A Few from Our First Day

I was going through photographs from Joe's class last Feburary for a project I was working on when I came across a few candid portraits taken on our first day.

I've posted them in a private gallery here. My apologies to those of you who are among the missing.

I hope the pictures bring back good memories of a week full of challenges, discovery, fun and frustration.

Merry Christmas and best wishes for a healthy and productive New Year.

Chicago at night

Hope everyone is well. Just keeping Kabobs alive! These are from my recent trip to Chicago.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone.

Fred

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.

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!