Sunrise over the New Jersey shore in Atlantic City, New Jersey
Yes, this post is late, but we were traveling today! We made us road trip to Atlantic City, NJ to photograph another ballroom dance competition this weekend. Friday to Sunday will be the American Star Ball at the Golden Nugget. We are setting up now, and will be ready bright and early for the dancers. The ballroom is decked out in red and will look great in the photos. Check back here for updates!
unedited smart phone photo of a building during a road trip – Rockville, MarylandSnapseed edited smart phone photo of a building Rockville, Maryland
Prior to getting to the event venue, I made some photos along the way. Of course, I needed some blog content, however, I also tested some of the new apps available for photo editing. Since the photos reside on the computer that they were created, it is easier to work on these on the phone. While on a short stop on the way there, I was able to test some of the options of Snapseed. While I can easily tell the difference, this can keep creativity going when your camera gear is packed away!
Symmetrial bedding at the Golden Nugget in Atlantic City, New Jersey
This has been a busy week of shoots for me. I have been assisting on some events, and shooting some of my own. While assisting, I always learn new things in order to be successful as a photographer. Luck has been on my side to find great photographers in the area that like my work enough to have me shoot along with them. With some assignments this week, I have been to some of the nicest venues in the area. Washington, DC, being a city of decision making power, is the site of many conferences, events, and weddings. I have taken for granted so many of the things around here being a native of the area. So it has been nice to appreciate the opportunity to photograph many familiar landmarks from new angles. If it was only nicer weather this weekend, I may have been inspired to go out again. Oh, and I have to visit my mother.
Next door to the Hay Adams are other buildings with terrific views of the White House. There were lots of cameras and tents for television production setup permanently, but I did not see anyone broadcasting at the time. Now I know where all those “Reporting from Washington” views are filmed! I would be so distracted all the time if my outdoor view was Lafayette Park, the White House and the Washington Monument.
One of the first lessons I learned in photography was that cameras “see” much different from the human eye. If you look around a closed room, then out a window, not only does the eye focus much faster than any lens, but it can take in much more detail than you realize. This happens so quickly, that you do not even realize drastic light condition changes. With this in mind, HDR photography can render a scene closer to this.
High Dynamic Range Photography
When studying photography, you can see that you have to make compromises. In a high contrast scene, such as a bright sunny day, you cannot have a blue sky and shadowless subjects in the foreground without some help. You either have a beautiful sky with your subjects in silhouette, or dark shadow, or you have a completely “blown out” white sky with detail in your foreground subject. You do have some options if you want to manipulate the light such as flash or bouncing light to your subjects with a reflector, but I want to post today about another new option that has become popular with the advancement of computers – HDR or High Dynamic Range photography.
HDR is an option for shooting with the new iPhone 5. The idea behind it is to take multiple images of your scene. In a 3-image HDR, one of the images will be underexposed, one will be exposed properly as determined by your meter, and one will be overexposed. Here is an example from the FDR Memorial in Washington, DC. I took these during late morning – the sun was already high in the sky, and it was difficult to get both a blue sky in the photo, and to read the text on the memorial.
In this first photo, the frame is overexposed but you can clearly read the text. The sky is bright white with no detail, and some of the cherry blossoms are washed out as well.
This is the correctly exposed photo using the Matrix Metering in my Nikon DSLR. It is the most even across the frame in terms of dark tones and light tones.
This is the underexposed frame – most everything is in shadow, only good detail in the sky and other bright parts of the frame. With these 3 images, you combine them in software. For this, I used Google’s Nik HDR Efex pro 2. The software stacks the images, and uses calculations to increase the dynamic range of light and dark tones in the photograph to get a better approximation of what your eye sees when you are standing at the memorial. Let me know it turned out! There are many plugins and other techniques to combine with HDR to make scenes look either more realistic, or surrealistic depending on your preferences. It is always nice to have options. Here is the final HDR photo –
