Taking advantage of Facebook notifying friends about their upcoming birthdays, I just wanted to send birthday wishes to Roxanne. In fact, she reached out to us a few years ago when she took over two ballroom dance competitions. Specifically, they were the American Star Ball, and the New Jersey State Open. Since she was looking for a photographer to cover the events, we were happy to step in to work for her.
Undoubtedly it has resulted in us getting some of our favorite images from the dance floor! She has setup the ballrooms to be great for photos. For example – dark and colorful backgrounds, stadium lights, floor lighting, etc. We have met lots of great dancers, judges, organizers, volunteers, and have had a lot of fun on our trips to her events. They have run smoothly, and the guests really enjoy their weekends of dancing. Thanks for reaching out to us, we hope to have represented your competitions well in images. Continued luck in the future, and happy birthday! We hope to see you again this year!
Below are photos of the Lincoln Memorial with some examples of how you can develop a photo in different ways. Firstly is just from one exposure with adjustments in Lightroom. In other words, a ‘normal’ processing from out of the camera.
The other images were processed in HDR programs from 9 separate exposures. In summary, the images were bracketed at different exposures. Afterwards. these images were used as sources for HDR programs.
This shows not only the possibilities with processing images in one program, but the amount of information available in combining exposures really opens up a lot of options! The HDR processing started from photo realistic presets.
Many of the “artistic” or “surrealistic” presets were a little off the chart for me. Especially with a subjects like the Lincoln Memorial, going too far on the processing would have really taken away from the image. Let me know which of these came out the best. If you have any tips for processing HDR images, or post processing architecture or landscape images, let me know!
This was a nice gift my wife received this Christmas. From the moment I saw this, I knew it would be a nice subject for a product photography shoot, but it would be a challenge. This was my first attempt at it while the tree is still up. I think it is a good attempt, but looking at the images on the computer now, there are a few things that I will try next time. Here is my first exposure using no flash, and using the Aperture Priority metering in camera using a 105mm macro lens:
Because of the automatic metering, the camera makes the background lights the basis for the exposure. The lights are about right, but the glass with the ice is underexposed. With this result, I knew that I needed to add flash from a speedlight to bring a little life and sparkle to the subject. This should also darken the background, and make the lights separated, and a little more saturated.
This is a little closer to what I was going for, but what I noticed first was the bokeh. In the blurred background of the tree lights, there was such a distance between the subject and the background, that the lights are no longer circular, and are taking on a strange oblong shape. To make them a little rounder, I moved the camera away from the subject, so lessen the difference between the subject and the background with respect to the lens:
Now the lights are back to being round, and you can see more of their colors. On the plus side, the flash is not too overpowering on the subject. I decided that I still want to have the lights a little larger, so I moved halfway between my previous position and this one.
This was the best that I could get with this setup – the macro lens and one flash with the diffuser as the only modifier. Looking at the images now, I think I have one more idea to try. I think the background could be even darker. I’ll give it a try and post my results. Let me know if you have any ideas as to how to make this image any better.
