Results tagged “HDR” from Photography, writing and observations of our world

I wish I had taken the photos presented here, alas I did not.  I was just a recipient of the marvelous eye of Dwaine Gaeke via a forwarded email from a mutual friend.  Dwaine gave me permission to publish these as an example.  I just wanted to demonstrate that anyone can capture these images if you have an eye for composition and vary the exposure.  As soon as I saw them I realized that they were virtually identical in framing, just different exposures with a Panasonic Lumix point-n-shoot camera.
I aligned them in Photoshop CS4, then used Photomatix to create an HDR image, which I subsequently reimported into PS CS4 to paint the HDR image over part of the darker original to remove some parts that were too light.  I ran the Noiseware Pro filter on the result to reduce digital noise, then saved and imported into Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.3 for final tweaking.  Here is the result.... almost mystical.  Great job Dwaine.

Last week I did a short "BBQ Tour" with my friend Mark to sample the spiced cuisine in the Austin region of Texas. Unfortunately we did not have the discipline required for what I am sure will become many forays in multiple compass directions. We were overcome with the aromas offered at our first stop, Smitty's Market, in Lockhart, Texas, and ordered too much.


It was only 10:30am and we had the full day before us. I was doing well up until the moment I snapped the photo of the BBQ on the butcher paper in front of me. Carnivore instincts set in and we seemed out of control for a short time. Smitty's got four greasy thumbs up in the end. The sweet ribs were our favorite. We pressed onward to Luling after walking around the heart of Lockhart.



The smoke stained sign in the interior of the Luling City Market was ominous. But our quest for food that only a cardiologist could appreciate was not over yet. We did the "usual" at this point, one link of sauage, four ribs, and a few slices of brisket. Since this was "lunch" we even threw in a Shiner beer too. The line was out the door by the time our eyes glazed over with a coating of cholesterol and we muttered the words "I'm done" and "me too." Wrapped up what was left just in case, and took it with us. Mark and I agreed it wasn't exactly fair to judge the Luling Market in our sated state, but we gave the edge to Smitty's.


"On the road again" as Willie Nelson says in his song. We stopped briefly in Gonzales to take in the local antiques, both in and outside shops. A nice place to stop and visit the Gonzales Memorial Museum, full of Texas history. It was near here that on October 2nd, 1835 the first shot was fired in the Texas war of independence from Mexico.



Our own day was running late and we had one final destination to see the K. Spoetzl Brewery, the creator of Shiner beer. We arrived about 90 seconds before the visitor center closed, but not to late for a quick sample to end our day.

More to come....

I have had a lot of discussion about this image in my Caribbean gallery so I am going to elaborate more on it.  I did an exploratory trip of the Caribbean in 1978 on an old 1930's schooner for six weeks.  I traveled from the Grenadines to Antigua.  May 15, 1978 was the first time I saw English Harbor (I kept an extensive written log so I know the dates).  There were not any boats in the outer harbor then (lower part of the image with a lot of anchored sailboats) and I took a small dinghy and rowed over to the far end of the bay.  For the next few hours I snorkeled the entire length of the shallow bay, repeatedly diving to the bottom.  The whole expanse of water was full of shimmering schools of juvenile fish, and with each plunge toward the bottom the fish would open a "hole" to let me through and then close behind me, covering my view of the surface.  It was magical.  I was 28 years old and had been free diving and SCUBA diving since my mid-teens in California, but I had never experienced anything like this.  It was an enthralling, interactive contact with nature.   I did not visit this harbor again until 1990 when it became my first landfall after sailing across the Atlantic.  Another visually intoxicating experience with the elements. This trip was only my third visit over this 31 year history.  I knew that there were steel drum bands playing on Shirley Heights on Sunday evenings, having been there before, so we set off just before sunset in Pele's Taxi, the driver a local personality.  I knew the view, I was armed with a basket full of memories and I knew exactly want I wanted to convey in an image.   Which I might add as was quite different from the throng of commotion behind me... a hundred steel drums, children & adults dancing, beer and wine flowing to the staccato of the drums... even some palm fronds being woven into baskets. 

This image was published in the March 22, 2009 issue of the Austin American Statesman as it won their "Win in a Flash" contest.

Texas has been really dry for the past year and a half.  Austin and environs are about 24" of rainfall behind.  Here are a couple of HDR images from Dripping Springs & Johnson City, Texas.  Lastly is an image from inside the wine cellars of Pedernales Cellars (plural seems a bit of a stretch).  It's the dribble that counts.  Cheers.

I stumbled upon a few images that I took last April in Boston, MA.  Hand held HDR images of the Stata Center at MIT.  I could not resist one more try at creating something that seemed out of this world.  It looks like a wild dream of a "space port."

Another angle reminded me of the "warp drive" on Star Trek.  The place is a trip without moving.

I have been learning and playing with many of the new features of Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended edition.  I must say, even after being a student and teacher of the program for 17 years, the software is just plain fun sometimes.  The original image on the left was actually shot in five exposures, hand held, the morning of August 11th, 2008. I have generated an HDR image with Photomatix, tweaked in Photoshop CS4 (Noiseware Professional and Lens Correction adjustments) and finally into Lightroom 2.1 for final adjustment of colors and black/white balance.  Then I exported it again to Photoshop and created a 3D later and came up with the image on the right and modified detail on the left.
 



The doors can be particularly interesting with their normally rectilinear detail.

Lastly I revisited an image of my hand gripping a large bamboo shoot on Avery Island.  With some 3D effects, I think I like it a bit more as the grip was tight and the urge to get out was large.

Today, I have been working on images again, and this time from the city that has inspired a lot of novels in the past and present, New Orleans.  I pasted through New Orleans last August on a fast trip from Georgia to Texas.  I had one evening and one morning to take photographs.  The image on the left of the cigar shop is a hand held HDR composition of five images, 1 EV apart from 1/15th/sec. to 1/250/sec at f/7.1, ISO 200, EF24-105mm f/4 IS mounted on a Canon 1Ds Mark III.  Precisely at +29° 57' 29.73" N, -90° 3' 55.27" W, at 9:05 a.m. on August 11, 2008.  I could spend weeks in this city taking photographs.

The one on the right is obviously from seven images in the same area.  For the technically inclined these RAW images were all shot hand held, and aligned in Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended as a "smart object" in the "stack mode".  Then the maximum filter was applied to the stack mode.  I love the contrast of the fellow walking in his dress whites against the vivid colors of the street.  It is a great city and a fabulous place for photography, I hope she stays afloat.  So much history is written on the walls of every building.  Interpretation is an endless journey down each alley.  The best of the city however was a late night visit to Cafe du Monde.  Truly some things never change.

A week ago I went to the Austin Rowng Center, a non-profit organization the shores of Lady Bird Lake in Austin, Texas.  It was a "first timers" class.  I was just trying to stay out of the way and take a few photos.  These were taken right at sunset with my Canon 1Ds Mark III and 14mm f/2.8 lens.  They are hand held, ISO 200, 1/320th, 1/80th, and 1/20th per second exposures at f/2.8.  Auto bracketed at 1 2/3 stop separation, aperture priority.  GPS coordinates +30°15' 36.77"N, -97° 44' 32.09"W.  These are assembled in Photomatix and then saved as a 16bit TIF file and re-imported into Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0.  In the right hand image you can see the Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge, a.k.a. "the bat bridge", where the Mexican Free-tailed Bats hang out.