Some HDR Pictures

[Adam Grace]

I have been playing around with Photomatix, an HDR software program and enjoying myself. Here's some of my most recent HDRs:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3162/2965547825_85c1d7bfed.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3165/2963274194_be2391d0f8.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3210/3014389785_46b3dcd085.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3217/3012517796_9f78fc65a5.jpg


and here's an example of the three exposures and what the output looks like for demonstration purposes:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3172/3012517806_c530a16d94.jpg

[Amador]

Hey Adam, These don't look like HDR's, which IMO is a good thing, but they also don't look like scenes that would require HDR. Whith that said, good job with the blending.

[Adam Grace]

The classic car and the motorcycle shots both highly improved by making them HDRs. The car shot for sure was a candidate. The shadows on the front of the car were way too dark and concrasty with the original " properly metered" exposure. Both were shot in very bright light which was casting some very dark shadows. The fish picture wasn't necessary but I wanted to see how different it would have looked if processed as an HDR. Later tonight I'll post examples of the original images so that you can see the difference. I have some landscape that i have to work on which will be even better candidates for HDR processing.

[DonCooksey]

Ansel - I mean Adam:

I've been intrigued by HDR photography after you brought it to our attention a while back, but how did you get that fish to stay so still during the multiple exposures that you took? Seriously, I don't understand how moving images end up not being blurred with this technique, but I've seen plenty of HDR photos with waves, rivers, clouds, etc. that were certainly moving during the time it took to take multiple exposures, but they come out crisp. Is only one exposure used for the moving part of the photo in the final merged image?

[Adam Grace]

Don, for moving subjects or objects in an HDR I believe that they are using only on RAW image and changing the exposure value through that single RAW image to create 3 or more differently exposed images that they can then import into a program such as photomatix to create an HDR. I want to try that with fly casting in a high contrasty backdrop to see how well it will come out.

People could create an HDR with multiple exposures shot continuously but the moving object would nee to be masked out and replaced later in photoshop but that would be a huge pain in the butt depending on the amount of movement within the picture.

Hopefully this helps you out, thanks for the Ansel comment but I would consider my life very blessed if I could take my photography anywhere (even-so-slightly close) to that photography master.........

now Ben however....... :-)

[DonCooksey]

Thanks Adam. I had not heard of using a single image to generate differently exposed images to use in HDR, but a web search with "RAW" and "HDR" yielded a bunch of information on that type of procedure that I can follow up on now. Lots of fishing images that people might like to use HDR for probably involve moving things (water, fish, people), so this sounds applicable to a lot of fishing photography. I remember your image of Mike Bias holding a nice Yuba trout that you did a lot of photoshop work on. That would be an interesting type of picture to try this on if you had an original RAW image to work with, although I guess this can even be done from a single jpeg file, from what I just read.

[DonCooksey]

OK, I experimented a little with my single jpeg image from Hot Creek, by simulating multiple exposures and then merging them with Photomatix as sort of a pseudo HDR image. It lightened up the boulders in the foreground that were largely in shadow previously, while maintaining a darker exposure of the sky with a little more cloud definition. Here is a before and after:

Original jpeg:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v649/DonCooksey/IMGP1343a.jpg

"HDR" image:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v649/DonCooksey/IMGP1343e_c__f_d.jpg

[Adam Grace]

Cool, that looks better. Now if you only shot that picture in raw you could have changed even more from that single picture. Good job. Subtle HDRs look much better than those wild looking "un-natural" versions.

[DonCooksey]

I don't care for the wierd-looking HDR photos either, Adam. I'm mainly interested in correcting the exposure limitations of normal photography. Those rocks in my photo were not in shadow, and the sky was not washed out, through my eyes, but it came out that way in a single, static exposure with the camera. Ansel Adams dealt with this in black and white photos during printing, by burning and dodging. Most of his famous photos would not have looked like we see them in print if someone just made a straight print from his negatives (if they still existed). I don't see HDR used for this purpose to be very different than that.

[Adam Grace]

I totally agree Don! HDR people like you and me are just taking dodging and burning to a totally different (technical) level.

Once I finish some more HDRs for my portfolio I will post them up on the board.