In her last post Victoria over at
Photography Unscripted pondered over the value using HDR (High Dynamic Range) techniques on her images when she prefers them in B&W. She mentioned not having found color images of her own that looked great as HDR. I have struggled with the same thing. I have found in my own photos there are some color shots or exposure ranges that don't look good as HDR. I have found some that look stunning, but have decided it is not meant to be used all the time. In fact I lean towards a more natural look in my HDR than some of the over the top stuff I have seen. Victoria mentioned possibly doing a bracket series of infrared and turning them into HDR. I would be very interested to see how this turns out in both color and B&W infrared. I am going to file that away for infrared season this summer. I think this could be amazing. Considering how good Victoria's IR work is already I'd like to see what she can do when turned loose on HDR-Infrared!
I did experiment with HDR in B&W white tonight with this shot of a great old movie theater in my town. The top one is a single exposure converted to B&W and with a 40% sepia filter applied to it. At first I thought it look pretty good. Then I did the same image as an HDR series using this exposure as the normal image and also using one shot 2 stops over and one shot 2 stops under and combining them in HDR EFEX PRO, then converting to B&W and finally adding the same amount of sepia (40%) to the image. I really like the HDR Image ( the bottom of the two images) because of the greater amount of detail the effect was able to bring out in the photo in areas that are lost in shadow in the single exposure. The HDR image has a really old feel to it and looks like it was shot with a 4x5 camera in the 1940s. I will in the future plan to use HDR in some of my B&W work where a gritty detail will help the feel of the photo.
If this post was a little too full of tech stuff I apologize.... Feel free to just look at both versions of the image and tell me which you prefer and why.
Keep Makin' Art!
Carl
We took friends into New York City on Saturday for a bit of site seeing. I always enjoy seeing the sites of the city with fresh eyes. I get a chance to take some photos of the standard things you see and other times I just take what catches my eye. These are some of the standard NYC sights.
We spent the day Saturday with great friends in NYC. I always enjoy wandering the city with people who have not been there before. I get to see things in a different away and it always inspires me when I get a fresh perspective on the city. The photos above are details from one of my favorite sculptures in Battery Park called the immigrants. I play around with using HDR techniques with the bronze sculpture against a perfect blue sky and got some great results. I have decided to go back when I have more time on a warmer day and spend more time admiring this great work.
We had a light snow last night. Rather than be bummed that it had been 70 degrees on Friday and it is now snowing again I headed to the park with my camera at sunup. I had the trails to myself my only company was the sound of the streams swollen with rain and melted snow. It was wonderfully peaceful. I hope these images convey to you how at peace and awed by nature I felt. After I took the images I just stood to enjoy the sights and sounds. A perfect way to start the day.
I photographed More HDR (High Dynamic Range) images today at one of my favorite places... Indian Brook Falls in Garrison, NY. I took these shots around two pm. Anyone who shoots waterfalls knows this is normally a useless time to photograph the falls because the strong light together with the white of the water makes for harsh lighting with blown out highlights in the water. HDR uses multiple exposures of the same scene (for example one taken as the meter in the camera suggests then one shot two stops over and a third two stops overexposed. This should give you enough information to capture the parts of the image that can't be recorded in a single image. It can have some very striking results. Here are my efforts for today. I am quite happy with them. Note the detail in the lights and the shadow areas you might not normally see. This effect can be too much and I would not suggest using it all the time, but I like these and really think the B&Ws are really quite stunning.
In her last post Victoria over at Photography Unscripted pondered over the value using HDR (High Dynamic Range) techniques on her images when she prefers them in B&W. She mentioned not having found color images of her own that looked great as HDR. I have struggled with the same thing. I have found in my own photos there are some color shots or exposure ranges that don't look good as HDR. I have found some that look stunning, but have decided it is not meant to be used all the time. In fact I lean towards a more natural look in my HDR than some of the over the top stuff I have seen. Victoria mentioned possibly doing a bracket series of infrared and turning them into HDR. I would be very interested to see how this turns out in both color and B&W infrared. I am going to file that away for infrared season this summer. I think this could be amazing. Considering how good Victoria's IR work is already I'd like to see what she can do when turned loose on HDR-Infrared!
I have been playing again. We had some nice tulips at home that I brought home a few days ago. Just for fun tonight I took out the camera and my lights and took a few shots before these bright sunny flowers fade away.
