Posts Tagged ‘HDR’
Prior Lake Palace
I love doing architectural photography – it has so much in common with landscape photography but doesn’t involve getting up before dawn or hiking in the dark. My good friend Vince from Memory Lane (www.memorylanemn.com) asked me do some images of a house he recently built. It was an amazing home – it even included an indoor snowmobile garage that allowed the owner to drive right out onto the lake from the house.
It was a challenging shoot because the house is being lived in by a family of 4. We only had about an hour to get the pictures – and we had to dodge cleaning people the entire time. This meant Vince scrambled to hide extra knick-knacks and vacuum cleaners while I lined the shot up. I’d fire three bracketed shots to compose the HDR picture, and he’d run around putting everything back while I moved to the next room.
Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 17-40 f/4L @ 17mm ISO 200, f/16, 1.3 sec.
Here Lies St. Pete
Today’s image of the day was another shot capturing the grandeur that is St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. This structure is the baldacchino – a one hundred foot pavilion marking the spot where it is believed that St. Peter is buried. At one time it was thought to be the largest bronze structure in the world – and probably still is. This isn’t one of Michelangelo’s works – Bernini gets the nod for this one.
Vital Stats: Canon 350D w/Canon EF-S 10-22mm @ 10mm ISO 1600, f/5, 1/30 sec.
Spooky Tree #2
Here is a picture from the west ridge of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. I’ve featured this tree in another picture of the day – but this is a slightly different composition and framing than the first. This picture was taken very near the end of my father’s patience for waiting for me – so I was a little rushed to get this shot taken. Fortunately, everything lined up and I got what I wanted and was able to get back to the van in time for us to continue our journey. Like the others, this is an HDR shot with three images blended. That was quite a challenge with 40-50mph gusts of wind! I had to time the three shots between gusts to minimize blur.
Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 17-40 f/4L @ 24mm ISO 800, f/16, 3 exposures
Afternoon at the Black Canyon
Here is another one of my shots from my trip to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. It’s not of the canyon itself, per se.. there are lots of interesting things to take pictures of on the rim of the canyon. We just don’t have gnarly little trees here in the verdant Midwest – so I love taking pictures of them. There was a high wind from the right side of the frame when I took this shot – so it was difficult to get three bracketed shots off in the brief pauses between gusts. Fortunately, I was able to catch a 15-second break right when the light was perfect. To minimize motion blur across the three exposures, I had to boost the ISO to 800 to get faster exposures.
Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 17-40 f/4L @24mm ISO 800, f/23, 3 exposures centered around 1/20 sec.
Autumn at the Black Canyon
This shoot was inspired by a true giant in the landscape photography world – Ron Niebrugge. Ron posted some gorgeous shots taken at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison on his photo blog about two weeks before my trip to Colorado. Since my route from Silverton to Denver would take me right through that area, I insisted on stopping to take some shots along the way.
It was a strange shoot because it consisted of me running out of the van at every overlook and throwing up the tripod in 40-50mph winds. Since dad was waiting for me in the van, I didn’t want to make him wait too long. I’d fire off three bracketed shots, recompose a couple of times, shoot again, then run back to the van to move to the next shot. It was more like carpet bombing than photography – but we had some miles to get in that day and didn’t have the luxury of waiting for ideal light.
It’s really a spectacular location – incredibly deep and crazy rock detail everywhere you look. The hardest thing from a photographers point of view is that there is so much to take in that it’s actually difficult to compose a shot that doesn’t try to show too much. Again, I relied on taking three shots and blending them to deal with some very bad lighting conditions that day. I really didn’t know if I had anything usable until we got to the hotel that night in Gunnison (which is actually about two hours away from the canyon!) and I started to blend them in Photomatix Pro.
Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 17-40 f/4L @21mm ISO 800, f/22, 1/30 sec.
