Archive for the ‘HDR’ Category:
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.
Cash for Clunkers #2
This ancient pickup has certainly seen better days.. probably about 75 years worth of better days. The remains of this pickup is sitting at almost 12,000 feet above sea level – it is just above Animas Forks on the way to California Gulch. It is so fun shooting in the San Juan mountains – there are mining relics scattered everywhere. This shot was taken just before the sun popped over the mountain behind the truck giving it that cool halo-like glow. I drove up to Animas Forks to take dawn shots only to realize that a) the sun didn’t hit the town until about 9:30 AM due to the mountains and b) it was really cold waiting in the dark for the sun to rise.
Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 17-40 f/4L @24mm ISO 200, f/16, +/- 2 stops
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.
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
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
By The Dawn’s Early Light
Believe it or not, I didn’t get around to downloading this image from the camera until about a week after my trip. When Heather and I were out at Whitefish Dunes at dawn, we brought my old 40D as a second camera in case Heather wanted to shoot. As the sun came up through the mist over Lake Michigan, I set up the 40D on my gigantic studio tripod (I don’t have a lightweight 2nd tripod) and tried for a sunrise shot. Since I only shot a few shots on the 40D, I forgot there were pictures on that compact flash card. Imagine my surprise when I downloaded this picture!
Technically, this was a big challenge. Shooting directly into the sun brings out the worst in a lens since lens flare can occur. I also had to contend with heavy fog that hadn’t quite burned off – which you can see along the tree line. To deal with the wild dynamic range differences between the sun and the shadowed tree line, I used a 3-stop graduated neutral density filter. I also shot three images bracketed at +2, 0, and -2 EV so they could be combined as an HDR.
Vital Stats: Canon 40D w/Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 ISO 100, f/16, .6 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.