More HDR

Two key players in the house were not captured in HDR yesterday.. so they got their chance today during the feeding time. 

San will not pose.. So the plan for tomorrow ? Self Portrait in HDR. Hopefully the Yoga will help me take a deep breath and stay absolutely still.. who knows, maybe go +/- 3 or 4 eV bracketing?!

We saw a gorgeous sunset today with some amazing clouds. Will try to capture that tomorrow. Looks like this weeks pet project to take my mind off things is HDR.

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! 

Back in town..

Daddy Narayanan has been traveling over the last few weeks, busy with work.

We also did some travel as a family to Reno and back. Today we spent a few hours in San Francisco visiting the Ripley's Believe it or not, followed by ice cream at our favorite joint..

The skies were a bright red, white and blue and the lights had just come on.. could not resist an attempt to make a composite HDR image..

Definitely going to buy this Photomatix software next time there is a discount coupon!

More photos of trips and funny events around the house later..

ps. The image was a composite of three images shot with self timer by placing camera on a table in the restaurant using my iPhone under the lens to lift it up..

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Karthigai Lights and Christmas Deepam

In our house we have a tradition. On the day of Kaarthigai Deepam (the day we light oil lamps and pray to lord Kaarthikeya and eat Pori Urundai's), we also put on the Christmas lights. The Kaarthigai day in the US also coincides with my star birthday in India as they are around 12 hours ahead and overall turns out to be a great experience.

In summary, I get to eat pori urundai's every year for my Birthday!

The oil lamps come back in the next two days but the Christmas lights stay on till the New years!

This year daddy Narayanan aka limpy Narayanan was given an ultimatum by the kids. Either get on the ladder and put on the lights with help from mommy and the kids or go hire someone to put on the lights, NOW!

With a lot of help from the three of them, the lights were up after an hour..

We also celebrated with the kids lighting lamps (or switching on battery operated lamps that look like real lamps)and placing them inside and outside the house!

Good eats..

Notice daddy's slight paunch. 15 days of eating, limping and no calorie burning and trying on pants a tad smaller on the waist can do that!

A full moon night as always for Kaarthigai and this year it coincided with an eclipse in many parts of the world. The moon as seen at 400mm and ..

and back lighting our house..

We had one busy day. Children's party in the morning. Lighting up the house in the evening!

This special day was made possible thanks to isolation from the internet. We are now planning to cut the internet cable on festival days as a policy!

Hope those of you who celebrate Kaarthigai, had a great day yesterday!

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The kids in HDR..

Human subjects are difficult to do HDR using bracketed images(the overall Google opinion seems to be that). Most Human subject HDR images are from tone mapping with single images.

This was an attempt to do bracketed images using high ISO and lower f numbers but have the shutter speeds still short enough to pull off three shots in rapid succession before the kids moved..

We are almost there..

Thanks to my wonderful subjects who pulled in a deep breath then let it go and off we went

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These days the weekends seem to fly! Well we still have another day to ourselves...

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