Posts in Category: Photomatix

12/13/2011: Wildcatter Dawn

Wildcatter Ranch bills itself as the Resort Ranch in the North Texas hill country. It is a working ranch and they cater to corporate retreats and weekend getaways for those who enjoy luxury rustic. The restaurant and conference buildings are strung out along the top of a narrow ridge and the views off either side are wonderful. This is dawn coming to the hills of North Texas.

Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent field of view, f4 @ 1/500th @ ISO 250. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.

This image got a lot more processing than I normally do. I was experimenting with Lightzone again, and then trying to approximate (and improve on) the Lightzone tone-mapped effects in Lightroom and Photomatix. In Lightroom I used the dueling Graduated Filter effect technique to lighten the foreground and darken the sky. That produced a pleasing image but with a very soft sky. In an attempt to bring some definition to the clouds, I exported the Lightroom image to Photomatix for tone mapping. I began with the Painterly setting and then backed off on the controls until I got the definition I wanted, without the artificial look (I hope).

This next was taken a few moments later and further down the ridge. It received similar treatment in Lightroom and Photomatix.

10/4/2011: Eisenhower Park Veterans Memorial HDR

Eisenhower Park in Nassau County New York on Long Island is beautiful park filled with war and civic memorials. There is a 911 memorial there, and this is the Veterans Memorial. As you see, a series of terraced wall fountains and pools bordered with flowers runs down the hill toward the lake.

This is a 3 exposure HDR, from –2.6EV to +1.4EV. The Canon SX40IS has a very flexible auto bracket, though it is limited to 3 shots. The shots were blended and tone mapped in Photomatix Pro and final processed for Clarity and Sharpness in Lightroom.

Canon SX40IS at 24mm equivalent field of view, f4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 100. Programmed Auto.

And just for fun…here is a single shot comparison, processed only in Lightroom. Which goes to show, you don’t always need HDR.

4/11/2011: Last of Winter HDR

Hard to believe this was only a week ago here in Maine, after what I sincerely hope was the last snow of the season. This is a nothing shot…just a little moderate-telephoto crop of the landscape…but I like it. I like the bare branches against the sky, the clouds, the water and the leading line of melt in the foreground…I like the balance and the detail.

Canon SX20IS at 75mm equivalent field of view, three shots bracketed around –2/3rds EV, blended and tone-mapped in Photomatix Pro, processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom.

I did shoot this as a standard Landscape Mode image just for comparison. All the HDR did was to bring up the relative brightness of the mid-tones in the trees, giving them more dimension, and bring out the green of the conifers. I might, with careful levels work and some masking, have been able to achieve these same results working with the single exposure. 🙂

3/23/2011: Mousam HDR

This is a section of yesterday’s panorama taken at the mouth of the Mousam River behind Parson’s Beach in Kennebunk Maine…not literally a section as in one of the three stitched images…but a section as in a piece of the same view. This time it has received the HDR treatment. For a scene with this kind of sky drama already happening, about the only thing HDR adds (the way I use it) is a bit of detail enhancement in the foreground, some extra detail in the cloud cover, and greens you can see. In a normally exposed image of this scene, the greens would be going toward black (or the sky would be pale and lifeless), especially the evergreens in the distance. They might hold a bit of green, but HDR brings them back up to normal visual levels while preserving the cloud detail.

Canon SX20IS. Three bracketed exposures centered around –2/3EV, assembled and tone-mapped in Photomatix Pro and processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom.  

3/6/2011: Sunset, Mission Bay, HDR

Happy Sunday! I have taken this shot many times over the last 8 years on my annual visit to San Diego. I spend most of each day at the Mission Bay Marina Village Conference Center talking optics with prospective ZEISS owners and one of the highlights of the day (no pun intended) is sunset over the marina. This year I have a new tool to apply, since I have begun to actively experiment with HDR. The hard part of a sunset shot is holding any kind of realistic detail in the foreground while capturing the subtle shades and brilliant hues of dominant sky. HDR helps.

Canon SX20IS at about 60mm equivalent field of view, three bracketed exposures centered on –2/3 EV, assembled and tone-mapped in Photomatix pro, processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom.

And here we take the closer view, which is even more of challenge for the sensor.

And, since it is Sunday: we love sunsets…sunsets and dawns when the sky takes fire move the most self-centered of us to an appreciation, to an apprehension, of the beauty of nature. But there is something deeper there…sunsets stir something in our souls…we feel them, as much as see them…we are moved. There is a longing in the time between times (as the Celts would say), a yearning, an opening to something other and beyond ourselves. I am not a believer in magic, but I can believe more fully in miracles at sunset. The sunset has to witnessed either with silence or with song…with contemplation or with praise…with supplication and with hope. It is in the truest sense, a holy time. Is it any wonder the camera sensor struggles to capture it…

2/28/2011: Kennebunkport HDR

Looking across the Kenneunk River at flood tide toward Kennebunkport. This is intentionally processed to be more painterly, using heavier than my usual tone-mapping in Photomatix, and, of course, it is scene that might feature in a painting. The variety of light…sky and cloud, reflections in the water, patches of sun and shadow on the trees and the far shore…keeps my interested as much as the scene itself.

Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent field of view, three bracketed exposures centered on –2/3ds EV, assembled and tone-mapped in Photomatix pro, processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom. It required some noise suppression, distortion control, and just a bit of color temperature adjustment (warming).

2/26/2011: Winter Cold Sea HDR

Another HDR effort, this time form Mother’s Beach in Kennebunk, looking out across a cold sea to the retreating storm. Again it is really about the clouds and the light on the water, but the gulls on the little strip of open beach add an element not usual for an HDR (since anything that is likely to move can be a real problem with 3 exposures). Even the sea cooperated for the most part here, with the high tide and gentle swell working for a good HDR effect.

Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent field of view, three bracketed exposures centered on –2/3s EV, assembled and tone-mapped in Photomatix pro, processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom. Some noise reduction applied also to tame the HDR noise. For whatever reason, this required some color temperature adjustment as well.

2/24/2011: Flood Tide Mousam River HDR 2

A second shot from the river side of Parson’s Beach the other day as the front passed through. Again, a three exposure HDR. The bit of road embankment (causeway really) in the left foreground provides a scale the last shot lacked, as do the visible houses. Still lots of drama in that sky, and the play of reflections and subtle colors in the water to catch the eye.

Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent field of view, three exposures bracketed around –2/3EV, assembled and tone-mapped in Photomatix Pro, processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom.

Though I moved Pic of the Day from wordpress.com (the wordpress.com has been hidden behind the custom url for quite some time now) to a self-hosted WordPress installation during the day yesterday…and later links in the day pointed here…this is the first official post at Pic for Today (p4td.lightshedder.com). The site design is updated. Let me know what you think. I am still getting used to it and making adjustments.

2/22/2011: Flood Tide on the Mousam HDR 1

While I am not done with the digiscoped birds from Merritt Island, I, for one, need a break. Yesterday morning we had fresh snow, and as the front passed away out to sea in the afternoon, some spectacular skies. Add as high a flood tide as I have ever seen along the coast here and you have the makings of some HDR landscapes, or sea-scapes, or river-scapes…some-scape with a lot of water and sky.

This image walks a fine line, to my eye, between natural and over-the-top. It presents a reality that is there, but that, without the emphasis of HDR and tone-mapping, many people would not see. It is the reality a painter records when painting such a landscape…an image built up in the mind over time, as the details and the colors catch the attention one by one, as the shadows and reflections on the water burn in to the awareness. It is not what you see at a glance or in the moment, and therefore perhaps strikes the eye as not strictly photographic. It is something between a painting and a photograph. I don’t, in fact, know if any such space exists, and, even in my own mind, the jury is still out on HDR and tone-mapping…but I do know that I like this image. I like the drama of it…the vivid world it portrays…the intensity. It is just so alive on an lcd monitor, with the light behind it. I like it.

Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent field of view. Three exposures centered around –2/3 EV, assembled and tone-mapped in Photomatix, final processing for intensity and clarity in Lightroom. Some distortion control and a bit of noise reduction (generally needed in HDR) as well.

12/26/2010: Mousam Full of Light

Happy Sunday! Happy day after Christmas. Happy Boxing Day.

After our brief snowstorm last week, the sky lightened and the light grew as the sun peaked out off and on, and the world, just for a few moments, glittered and sparkled with what seemed an inner light. With temperatures rapidly rising to the upper 30s, the snow on the trees came literally and figuratively raining down. I attempted to find a spot to catch the light before it passed.

We are having unusually high tides the past week, with the full moon, coastal runoff, and onshore winds, and here we see the lower Mosuam River filled brim to brim. Where I stood to take the image, you generally look out over a relatively dry marsh to the river which runs, in perspective, not far in front of the trees and houses on the far side. The trees at the right are generally 300 yards from water, even at high tide.

But, of course, what really caught my eye was the sky and the light in the water, the silvery blue expanse, full of texture and movement, running back under that strong diagonal mass of cloud…and the highlight behind the bare trees on the right.

To capture this range of light with my Canon SX20IS, I resorted to HDR, three exposures centered around –2/3 EV, then assembled and tone-mapped in Photomatix Pro from within Lightroom. Final processing for intensity and clarity, some sharpening, and a bit of distortion adjustment for the horizon, produced the result above.

The Sunday thought?…in less than an hour we went from the quiet beauty of falling snow and misty light, a soft intimate world where even the sounds are muted…to this splash of glory, noisy with light and drama…as overfilled and overflowing as the banks of the Mousam. And that is a metaphor for the well developed spiritual life. From the babe in the manger to the transfiguration and the assentation, and all in-between, all part of our experience, coming in waves along the stream of time. All we have to do is to be open to all of it. There is beauty in every moment.