I’m sorry that it’s been so long since I’ve posted anything of my own. Life has been a circus around here.
We’ve been keeping close to home most days, working on the expanded gardens. No matter how many hours we’re out there, at the end of the day we always have something more to do. (Totally worth it for the organic veggies.)
I hope to get back into the swing of things photographic, and to catch up with everyone as soon as possible. In the meantime, please enjoy this scene taken at a local ‘museum’, of sorts.
Each spring, we become aware of at least one momma rabbit who sets up her den somewhere in the yard. It’s predictable that at some point, we’ll see one if not several young bunnies exploring the new, glorious, nutrient-rich environment that we call “garden.”
This year has been better than previous years. We know of only one young’n – this one – and he seems perfectly content to munch on what’s left of our field of crimson clover. So far, he has bypassed all the good, human stuff.
Like the Carolina anoles, under the right circumstances a bunny can present a great photo op, as they freeze perfectly still when confronted with danger. In this case the danger was in the form of some big, two-legged galoot with a 300mm lens. While shooting, I told him that we have to learn to coexist for our mutual benefit.
In the recent HDR Collaboration project, Inland Sailor, I mentioned that prior to snapping those brackets we had indulged in a great lobster dinner. This scene is from Thurston’s Lobster Pound in Bernard, Maine, where lobster boats unload their daily catch to be enjoyed at the waterfront restaurant. It’s a great place to kick back and enjoy the scenery while waiting for your crustaceans to steam.
To be honest, I’ve become a bit bored with standard processing techniques, even though there is always room for improvement (perhaps particularly so in my case.) I’m sure it’s just a temporary condition. However, in order to fully break away from my typical stuff, I decided to give the image more of a nostalgic, postcard feel using a few techniques that I don’t usually approach. Given that the composition of the original shot was cluttered and had a chaos of different colors, I like the way that this treatment works with the scene, and hope you like it, too.
Starting with an tonemapped image from 7 exposures (+/-1EV, f/14, 75mm, ISO200), I applied a Shadowmap derived from Nik’s Silver Efex Pro, adjusted for some imperfections, then turned around in SEP to apply both aged toning and light vignette effects. Seeing that it was a bit too monochromatic, I allowed just a hint of color to sneak through in places. Various other more subtle plug-ins were used, including Topaz DeNoise and Nik’s Color Efex Pro 4 for final dressing.
I’ve long wanted to create a video tutorial as a way of passing along ideas that others have contributed along the path of learning HDR processing. It took the urging of one Mark “Konaflyer” Patton to have me get down to business on the project. (Hence, the title of the image, “Pier Pressure.”) Mark had emailed, wanting to know how I achieved a certain “glossy” look to some of my HDR images. As it turns out, creating the video — and working on Mark’s brackets — was a lot more fun than I expected! Best of all, Mark has graciously agreed to let me post his image and the video for all to see in the interests of passing along knowledge to others. Thanks, Mark! Please be sure to visit Mark’s great Flickr photostream.
Perhaps… it was a bit too much fun. The resulting video turned out to be an hour long as I took Mark’s brackets from the original RAW files to the final product you see here. Although Mark has viewed this in its entirety, I had to break it into five different parts in order to satisfy the 15-minute restriction on YouTube. That’s okay, I figure; In between segments you can get a cup of joe, slap yourself awake, or otherwise lift your spirits as we get down to some of the fine points of post-processing. I promise that next time I create a video, I’ll make it 15 minutes, or less.
I’ve included the embedded YouTube videos here. Later, when this blog post gets buried in the archives, you can access the videos via my Tutorials page. Or, if you’d like to subscribe to my YouTube channel, you can receive updates whenever new videos are posted.
You can view the videos directly from this blog page, or view them on YouTube. Either way, please remember to view them in 720p mode if your system is capable of that.
This is my first go at creating a video and posting it. So, if you see anything amiss, please let me know right away. If you find anything useful or helpful in all of this, I’d love to hear about that as well. Comments and feedback are always welcomed here.
Cheers, and happy viewing.
Rob
Part 1: Includes Introduction, Image Analysis, Creating multiple tonemaps in Photomatix Pro
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Part 2: Includes Layering & Blending Tonemap Files in Photoshop CS5, Image Cleanup Techniques
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Part 3: Includes Defringing, Denoise, LAHR Sharpening
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Part 4: Includes Nik Color Efex Pro, Color Fixing
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Part 5: Includes Cropping, Finishing, Output Sharpening, Saving, and Conclusion
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Following up on the previous image Angels in the Architecture, I again found fascination and beauty in an Italian Summer Squash bud, backlit by the setting sun. The varietal name is ‘Climbing Trombocino.’ (“Squash” seems like a rather unromantic name for such a plant, and certainly didn’t conjure up appetizing thoughts when I was a kid.)
I was delightfully surprised to see the bokeh come out so well on this image, especially since the aperture was f/6.3, though the tall hedgerow that caused the bokeh was some distance away from the subject. ISO was 800, 1/80 sec., at 55mm.
The title, once again, is the next snippet from Paul Simon’s song “You Can Call Me Al”
News Update:
The release of my HDR video tutorial has been delayed a bit. Since I created the video for a friend and wasn’t at all concerned about length, it’s a full hour of fun and games. Problem is, I hadn’t accounted for where I’d store the beast, and have had to break it up into 15-minute segments before posting on YouTube. I hope to have the finals uploaded by the end of this week after I re-index it.
~ Kay Gaensler’s recent images from New England had me feeling nostalgic for the trip we took there this past September, so I went back to the library to find this nice waterfall image.