Clinging to Life
This picture is from the rim of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. I was there to shoot the canyon.. but the light conditions were really unforgiving for capturing the harsh contrasts in the canyon. The light was filtering through thin clouds making for ugly grey high contrast light. As I was making one last stop, the light burst from behind a cloud lighting the landscape above the rim with brilliant warm light. I scrambled to find a great foreground (there are lots of gnarly trees in the area) and set up to shoot. Since the sun was right at my back, I had to be careful not to allow my own shadow into the scene.
Since I had dramatic light and awesome skies – I knew that if I shot it as an HDR it would be a very dramatic, slightly surreal scene. This would help control the crazy contrast and would capture the skies so they would look as cool as they were in my mind’s eye.
Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 17-40 f/4L @ 17mm ISO 100, f/18, +/- 2 stops bracketed
The Box Canyon at Ouray
We stopped to see the famous Box Canyon at Ouray, CO on our way through town on Sunday afternoon. There is a set of metal stairs to get down to the floor of the canyon and the waterfall is tucked way in the back. There really isn’t a way to take a great picture of the main waterfall – but the lower waterfall can be reached by walking around the steps and down some slick rocks to get to the water level. This is where I had to climb to in order to get this picture. It was raining pretty hard outside while I was taking this – and just enough water was filtering down to make it a challenge to keep the camera dry.
Because of the huge contrast in light between the inside of the canyon and the outside of the canyon, I shot it as an HDR to get maximum dynamic range. I combined them in Photomatix Pro and did some final color correction with Adobe Lightroom.
Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 17-40 f/4L @ 17mm. ISO 100, f/20, 3 shots centering on 3 seconds
Cash for Clunkers
The amount of industrial age refuse in the San Juan mountains is staggering. Mines, boom towns, and giant mills were born and died in the space of a couple of centuries a hundred years ago. Some made it a little longer – most didn’t. Want to know what they did with their debris? Nothing! All the rubble of an entire silver boom still lies scattered in the San Juan mountains.
This truck obviously isn’t part of the silver boom in the late 1800’s. Like I said, a few of the mines struggled on longer. This is probably a relic of one of the last casualties. It currently is lying in state on a hillside halfway between Animas Forks and the Frisco mine in California Gulch. It’s only about a hundred yards away from where I stood to take yesterday’s picture of the day. It’s obviously in very bad shape.. but it is in better shape than most every other leftover from the mines. In a way, it is proudly lording over a bygone era.
The surreal look to this image is on purpose.. and I’ll concede it’s not for everyone. Enjoy it for what it is – a hyper-realistic piece of art.
Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 17-40 f/4L @ 22mm ISO 200, f/23, 3 exposures combined with Photomatix Pro
Door County Haven
Here’s an image from an architectural shoot that I did recently in Door County, WI. This is the little cabin that we stayed in for the weekend – and I was shooting it for the owner’s website. The cabin is located right in Ephraim, Wi about a block from the waterfront.
It’s surprisingly tricky to shoot architectural pictures – HDR is almost a mandatory prerequisite. The dead giveaway is that you can see out the windows – it isn’t a white bleached-out mess. The net result is a nice warm homey-looking picture that will hopefully drive more rentals for her adorable cabin. If interested in more information, the owner is on VRBO right here: http://www.vrbo.com/249849
Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 17-40 f/4L @ 17mm. ISO 100, f/16, 1/4 sec. +/- 2 stops
Venice Skyline
This isn’t the standard view of Venice – it’s nowhere near the Grand Canal. It’s back in one of the neighborhoods and the shot was taken out the window of the apartment we stayed in. It was a cool spot – because real Venetians lived around us. It was November – so it was pretty cold outside when we were there. It was probably about 40 degrees and it rained quite a bit later that day. Fortunately it wasn’t enough to trigger Venice’s legendary floods.
Vital Stats: Canon 350D w/Canon 10-22mm @ 22mm, ISO 100, f/8.0, 1/100 sec.