A photograph can only do so much justice..

It was a great idea to go work today instead of doze off at home. No pills, visited the hot room and now feeling a lot better. 

So the thought of visiting those 3000 odd photos from last week came to mind. 

After spending 2 hours on just 6 photos calling it a night.

At the end of the day a photograph even if done in Photorealistic HDR doesn't recapture the wonder of Death Valley!

This one photo below is of the Ubehebe crater. This is a composite of 7 shots stiched together. The individual shots were taken at 17mm in portrait format on a Canon 17-40mm L lens using a ND filter in manual mode with manual focus, then cropped and adjusted. I tried pulling the whole thing off with auto exposure bracketed shots in HDR and that did not work. Guess even my Mac quits at some point..

Sure there are not that many pictures like this of Ubehebe out there. We are on a rim of a crater which is around 100 feet! you get a feel for the size of this by looking at the people on the right edge.

The ND filter kit was part of the birthday present specially for this trip. Made a big mistake. Like a person who wears spectacles for the first time forgeting the specs at odd places, I left the ND filter kit on the crater rim. 

If you happen to read this blog and fate has it that you were on that crater rim between 11/21 or thereafter and you happen to have found it.. please email me.. 

Was almost in tears when we realized this at our next stop later that evening. By that time we had already driven a good 60 miles away from the crater and visiting it again in hopes of recovering filter kit was moot!

There were few good shots with the filter in the 24 hours of use like this sunset over the freeway. We didn't realize the sun sets before 4:30 in death valley! A lot earlier than the previous day when we were out of the valley. The valley is below sea level and the lowest point in the US is right here.. should have expected that!

or this one from Mosaic canyon..

These two photos en-route to Darwin falls at Panamint area..

and finally a butterfly that was everywhere in the desert.. they were even there in the salt flats. Don't know how they survive the harsh environment. 

Learned one more thing in the editing process. The canon photo stitch utility does not work on photos taken at 17mm! So figured out how to stitch them in Photoshop. Starting to really love Photoshop now. For all that Adobe hating because of Flash Player.. there is a new found love for Adobe because of CS5!

More photos tomorrow...

Five becomes six..

Got the hang of it now.. 

Can go to sleep now! 

In and around the house.

Two photos to share from today..

Both show the need for perfection and ideas for improvement..

The first one with the Photography

The second with the subject.. should have been able to hold this pose without moving. Was having Jr. click the shutter button once (had set it to continuous shooting mode with a self timer). The 2 second timer delay kept throwing me off. One thing we don't do in Yoga is open our mouth and talk. That is forbidden in the Yoga room. So it was odd for me to get into the pose and let Jr. know to hit the shutter release. My fingers practically look like they are coming out of the screen simply because we are able to see the detail in the shadow. There was not much editing in this one.. simply merged three images taken in succession!

Both will be improved, starting tomrrow!

My parents really like the way the HDR images are created and sit with me and watch my photoshopping experiments. They have started being vocal critics as well, which is good and bad! 

My mother had the same request as my MIL.. Both were private requests but so identical in choice of words, it is too hilarious not to share.

"You are really amazing at this photo editing thing! Can you not do something to make me look thinner? Your photographs make me look too big. Know that it will only show what is there.. still a guy with your ability has to be able to do something, no?!"

If I quit my day job, trust me, the first thing on my "to do list" is to develop a "Thin Plugin" for Photoshop which selectively takes any shape and converts it to the closest 36-24-36 (if those are still numbers today's women are shooting for!).. May be way off as yours truly is still living in the past...

Here to having grandparents around! It is very precious..

Happy weekend everyone!

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.

 * * *

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!