On the trail to the outstanding 200′ Arethusa Falls lie a number of smaller cascades and pools. This is the Bemis Brook Falls, if I’m not mistaken, and the rainy, foggy day made for a perfect backdrop to the falls. Even though we love to climb and gain elevation, on days like this the effort just isn’t worth the limited view. Instead, we try to find nice walks in the woods, or waterfalls, or a dry camp shelter to hang out in for a while.
You can click on the image for a larger view in a new window.
Merged from six exposures +/-1EV in HDR Express from Unified Color, with added Shadowmapping at 10%. Nik Color Efex Pro White Neutralizer took the gray out of the water; Tonal Contrast to crispen details; Vignette Blur for enhanced mist effect. Topaz Detail brought up a bit of color.
It was just another beautiful autumn day at Acadia National Park on the Maine coast.
This is The Bowl, a small tarn near the Beehives on the eastern side of Mt. Desert Island. It was such a nice day, we just had to pull up for a while. Couldn’t just sit there — right? — so I started clicking off some hand-held brackets. Because of the inevitable camera motion when shooting hand-held and the usual softness brought about by HDR processing, this image needed some help. It was shot at 11mm f/2.8 with a CPL filter, which didn’t help matters.
While I don’t often recite highly detailed recipes, I thought this was a good example of “rescuing” an image that would otherwise sit as nothing more than a pleasant memory in the library. Thanks to one of my new favorite toys, Topaz InFocus, it became a viable HDR image.
I started off with a three-bracket (+/-2EV) merge in HDR Expose, with basic brightness and highlight adjustments in Unified Color’s Photoshop plug-in, 32 Float. Returning the result as a layer, a lens correction was used to relieve some barrel distortion. I invoked the new Topaz InFocus filter, dialing in just the right radius settings for this subject (1.76 radius, 2.7 suppress) in order to provide sharp detail in the wood grain of the logs. There were artifacts left in the tree line and water surface, but these could be addressed later. Having recently received an upgrade to Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0 Complete, I had access to the Pro Contrast filter, which can really help to pop an image and remove color cast. Topaz DeNoise was then used to remove the artifacts created by the InFocus pass (I’m trying to wean myself off of Imagenomic Noiseware Pro since they’re not currently 64-bit.) I had originally used one of my favorite tricks, Nik’s Darken/Lighten Center, to bring the eye toward the logs, but it created a hyper-polarized effect by darkening the sky, which just seemed unnaturally blue.
One thing that has become clear to me (pun not intended) is that Topaz InFocus tends to work best when you have discrete, straight edges in an image. The cityscape that Topaz provides on their website is a good example of this. For this landscape image of The Bowl, you wouldn’t want to preview the area of trees, as that area is soft and irregularly shaped. Bringing the InFocus preview window to the logs and foreground detail, however, provided the harder edges needed for the filter’s algorithms to work properly. Knowing this seems to be one key to having the filter work best for you.
You can see this image larger by clicking on it. A new window will open on the Waterscapes gallery.
That must have been one serious downer for the owner of the truck. Being that it’s on a remote peninsula, I have to wonder how they got home.
This poor, unfortunate ride is now a permanent fixture at Cape Lookout, North Carolina. Fully covered at high tide (and hence the barnacles on the engine block), at low tide it bakes in the sun. We appreciate it being there, as it serves as a distant landmark for beaching our kayaks at this particular spot where there is a cut-through to the ocean side of the hook.
This is an HDR image from three handheld exposures, processed in HDR Expose and 32 Float from Unified Color. (Discount Available Here.) I had a circular polarizer installed that day, but it was a brilliantly clear day, i.e., no blue saturation was added. I used a little bit of Darken/Lighten Center, and Sharpener Pro, both from NIK Software.
This machine will get your booties looking nice and buff.
Located in the main workshop at Peter Limmer & Sons, Bootmakers, in Intervale, New Hampshire. Many thanks to Peter for letting me drag my camera rig throughout his shop.
Click on the image to see it larger in a new window on my Buildings Gallery.
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Processing: This image was derived from nine exposures taken using Promote Control and later processed in Photomatix Pro 4. I tried other HDR programs on this set, but the results were less than stellar, especially with a fluorescent glow around some of the highlights. I cropped it pretty closely, and then sent it for a grunge treatment with OnOne Phototools Pro, painted in some NIK Color Efex Pro Midnight filter (thanks, Fotofreq!), and finalized it with Darken/Lighten Center from NIK.
One of the great things about living in this part of North Carolina is that we’re surrounded by water. Not that it’s all deep water, mind you, but the area around Cape Lookout and the Pamlico Sound is ripe with opportunities for world-class kayaking trips.
Yesterday was a brilliantly clear and warm day for late October, so we took advantage of the opportunity to paddle out to Cape Lookout and Shackleford Banks. We paddled amongst large pods of dolphins; Loggerhead turtles visited the boats; a small island was chock full of pelicans; a family of wild ponies gave us a great photo op (and we’re still working on the model releases.) It just doesn’t get any better than this kind of day.
Here, late in the day, we encountered a sand flat that grounded the boats, so we walked part of the way home. It was okay… we were in no hurry to return.
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Processing notes:
This was taken from a single RAW image. After making some minor adjustments in Adobe Camera Raw, I brought it into Photoshop and immediately turned it over to 32 Float, from Unified Color. A few adjustments there brought it to most of what you see here. Several filters from NIK Color Efex Pro were used to jazz things up, including Polarization, Brilliance/Warmth, Gradient, and Darken/Lighten Center. A pass with Imagenomics Noiseware Pro and two sharpening passes using the LAHR/HALR technique (Tutorial), and done. No cropping was applied; I thought the framing was just about perfect right out of the camera.
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To see this image much larger, click on the image to see it in a new window on the Waterscapes Gallery.
Rob Hanson Photography Blog 