HDR Archives - TimeLine Media Blog

August 8, 2015

Tampa, Florida

Urban Walkabout

Last April, I accompanied my wife on a trip to Tampa, Florida. In a previous post, I talked about the trip out of DCA south to Florida. I have never been to Tampa before, and this was a great opportunity to see a new city for me. From my research before arriving, I did see that they had a nice downtown with some large buildings that I hoped to get in photos while I was there.

Downtown Tampa ©TimeLine Media — Tampa from above ©TimeLine Media

During the day, my wife was at a convention to earn some continuing education credits. I had some photography projects to work on that I had on my laptop. Despite not being at home, I can do most of my work remotely. Thanks to readily available internet and fast laptop computers! While my wife was out, I walked around downtown Tampa and saw a lot of interesting sights.

city skyline view from above ©TimeLine Media — Tampa, Florida ©TimeLine Media

Flying Mayor

The NHL Tampa Bay Lightning were in the middle of a playoff run! When I approached a building near city hall, I saw a ladder fire engine lifting the mayor up high into the sky! He revealed a “Go Bolts” banner on the side of the building. That was a fortunate event to run into!

Mayor Bob Buckhorn raising a Lightning Banner ©TimeLine Media

Go Bolts! Tampa Bay Lightning banner ©TimeLine Media

Tampa is a very walkable city. From our hotel, we could walk along the Hillsborough River down to the Convention Center and Amalie Arena where the Lighting play. Walking around the arena area, we found a nice parking garage with a beautiful panoramic view of downtown. Because it was a quiet night in the city without any games being played in the arena, we spent some time getting some nice photos of the tall skyscrapers. I really enjoyed the short time we had to explore this area of Florida!

Amalie Arena, Tampa, Florida ©TimeLine Media

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

August 14, 2014

Event, Photography, Technology, Travel | 0 comment

HDR – Deghosting | Tech Thursday

Tysons, Virginia

I received some questions about this photo from a few post ago:

HDR-SilverLine-in-Tysons-Corner-©TimeLine-Media

This was a high-dynamic range (HDR) photo from the Metro platform with an incoming train going through the frame. I really did not know if this would work at the time I took the images. For HDR, you need to make a series of exposures that differ in shutter speed. This will create a range of images that vary from underexposed to overexposed. Using the bracketing functions built into the camera, you can set this up in camera.

Using the very fast motor drive of the Nikon D4, there is very little difference in the composition of each frame. For the most part, you would not seen much differences except for the moving train cutting across the middle. This is what you need – the composition should be as similar as it can in each of the bracketed frames. With this in mind, the software can align each individual image for processing.

Post Processing

For this particular set, I brought the bracketed images into Photomatix Pro 5.0. After you export the images from Lightroom to Photomatix, you are presented with a Deghosting dialog box:

From the initial preview, you can see that the train is a mess. There are many different versions you are trying to stay, and the software is trying to put all of them into the combined image. To clean things up, you need to drag the “Deghosting” slides on the top left all the way to the right. This is the “Very Strong” setting. Then from the set of images below, select which of the bracketed photos you want to select as the master or source file that will take precedence over all the others. I chose the 1/160s one because the train was just starting to come into the frame. and you could still make out many of the numbers at the top of the train.

Photomatix-Very-Strong-Deghosting-selected

After selecting ‘OK’ you have a much cleaner file to tone map to your final HDR image in Photoshop. This is an extreme example, but it will work if you want to clean up moving people in an image, or anywhere that the preview HDR looks too muddy or blurry. Give it a try!

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

August 11, 2014

Personal, Photography, Travel | 0 comment

Lancaster Pennsylvania Covered Bridges

Earlier this month, we traveled to Lancaster County, PA to help another photographer cover a beautiful wedding. The road trip allowed for some time to explore this part of the country that is not that far, but one that I have not visited in a very long time! The helpful visitor’s center pointed out some of the places that would be great for out of town visitors to see. The highlight for me and my camera were the covered bridges! I cannot remember the last time I had come across these in my travels, so I was excited to get some photos while we were in the area.

Zooks-Mill-Covered-bridge-©TimeLine-Media

Little did I know there were so many around! We could easily drive to a few in a day, spend some time making photos, and still do some other sightseeing. These bridges all came with information right by their entrances. You can read about their history, their construction, and how they have changed in function over the years.

They had a nice setting in the farming country of southern Pennsylvania. Surrounded by cornfields, and spanning the waterways that carried commerce from Amish farms to the towns really gives you the sense of their importance in the development of the area. Although many of the covered bridges have been replaced so many are still in use. They help to preserve the history, and add nicely to the landscape. I will definitely try to make it back to see others next time.

Lancaster-Covered-bridge-©TimeLine-Media

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

Posts Tagged ‘HDR’

Urban Walkabout

Flying Mayor

Share this:

Tysons, Virginia

Post Processing

Share this:

Share this: