Fun with Mushrooms

Well not that kind of fun, just photographing the mushrooms.

While in Sacramento CA, I came across this colony of mushrooms growing at the base of a tree. I thought it was kinda neat looking, so I came back the next morining to catch the warmth of the early light.

The below two images are HDR (High Dynamic Range) compositions, using Photomatix Pro software. I'm really liking the results of this HDR stuff.

The image below is from a "point and shoot" camera, shot in the shade of the tree, still turned out OK.


Wishing you all the best,
David Gralian
http://www.davidgralian.com/
david@davidgralian.com

Fisherman and engine shed

Hi Virginia,

I was trying to implement RSS feed on my own blog, but then "something" happened ...;o) Sorry!

FISHERMAN
Well, here is a picture I made earlier this year of a fisherman on Ringkoebing Fjord a beautyful (and very early!) morning in the summer of 2009.

D2x, ISO 200, 1/1.000 sec., f. 5,6, 17-55 mm. f.2,8 lens at 17 mm., manuel mode. One SB800 + SC-28 cord.
 
MILLE
Here is a picture I made a couple of weeks ago in an old remise (garage for trains). I think it is called engine shed or roundhouse in english. The girl is Mille.
 

D2x, 17-55 mm. f. 2,8 at 28 mm., ISO 200, 1/160 sec., f. 11, manuel mode. One SB800 in Ezybox as main light camera right + one SB800 very high to light the scene up + SU800 commander.

LISBETH

Trying to light the purple shawl from behind and control the ambient too. The girl is Lisbeth.

D2x, 17-55 mm. f. 2,8 at 30 mm., ISO 250, 1/3.200 sec., f. 2,8, manuel mode. Two SB800 in shoot thru umbrella as main light camera left + one SB800 with gobo from behind camera right to light up the shawl camera right + SU800 commander + strong sun from right side to light shawl camera left.

TROTTING TRAINER

Made a testshot of trotting horse trainer Mr. Kaj Jensen, Aalborg. Just for fun.

The shooting resulted in two new customers who accumulated minimum a months pay, so my time was invested good.

D2x, ISO 200, 17-55 mm. f.2,8 at 32 mm., f. 5,6, 1/80 sec., manuel mode, one SB800 in umbrella + SU800 commander.

Carol's project following an artist

HDR using Photomatix Pro 3

It's interesting that Fred Troilo posted his experiments with a HDR (High Dynamic Range) style image, because I have just recently been experimenting with producing HDR images using the Photomatix Pro 3 software.

Below are 3 HDR images of a Monument Valley Sunrise that I just created using multiple camera captured pictures at different exposure levels. {click on the image to see a larger version}


This HDR image used 3 images: nominal/-2/+2 stop images.

This HDR image used 3 images: nominal /-3 /+3 stop images.

This HDR image used 5 images: nominal/-2/+2/-3/+3 stop images.


Here are the +-3 stop images for your reference.
Nominal exposure


+3 exposure



-3 exposure



Of all the images, the HDR images come the closest to portraying the spectacular view I was seeing.


I actually shot 7 images in 1 stop increments from -3 to +3 stops and I was not able to create from any one of them an image that even came close to the results of the HDR images.

In this round of experimenting, the HDR image composed of the +-2 stop images turned out the best in my opinion, but you probably won't be able to tell that from the smaller images I've used for this post (+-2 stops is what the Photomatix folks recommend). The only processing I did to the Photomatix output file (.tif) was some "chromatic aberration" adjustment using Adobe Lightroom.



This was only my second time using the Photomatix Pro software to create an HDR image, so there is definitely a lot more practice needed on my part to processing the image, but Photomatix will become a new tool I will be using to create my pictures where there are a wide range of tone values present that should be portrayed in the final image.




I hope this was useful and interesting.


David Gralian
http://www.davidgralian.com/
david@davidgralian.com

Pseudo HDR

Been fooling around in Photoshop playing with HDR and came across a technique to create a pseudo HDR using Lightroom. No photoshop at all! Here is the before image. Took this from my hotel room last month. Early morning outside DC.

I imported the image into Lightroom, and started by setting all the following to 100 Recovery, Fill, Contrast, Clarity & Vibrance. Then just kept tweaking until I got this.