A wonderful end to the day

Colour #photoassignment Finding Orange in the Sunset

This was a little easier, I was counting on a good sunset and waited for the strongest colour. Ok, I'm a little restricted in the view to the west but I much better views than a lot of folk in single room isolation or locked down. Still, there is beauty in watching the sunset.

Sunset

Mucking around on boats :: Balmy dusk, perfect time for that sundowner.

Dusk looking over to the Naval Base Darwin

I've been off the nest for over 10days now and Haven't missed it one bit. The noise of constantly being "connected" is very distracting but the peace and tranquilty to just enjoy theplace you are is wonderfull.

Last Light :: another photo in Explorer

A Photo Worth Taking

Sometimes there will be beautiful light and you don't have you camera, but you will have your phone. This was taken with my new HTC Uplay smartphone and its basic camera app in panorama mode. I’m certainly rethinking the need to carry a second camera body in my travels.

A Golden Sunset

The Real Solar Power

A Pleasant Surprise

I was out taking some photos of hay bales across the road (in HDR) but the sun was getting a bit low, so I walked up onto the levee and took a series of Bracketed photos that encompassed a wide panorama out towards the river mouth. I didn't bother processing the HDR that night because I was more interested in the hay bales (wrongly). When I finally got around to creating the HDR series I was taken with the delicacies of the low angle light.

Right Place, Right Time

I had  parked beside the Oakliegh Football ground on my way to a show at the Caravan Club, “Feelin’ Groovy” The Simon & Garfunkel Project  (its a Jazz Influenced band with two female singets, playing the folk/rock and harmonies of Simon & Garfunkle, and it really works. There is a another performance coming up at the National Theatre.) Anyway I have digressed I was a little late but as I looked up I saw the last rays fo sunlight break through the clouds and climb into the sky. I had to turn back and get my camera and take a bracketed set of photos to make this HDR image. There are times when You need to realize you are at the right place, right time.

By coincidence the theme the week on Photo Friday is silence.  (The Sounds of Silence)

PhotoProject :: Dynamic Range & capturing what you saw

As I waited for the sunset, I watched a cruise ship on its way north along the inland passage. The white ship was catching the golden light, but a long way away. The distance was very hazy but there were a few clouds. Should make a great photo right! Well not really, and its a little complex but the camera auto exposure  is trying to get an average (grey) exposure. However the scene as seen by our eyes has some very bright things like the ship and some heavier darks amongst the foliage. If you like histograms you can see rather than being a nice bell curve, the tones peak and trough. Further the camera hasn’t really recorded the brightest golden light and the darkest dark. They are instead “blown out” or clipped(meaning they are just either totally white or totally black). The result of averaging the exposure across this wide range is most often a flat and murky image, and generally disappointing colour.So what can you do about it. The lighting clearly was richer and more colourful, so the tendency is to go for the brightness (or exposure) slide and then also increase saturation. However this usually makes for a very fake look (to the layman its over “photoshopped” even though photoshop was never used).

 

There are better ways, If you have a camera that can record in RAW, which simply means the actual sensor illumination reading and all the camera settings. If you also have suitable software to render the image, such as lightroom you might be able access the greater range of light.  However you will be limited to the range of light and colour you are able to reproduce on your screen or printer. You have to stretch the exposure to get all the levels of tone and colour into that range. I once created my own pre-set call SDR+ (Standard Dynamic Range Plus) but I find it just as easy to tweak the basic sliders.

 

The second well established method is HDR (which stands for High Dynamic Range). The simplest way to think of the process is taking three of more separate exposure from under exposed to overexpose. These three or more images are the merged together in such a way to make up a broader range of illumination (something more like our eyes will actually see). There are a number of specialist packages that can undertake this merge. Then there is generally a second process that “tonemaps” this extended range back into the reproducible range. I like this technique but it is getting a bad reputation for being overdone (laymen might sometime call this the “fake HDR look”), because the majority of folk take one of the default pre sets which often overdo the level of detail and intensity of colours.

