HDR on the forest floor

I visited the Tahune Air Walk and forest on a largely bright (summer) sunny day, but rainforests are typically dark (shaded) places on the forest floor. Shouldn’t a sunny day be a better time to photograph?

The answer is NO! The dynamic range of light (the range in strength of illumination, from darkest to brightest) on a sunny day is significantly higher on the sunny day, The bright splashes of foliage where shafts of full sun light is reflected many times brighter than the nearby glom of full shadow, yet there is detail there also. Whilst our eyes can handle this situation a camera and the dynamic range it can capture will probably be a lot less than required.  Typically you will your photo will have correctly exposed (or maybe slightly overexposed foliage behind dark silhouettes of tree truck of overhanging vegetation. On an over cast day this difference is much narrower, and you are much more likely to get a decent picture.

So it seemed logical that this is a perfect opportunity for getting better images with a set of bracketed images (using EV steps, see screen capture on the right) and HDR post processing these images. Here I am using lightroom and the NIK software add in which has worked fine. The resulting HDR image does manage to get the shadow detail and preserve (not over expose) the colour of the foliage. I is much closer to what I remember seeing (and feeling). There is a lot that can be done at the post processing stage and this is usually referred to a tone mapping, how the extra illumination and colour detail is mapped back into the colour image and this is where HDR can get its bad name because you you can push the colour, local contrast and other aspects into very surreal and painterly abstractness. I am becoming a fan of NIK HDR Efex and their realistic presets (either balanced of deep) because they stay closed to my expectations.

I have returned to using lightroom to mamage photos on my HP Spectre and definite use two organization tools, Colour (eg. I flag bracketed sets with yellow) and then I stack the original images together. Thus reducing the clutter or many images that are the same.

I also have gone one step further in this image and used OnOne 10’s enhance and magic eraser to reduced the impact of a dead fern frond in the upper right and also detail filter to reduce overall digital noise, but keep as much detail as possible.

The Knowledge of the Forest

There are many interesting things to see in any forest for #thesececretlifeoftrees 

Original: imageo.withknown.com/2014/the-knowledge-of-the-forest

Kauri Vert-a-ramas

Forest Greenery

  

PhotoFriday :: In the Wild

For PhotoFriday‘s topic In the Wild

Sculptural Garden

The maroochy bushland botanical gardens has a wonderful sculptural garden, with many works my contemporary international sculptors, all beautiful situated in natural setting.

 

This work, “the Passage”, by Jean_Paul Chablais is very impressive, made in Sandstone and tallow wood, from a tree that was felled to make room for the carpark. Unfortunately after its commissioning it developed a serious flaw and cracked. Rather than try to repair it the artist wanted the parts used separately, the small pool below the broken piece, shown below, now attract wonderful birds.

 

 

 

Sherbrooke forest space man

Patterns in Nature

PhotoProject :: Beneath your feet

The wonderful Chamber’s walk, though part of the Te Mata Park, was a great place to do a PhotoProject, looking down at the detail of what is around and beneath your feet.
       

lyrebird walk

lyrebird walk, originally uploaded by imageo.

Multiphoto panoramas can be constructed for close subjects. In fact the modified perspective view they give can be charming. This is the photo of a straight section of creek passing under the log I am standing on, to take the photo, yet in the image the creek cuts a sweeping curve. The main difficulties in close up panorama sticking relates to parallax problems (see the broken stump on the left hand side of this image, the image merge has had trouble because adjacent photos can see behind it)