be a tool in every HDR photographers backpack.

The Promote control allows (through a cabel) to take as many HDR photos you like. I can then take 9 HDR photos automatically with my Nikon D600 (which is normally limited to 3 shots), just as I can with my Nikon D800. But I can also increase the EV step between each shot. The D800 is locked to 1 EV step, which means that if I really wan’t to cover some dynamic range, with the Sun within the frame and dark shadows too, I have to switch to manual. Another nasty side effect of taken 9 bracketed shots with the D800 is the 675 Mb impact on the memory card (ouch!).

With the Promote control I can take what ever number of photos I like with whatever EV step. Now that is cool, and I can’t wait to get it in use for real.

For this shot I didn’t have the Promote Control yet and took all 9 shots of 75 Mb each.

About the processing
I used Photomatix to tone map the image. Afterwards I have spend quite some time in Photoshop blending layers. The sky kept coming out dull and gray from Photomatix, so I had to mix in another sky from one of the original photos, but it was still too flat. So I made a duplicate layer and started playing around with the Red, Green and Blue channels individually in the Hue/Saturation dialog (CTRL + U) untill I got what I wanted. However, that ruined the lower part of the image completely, but that was not problem, I just mixed in the sky with the rest of the image.

Finally I spend quite a lot of time cleaning up small peckles on the ice and the bridge.

Amsterdam Maritime History Museum at Dawn

Amsterdam Maritime History Museum at Dawn

After walking through Amsterdam taking nightscapes I finally arrived to the harbor, to see the sun rise behind the Amsterdam Maritime History Museum. A beautiful place, that I returned to in the evening, to attend to a cocktail party. That I didn’t know, when I took this photo.

About the processing
The photo is a 5 shot HDR. I did the tone mapping with HDR Efex Pro 2. Not a bad tone mapping tool, though I find it more detailed in Photomatix. Afterwards I did a little blending layers. Primarily to remove ghosting in the water, on the masts of the ship.

Gold on the beach

South Island on New Zealand has got these wonderful golden beaches up north on Tasman Bay. We took a water taxi, but because of the tide, we were dumped in the water and had to walk the rest of the 500m to the beach. It was mid thigh deep. I was quite worried about my photo equipment.

About the photo. This is a hand held 5 shot HDR photo. It lacks a bit sharpness in the front. A disadvantage of taking the shots hand held is that, you can’t always get all of the details right. However I do like the photo, composition and the clouds. Processing wise, this is a combination of a single and double tonemapped image that I blended in Photoshop. See my HDR tutorial if you want to know how to do that.

Lake Matheson in New Zealand

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.

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.