Nik based HDR

Under the mistaken belief that me publishing my latest HDR would violate my NDA (it doesn't apparently) - I pulled a load of stuff from the last few photo sets, I have now uploaded them into this post so you can see my efforts with Nik's new HDR tool, which I rate tremendously, the fluid and slick interface allows for great results in minutes, a great plugin for a variety of packages I have had the most success with the Photoshop version. First two are from Amsterdam, second two from Stockholm.

Stockholm

I managed to grab a few shots in Stockholm over the weekend, I love Stockholm, Liza told me she fell in love with it when she was young despite only being in the city for a few hours, its wonderfully laid back with a rich compact old town at its centre and museum filled islands in the east.

Amsterdam

I have been out of the country for over a month now - in Barcelona, The south of France and Amsterdam so the images from these trips will come in reverse order, I just came back last week from Amsterdam on business for Apple at the giant IBC video show, I had not visited the city in about 8 years and really enjoyed my time there. The city bustles during the day but the long autumn evenings have a gentle pace, I strolled around the centre of town for an hour or two having managed to escape the mammoth video show to grab a few photos and was fortunate enough to catch a storm at sunset:

Further HDR experiments

As I continue to experiment with HDR I will be posting my progress on the blog, there two images come from the beaches of southern England, Eastbourne for the skyscape and Bournemouth for the beach scene, the first was pretty straightforward with 5 exposure ranging from -2 to +2 and an overlay of the original image in Photoshop CS5 to bring back a little cloud detail lost in the tonemapping.



The second image was actually overexposed by a stop to start with, when taking it I had wanted to get an over bright feel knowing I could pull back a bit of saturation in post, when it came to doing an HDR I had to start with it as a +1 and work back to -3 on the darker images - at this level of pulled processing its a risk that information will "drop off" or lose fidelity in the highlight areas.

To my surprise it actually turned out okay with most of the work done in the tonemapping and the only bit of Photoshop being some halo reduction around the subject and a slight multiply layer vignette, This image veers a bit towards the psychedelic but its subtle enough for me to not find it jarring to look at.

Adventure into HDR

I have avoided HDR for a while now - partially because I found the psychedelic look a bit unappealing and partially, I'm ashamed to say, I didn't understand the technique - it requires sitting down and learning how to balance the multiple exposures into one cohesive picture and although I had dabbled I hadn't really committed to learning until today.



I processed the image above from a single RAW file shot in Thailand this February - I produced 4 additional versions of the image ranging from -2 to +2 exposure and then popped them into Photomatrix Pro - the initial tone-mapping was completed here but the overall image was riddled with halo's around the mountains and inconsistent, dark areas of sand on the beach, in order to achieve amore natural look I dropped it into Photoshop and put the original and +2 images onto layers above my HDR from Photomatrix and used layer masks to brush through some of the light sand in the mid ground. The original image as captured in camera (slightly over-exposed) is below:

Warsaw by night

I was in Warsaw last week delivering a presentation, I had only one night in the city and my generous host offered me a whistle stop tour of the old town in the rain after taking me out for dinner. As usual my gear was a 5D Mk2 and a wide angle lens (16-35mm in this case) The slight wetness to everything really helped with the low light as the buildings had a sort of reflective "sheen" to them.












































































































































The image above is a memorial to the president and his wife, killed in a tragic air crash in Russia earlier this year.

Steam Fair

I recently visited east London for a quirky festival in Victoria Park and was surprised to find one of the only touring "steam" fairs operating. A "steam" fair is a funfair where the rides (well some of the rides) are powered by steam.. Carter's was immaculate - styled in 1930's to 1950's artwork it almost came across as an echo of Empire days long gone..