Yuletide Nostalgia

It is time to shoot another round of HDR Christmas images. I like looking for scenes or window displays that have a nostalgic feel to them. The HDR illustrative look really lends itself to this type of image.

Basic steps for this look:

1. Shoot for HDR – likely a five stop range for these – three in some cases.
2. Adjust the white balance in the HDR image set using your RAW processing software before you start the HDR processing. Lightroom or ACR for example .
3. Process for a grunge look with something like Photomatix. I tend to keep the light smoothing set mid to max, max strength, max microcontrast and max luminosity. Set the color slider to your taste (you can correct it  in step 5 as well).
4. Save the image after adjusting tone settings.
5. Reopen the saved image in Photomatix and process it with the sliders set as they were for step 3. Fine tune the color. Save again.
6. With your standard post processing tool (Elements, Lightroom, Photoshop, etc.) correct the contrast (almost always required), add a vignette, burn/dodge, clean up the image if needed, etc.

I was fortunate to find these images in my town of Forest Grove. Check out antique shops in your area one night.

Train Car

I have shot images of this old train car a couple of years now. Different light, different times of year, different angles, from the inside out, from low angles, wide angle and telephoto. This is just one my latest captures from this past fall. The lighting was great and so was the color. In this image the train car is just one piece of a bigger picture.

Blog image: Post processed with Nik Soft Color Efx Pro and Viveza 2. Filters included  “Color Contrast Range” and “Darken/Lighten Center” from Color Efx Pro. Hue/Saturation adjustments were also made in Photoshop (toned down the reds).

Snow and patterns

Well we had our first snow this past week. It didn’t amount to much so I decided to play with the patterns the snow created on our back patio. While I tried lots of variations, the lead blog image is my favorite. As luck would have it a few new leaves fell on the patio and I was able to find this nice triangular formation – No I didn’t place any of these leaves. Challenging yourself to find strong composition elements or patterns like this is part of training your eye to create pleasing compositions - ones that play off the fact that our brains like patterns.

The second image shows a simpler less dynamic shot, but it too was created with composition elements in mind. While the leaf is centered, notice that the background consists of a three by three grid with only three full bricks shown. This was no accident  - the shot was carefully framed.