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.

Gel assignment

I wasn't gonna let this month go by without a post from someone. Just had my son try on his costume for tonight and thought, what the hell grab the strobes. Had him stand in the entrance of the laundry room and threw a blue gelled light in there. The main light is a 580ex2 with a Honl grid. Happy Halloween everyone!

Fred

Sorry I am late ...

Is fire in old cars available light? I don't know but here is my pictures for the september assignment. A little late I know that, but I have been busy lately. Obama, Pelé and Oprah dropped by for a cup of coffee after the olympic election in Copenhagen, you know ...

Today on my way home from a shooting for a construction compagny, I noticed smoke on the horison and made a u-turn. Came to this nice fire with lots of burning cars and red firetrucks. Oh boy - I am 12 years old again!

I love the rainbow.

The reflection in left side of frame is from the sunlight.

The worker is watching the fire and the firefighters.

October

What's the assignment for october - gels?

Street people and the natural light

Hello everybody! Sorry for being a lurker for so long but finally I'm posting, too :-) This time it's about street people, who are among my favorite subjects...

September Natural Light

Here are my "natural light pictures" for the Kabobs September Photo Assignment.

I've been visiting my family in Sacramento California for the past week, so I thought I'd use the opportunity to catch some natural light images of my 16 month old nephew (Preston). It was fun to kinda follow him around to see what I could catch, he has such an expressive face and a happy personality.

Here are three images that I liked. I used my 70-200mm f2.8 lens wide open to keep a narrow depth of field.
This first picture is indoors next to a large picture window at a restruant, soft morning light.

The second picture is outdoors, with slightly cloudy soft morning light.

This last picture is later morning light, getting to be a bit harder, as the clouds dissipated.


I also took pictures of my mom, 88 years young, whose naturally silver hair works great with any light. In this case it was a huge skylight right above her at our favorite coffee & croissant shop (a regular morning ritual when I visit).

She thought I should try to make this an action shot, so she told me to take this picture and to use it. I'm a good son and do what I'm told.

All inputs and comments welcome.

Once again, this was a fun assignment, looking forward to the October assignment.

My Best to all of you,

David Gralian

david@davidgralian.com

www.davidgralian.com

Natural light portraits

Here are a few natural light portraits... I might still post another if I have time to shoot it.  =0) 

The girl with the gift was shot for our alumni magazine. That was just a matter of finding pretty light! 

The guy with the hat is Darnell, he's our mail guy at the College. I'm not wild about the blown out highlights but I just thought the sun was making an interesting pattern on his face.

The garage belongs to my parents' neighbors. I thought it was cool how Homer was lit and the rest of the garage wasn't.... just kind of hinting at all the crap in there!

Ah light O' Natural

Here is my image. I have spent the majority
of my career looking for nice even, diffused light.
Only in the last year I've been seeking out
intense light sources and trying to make them work.
So this is image, taken last week at my studio, goes in that
direction.

September Assignment

Ahhh natural, available, beautiful sun light. This is a shot of my parents neighbor, as she sat on her covered porch. The interior of the porch is all white - including the ceiling and floor. It was a cloudy day, yet fairly bright. No flash or reflectors, just that giant ball of fire 92,955,820.5 miles away.

OK, so maybe this is just a "proud new aunt" moment for me, but I wanted to praise the good ole-fashioned simplicity of BOUNCED FLASH. Who says you can't have beautiful, soft light with your 580EX mounted right on your camera? I just aimed it at the white wall that was 6 ft. to my right and voila! My nephew becomes the next Baby Gap model (don'tcha think?)

Jungle Boy

My nephew broke his wrist last week and wanted a picture before the cast comes off. He's studying to be an actor so I thought this might make a good character shot. Had my 580 EX2 camera right going through my homemade beauty dish and a Quantum flash with no diffusion on the outer edges of the tree line pointing directly towards the camera. Shot this with my 70-200 f/4 at 1/30sec.

Fred

LINK

Hi everybody,

if you do weddings see this norwegian photographers pics. OK or wot?

Link: http://www.terjeaamodt.com/blog/2009/08/20/bryllup-andalsnes-stavanger/

regards, Bjarne

Capturing Movement

I'm now officially two month's behind in posting to the topic, but I thought I would share this one of my friend, Monica, that was taken with available light in the Boston subway. I used high ISO out of necessity, but really love the graininess and the sense of motion.

I am still planning to do a sheet shot. I'll post when it gets done.

Meanwhile, I have been shooting mostly portraits and am learning about the joys of photographing kids and their families when one or more of the kids do not want to be photographed. I've gotten some pretty amusing pictures, but, unfortunately, not what the parents are looking for.

I'm really enjoying the work that everyone is posting and continue to be inspired by Joe's blog and, of course, his work.

Virginia