More Software fun!

A few blogs back I talked about the role of software in the future of photography. The bottom line was that some understanding (and useage) of software tools is essential to a photographer in the digital age. So in this entry, I thought I would show another before and after of an image where I applied some of the great tools available. The first blog image is actually the final image after processing. The second image shows the initial shot. While the initial shot composition and subject was good, the lighting and tonal spread was not. This resulted in a less than exciting image - but not bad.

To create the final image, I first brought the image up in Topaz Lab's Simplify ($39). This is where I created the painterly effect. The image at this stage was much more interesting but I decided to play with it more. Next I applied a "Bleach Bypass" filter in NikSoft's ColorEfxPro. Finally, I applied a touch of "Glamour glow". While the possibilities are endless, some definitely work better than others - experiment and have fun. In the end, using the tools is an art!

This might give you the impression that if you only had all these tools you could create great images. Let me reiterate that the underlying image must still be fundamentally strong: well composed, have a good defined subject, etc.

Making Lemonade

I have been out for a week road tripping. My wife and I enjoy doing that on our vacations. Generally we pick a direction and based on the time we have select a reasonable destination and play it by ear from there. In this case we targeted the California redwoods for the far point with a a return route up the coast or through central Oregon.

As free form as this sounds, at times I will get a bit fixated on a specific area I want to photograph. In this case I wanted do some shooting on the Oregon coast at Bandon. There are a lot of sea stacks there and it is considered by some as the most photogenic beach on the west coast. As it turned out, between the campground being full, clouds and high winds (sand blasting anything on the beach - like your camera). I didn't get to shoot there as I hoped. Instead I ended up at a place called Sunset Bay beach. As it turned out, there was greate light that evening and I ended up with some really nice images. So while I thought I was getting the lemon, I was really getting the chance to make lemonade.

Bottom line - as a photographer you need to stay flexible and work with what you are handed - it could be some of your best work.

Images:

The first image reminds of some 70's water color that was on books and cards - remember the 70's? This image like several others was shot around -2/3 EV to better saturate the colors (more like I saw them). It was also shot well after sunset - it always pays to stick around until you are sure the light show is over. I saw another photographer come and go before the really great light.

The second image was shot earlier, but still after sunset. The colors were more pastel at this point.

The third image was shot the next morning (cloudy/foggy day). The color pallet was totally different - very soft hues - but I still like it.

Mausoleum in HDR

Through my photography club I was able to get into a mausoleum that is usually closed to the public. This was somewhat of a good will deal, we provide them with images for their use (a very good deal for them) and the local club consortium gets access for an upcoming field trip.

This is an old mausoleum that has been in Portland quite a while and has sections built over decades. We had only 4 hours to shoot and this was a big place (8 floors with multiple long corridors per level). The lighting was often high contrast, almost non-existent and/or with mixed sources - incadescent, flourescent and daylight. Good candidate for HDR photography.

The HDR shots required from 4-9 shots taken 1-stop apart to capture the total light intensity span. I think 9 may not have been quite enough in some cases. In a couple cases where it was real dark I had to up the ISO to 800 to shoot a sequence in a reasonable amount of time. I had to use the built in camera noise reduction which made shot times even longer.

A first pass at post processing of these images can be seen here. I can play with many of these images for a quite a while to get different results.

I have include a couple HDR images here in the blog. The final image is not HDR, but just a simple pleasant image.