They is an alternative, rather than choose a default tonemapping you can often take the extended bit depth file (usually as a .tiff or .psd file) directly into your favourite software and do the tonemapping manually yourself, The Image at the top of the top of this post ws created in Aftershot Pro HDR Merge but instead of using the pre sets I tweaked the tonal range only slightly avoiding the halos around the trees and unnatural sky. The photo on the right was created with Nik’s software’s HDR Efx pro but finished in OnOne 10 effects to protect the sky but darked the sea and add a big softy vignette.

So there are several ways to expand the dynamic range to better match what you saw, only you must take care not to overdo it. I’ll let you choose which are over baked.

PhotoProject :: Studio Sunset in HDR

 

I took some time out from shifting and reorganizing stuff in my studio to take a few photos of the sunset in HDR, all based on three 1EV Bracket steps (-1EV,0EV,+1EV) and using HDR merge in Aftershot Pro.

 

PhotoFriday :: Vacation Snap

For PhotoFriday‘s topic Vacation Snap

Fire in the sky

Tonight’s sunset was spectacular, for a few minutes at least, as the clouds parted and then closed over again. I was keen to get a few more bracketed EV photo sets to test out the three options for making HDR images I currently have on the silver spectre (my new laptop).

 

My old favourite Picturenaut, is not exactly on the laptop (it lives off site on my backup disk drive and/or my Black Darkroom USB key. It is fortunately software that does not have to be installed on a specific computer and can run as a portable app). I purely use it to do the merge and feature alignment, deghosting and colour balanced and the most basic of tone mapping then “finish” the 16 bit HDR tiff-image using OneOne or Lightroom. 

 

My new toy, is the HDR merge within Aftershot Pro 2, which tries to take over all the steps, and can lead to those over the top surreal images. However by being a little constrained it can do a realistic albeit snappier results and optionally align features. It can also work directly from the RAW files and can store 16 bit tiff files, to give gorgeous results without a lot of tone mapping required.

 

The really new kid on the block is Nik’s HDR Efex Pro 2, which is currently free to download thanks to google loosing interest in it. I haven’t had much of a chance to play with it but It can be used as an add in from Ligthroom and now OnOne 10.5 (although I can not figure out how to do the merge direct from Onone 10 browse. I can get the merge, alignment, deghosting and defringing done in one set as a special export from lightroom. the raw HDR file actually looks pretty good, ie natural but maybe a little contrasty & dark. It has a number of tone mapping presets to finish the image.

 

Picturenaut	Aftershot Pro 2 HDR	NIK HDR Efex Pro 2

So which image have I chosen as my Daily Photo?

You need to go the flickr to see.

Pink Rain

Shared this photo from the Flickr app on my phone! Take a look: https://flic.kr/p/FQchZc

Mallacoota :: Bushfire Sunset

HDR Sunset

PhotoFriday :: Wilderness

For PhotoFriday‘s topic Wilderness

Updating OnOne & having fun

Towards Sunset

After Sunset

I have been experimenting with the new OnOne10, its fast!.My perspective is it is most of the great tools rearranged and set up so they can be used standalone not only as an add-in (to lightroom). There By-line “photo editing made simple” is very appropriate. I’ve also had much fun using browse & layers rather than lightroom and then passing files to other applications which are simple to set up. Unfortunately I haven’t figured out how to send multiple photos into Autostitch. However the simplicity of the file export means they can easily be sent somewhere autostitch can pick them up.

PhotoProject :: One Image Three Ways

Sometimes it is worth taking one image and processing it in a variety of ways. Yesterday sunset was very memorable. Here I firstly have a Raw image processed in Lightroom (just of tone & colour balance). Next is a bracketted set made into a tonemapped HDR using Aftershot Pro, Finally I have used a Dreamscope filter.