HDR Portraits

A post that may be too technical from a Photography stand point.

Someday time permitting, will break this down in layman terms.. Until then, my apologies.

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It is no secret that I love HDR photography.

Now that there is Photoshop CS5 and the HDR plugin, don't have to worry about playing around with demo versions of Photomatix (which is awesome compared to CS5 with the controls and presets though) and can get photographs merged and tonemapped without a watermark!

Usually HDR photos are of landscapes and still subjects simply because the ghost effect is not easy to take advantage of in many compositions.

That is why you do not see many Portraits in HDR. The subject has to stay reasonably still for a long time. Time to take at least three shots (normal, over exposed and under exposed) and usually the over exposed shots taken without a flash, even with high ISO take upto a 1/4 seconds or more! 

Have tried HDR with the kids in the past where they were asked to hold their breath and it came out reasonably well. Tried that earlier today and it was not successful. Then decided to turn the camera around to some more co-operative subjects or catch them at moments when they are in relatively still mode.

Note the detail in the shadows and you will see why High Dynamic Range makes a difference in the photographs. All of the three images below were created using 3 individual images each (-2.0, 0, +2.0 eV exposure bracketing) , no flash, high ISO (800 to 1600) at f4.0 with times changed from 1/125, 1/25, 1/6 seconds to get differnet exposures. They were merged in CS5 using the HDR option and fine adjusted. 

Let me know if this changes your perception of HDR as being overly surrealistic..

So far personally happy with the results. That means, we now have a new Gallery for HDR photos on the site! 

Hummingbirds

Have seen some really good photographs of Hummingbirds taken by my classmates in the last few days.

That reminded me of my chance encounter with a pair of Hummingbirds at one of those picnic tables on top of a vista point at Palm Springs last year.

Now that yours truly has Photoshop, found that picture and edited it to my hearts content..

Here is my contribution to the Hummingbird collection.

It is a pity that we cut down the honeysuckle plant in our backyard as part of the construction. Need to go buy one and plant it just to get the birds to visit our house again...

or at least put a feeder in the backyard!

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Uvas Canyon

We visited Uvas Canyon State Park near Morgan Hill last Sunday with the Cousins. Was in two minds to go on Sunday as there was an early flight to catch on Monday morning, but went anyways.

We walked around for 5+ hours through the park and covered multiple waterfalls and walked along creeks. It was a very pleasant day and we thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon enjoying nature.

This was my first trip with the Canon 5D Mark II with the L series lens and most importantly the Manfrotto tripod.

The pictures have improved by leaps and bounds compared to the old broken tripod and the 400D + sigma lens combination. Not that those were bad photographs but yours truly has learned a lot of tricks since that trip two years ago..

Here are a few pictures.. (the second and fourth Images are HDR composites of 5 images taken at -2.0, -1.0, 0, +1 and +2 Exposures respectively and then tone adjusted in Photoshop)

Seriously thinking of getting a photo site..

Any suggestions?

A trip to Sausalito

Last weekend we decided to drive to Sausalito, thanks to NPR. Apparently the storm had moved over the bay area and it was supposed to be an extremely good visibility day to see the golden gate bridge and also the road down to Sausalito was going to be kept open over the weekend.

So off we drove and had a great time. Got to take some pictures of the bridge, then the kids spent two hours at the Kids discovery museum and we ended up driving around the cute downtown in Sausalito and had some great food at a Nepalese restaurant called "Taste of the Himalayas"

It was an afternoon well spent with something for everyone in the family!

A few photographs from the trip.

Separate posts on the museum trip and tiffin experience later...

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Pu'ahi crater

Before..

After edits

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