Archive for category Light Houses
To HDR or Not to HDR
Posted by Peter in HDRI, Light Houses, Massachusetts on February 15th, 2010
There has been quite a bit of discussion going on over at Scott Kelby’s Photoshop Insider Blog relative to the topic of HDR (High Dynamic Range ) image processing. The discussion all started with a Scott referencing a quotation about HDR that originally appeared on Dave Cross’s Blog.
Some of the comments remind me of the Chevy vs Ford, Toyota vs Honda, Canon vs Nikon, film vs digital arguments.
Personally, if the person creating the image is happy with the results what difference does it make what process was used to get there. Whether you used negative film, Polaroid film, digital capture, some processing is done to obtain the final results. Heck, even Ansel Adams manipulated the processing to create the final results of what he “saw” as Yosemite.
Scott goes on to mention “The biggest trigger point for most commenters seemed to be the amount or style of HDR tonemapping applied to a photo, and they seemed to feel that the over-processing was strictly to hide bad photographic technique.”
Can HDR be over done ? Sure, but when processed correctly (such as those done by Ben Willmore), HDRI can be the proper artistic technique to use and is better than the same image simply “Developed”.
Personally, I prefer a more subtle HDR tone mapping as done in the image below with final processing in Lightroom or Photoshop.
Though at times I do like to push the effect to what is obiviously not “real” but I do so because I personally like the effect, such as the image shown here.
Bottom line to me is, if you like what you are doing, create it and have fun doing it.
For an in-depth tutorial on the creation of and HDR image check out “My Deconstruction of the HDR image” by RC Concepcion.
Part of the fun is getting there ….
Posted by Peter in Google Earth Locator Link, HDRI, Light Houses, Massachusetts on September 2nd, 2008
Monday was a beautiful day on the North Shore of Massachusetts. My wife and I decided to see if we could make our way through the “Private” roads of Annisquam and make it out to the Annisquam Light.
I had been there years before and knew that parking was available for visitors.
I can understand why the nearby residences would like to prevent access, the roads are narrow and winding and the location is such that if not controlled would be overrun with people seeking access to the small shoreline beach.
Annisquam Light – Google Earth Locator
Expect to be stopped by a local resident association volunteer and to only be allowed 15 minutes of parking.
Here is one of the captures – (click on image for larger view)
This rendering was created by combining three exposures into a HDR rendering made using Photoshop Cs3 and some final tweaks within Lightroom 2.0
Evolution of an image and it’s photographer
Posted by Peter in Light Houses, Oregon, Radiant Vista on July 28th, 2008
I have found that being part of a Photo Community is a valuable resource for improving both my image capturing and post processing techniques.
I have become a daily visitor and sometimes contributor to The Radiant Vista Community.
In this post, I thought I would take you through the evolution of an image from my post processing and alterations made based on suggestions by the Radiant Vista Community.
Here is the original capture of the Coquille River Lighthouse which is located in Bandon Oregon. The lighthouse was under restoration when I captured the image.
(click images for larger view)
NOTE: I do all my RAW file processing within Adobe Lightroom.
First steps:
- Created a virtual copy of the original
- Straightened and made initial crop to get a feel for how I want to compose the image for final output. Lightroom makes it easy to move the crop around to visualize the output image. Though I usually try to capture the image close to the final composition, I sometimes allow for possible post composition. In this case I was not sure how much of the water I wanted in the final image nor how much sky. Since the capture is 12.5 mp, cropping should not be an issue.
- Adjusted the white balance
- Use the Fill Light, Clarity and Highlight recovery tools to bring out the details of the rock out cropping, dune grass, and lighthouse texture. I sometimes find that the clarity and highlight adjustments will make the dust spots and sensor dust more pronounced as will other tonal type and sharpening adjustments. So I find myself preforming dust spot corrections through the various steps in the evolution.
- I then made the tonal adjustments to the dark, light and shadow areas to increase contrast.
- I also applied a Sky preset developed by Matt Kloskowski of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips.
Resulting in this first take of the image which was posted to the Radiant Vista Community -
The first suggestion from the Radiant Vista Community was to add some contrast as shown here -
Once everyone had time to digest this edit, a suggestion was made about bringing more of the green out in the dune grass and a slightly more cropped towards the building -
NOTE: up to this point all edits had been done within Lightroom.
I then asked members of the community their opinion about removing distractions such as the sea gull, which can barely be seen and any other distractions. Since this is not documentary or journalistic, I was also open to making “artistic” adjustments.
Response
- remove distractions- seagull and some buildings in background
- square cropping
The removal of the distractions could not be done easily with in Lightroom 1.4. That meant a visit to Photoshop.
Here are those adjustments, along with my decision to bring some of the lighthouse out of the shadows.
Before and after comparison of resulting image from community input -
Comments or additional critiques welcomed.
Disappointment ? I don’t think so …
Posted by Peter in Light Houses, Lightroom, Photomatix, Washington State on July 16th, 2008
While visiting Northern Oregon and Washington State last month, I was able to capture several lighthouses along the way.
Lewis and Clark may have been disappointed, but we were not. Despite the rumors, the weather during the time we were in Oregon was perfect.
Across the Columbia river from Astoria is Cape Disappointment, Washington.
In 1788 an English Captain named John Meares missed finding the Columbia river and named the nearby headland Cape Disappointment.
These images are renderings of the Cape Disappointment Light at the head of the Columbia River. In 1848 a lighthouse was recommended to be built at Cape Disappointment. Built at a cost of $53,000 the first lighthouse in the Pacific Northwest was completed and operational in 1856.
The base image was a merging of several virgin RAW exposures combined into an HDR image using Photomatix Pro and then tone mapped and saved as TIFF for further adjustments in Lightroom.
The first rendering is “normal” development of that TIFF file with Adobe Lightroom ….
and the second rendering is a virtual copy of the first with some added effects applied …
As always, your comments are welcomed and appreciated.
Blue on Blue
Posted by Peter in HDRI, Light Houses, NAPP, Oregon, Photomatix on July 10th, 2008
The color of water in Crater lake ( Crater Lake NP ) is hard to describe in words and taking a picture at high noon doesn’t make it any easier to capture the way it really felt in person.
I have been following various blog writings about the advantages of HDR Imaging. One of the possible advantages mentioned was the ability to allow a greater range in the time of day for shooting.
Based on the comments made on various blogs, recommendations from NAPP members and after using a trial version, I purchased a copy of Photomatix Pro 3.0.
This image was bracketed as 0, 1, -1. I did not have a tripod so there was some misalignment.
(click on image for larger view)
I processed the image using the tone mapping option and as suggested in several readings on the subject of HDR Imaging, I did some further refinements in Photoshop.
Those who have been to Crater Lake will realize that the lake color is a very deep blue, much as in image.
Thanks !
