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.
From readers, I have received a lot of feedback and questions about the panoramic images I have posted. The added feature to smartphone camera apps and having it built into some digital cameras has made the practice of stitching photos more popular. It is now possible to expand the dimensions of images using multiple angles of the same scene. There are products that you can add to a tripod mount to make your panoramas more precise, and there are even robot controllers that can make multiple images for you to make stitched GIGA-pixel images.
Photoshop Stitching
14 images opened in Photoshop
Since I am doing all of these hand held, I need to rely on the Photomerge function in Photoshop CS5. The first step was to open the 14 images that I intended to stitch together. There were taken in portrait orientation so that I could get more room to crop than if taken in landscape. Then, go to File > Automate > Photomerge:
Photomerge dialog box in Photoshop CS5
The result shows all the work that Photoshop does for you! It blends the images using the overlapping elements that were in each frame. The more information that it has to work with, the better the blending. I was happy with how the combination of the images turned out except for one section where the horizon dips a little in front of the middle pier. That area would have to be corrected manually – maybe in a future blog post!
To finish the image, I make a new layer above these with all the lower layers flattened into one. Now I can work with all of these merged, but I still have the previous work still available so I can work without destroying the previous step.
Now I just use the spot healing brush, and run it over the blank spots in the cropped image. This tool works really well for this image because of the large expanse of cloudless sky. You may have more trouble if the images you are using are busier, but you would be surprised at how good the math is with this tool!
