HDR Photography has been slowly bleeping on my radar and I found myself intrigued into this wonderful world. One of the first shots I ever saw was that of a rally car drifting around a corner and leaving a whale tail in it’s wake.  Dirt flying everywhere and almost off the screen and on to my keyboard.  I was astonished at how these images could capture what it looks like to be really there. And recently there have been a few major posts highlighting HDR photography that have just dropped my jaw further.  I wanted to know…

What is HDR Photography?

High Dynamic Range photography or HDR photography is an advanced set
of photography techniques that play on image’s dynamic range in
exposures. HDR Photography allows photographers to capture a greater
range of tonal detail than any camera could capture thru a single
photo…

…While many imaging experts regard HDR photography as the future of
digital photography, the discipline has long been in existence.

Its real intention is to create an image that accurately characterizes
the intensity levels found in natural scenes. If you ever wondered why
the picture you took was different from the scenery you actually saw,
then maybe it’s time for you to learn HDR photography.

(via Photocritic)

It’s the one thing that digital imaging can do that traditional photography can’t. The depths that some of these images dive into are fantastic optical illusions. I’m the first one to admit that I’m no award winning photographyer, yet I can still appreciate that which is aesthetically pleasing. So I present a small collection of thirty one flavors of HDR photos that found me in appreciation of beauty and tonal bliss.

Near AK Museum in Cracow

by Jakub Kubica

Antelope on Fire

by Thomas Even

Edge of the World

by Mike Kidulich

And what a year it’s been…

Looking back, I can’t say that I have many complaints.  Everyone survived without major incident, we moved, I started school again, and I’ve developed long-lasting relationships with individuals on Twitter and the Internet.

All in all, not a bad year indeed.

So looking ahead to 2009, there are a few goals I’d like to achieve.

First of all, I will be graduating with my Fine Art degree.  That alone is a major accomplishment for me.  I spent the better part of my adult life in the military, traveling around.  Once I found out that I have Essential Tremors and could no longer be able to perform my duties as a Cavalry Scout, I had to start over.  Now, if it was just me, no problem.  But having a wife and two boys, life was about to get very difficult.  But we’ve managed to make it this far!

And now I’ll be finishing up with a degree in the field that I most enjoy.  After that, it’s on to my teaching degree.  (More on that one some other time!)

Second, I want to have a successful photography/videography business here in town.  This is one of my ultimate dreams, not only to have my own business, but to do something I love doing.  I know I can do it, it’s just a matter of taking the first steps.

Last of all, I want my family and I to create new and wonderful memories.  That may seem automatic but if you don’t go out and do it, you won’t remember a thing about the year.  My wife’s family is visiting from Germany, so we are going to take a few shorts trips to places I haven’t been since I was a kid.  New and wonderful memories.

This isn’t a complete list, and there will be many smaller goals along the way.  But it’s a good start.

I wish you all a great new year!  Be safe.  Designate a driver (if you partake in those activities!).  And have fun!

I will see you all next year!

Image created using HDR MAX.

Here’s a cheerful little video for you to enjoy on this joyous day…

So today I had to do some last-minute shopping.  I know, I had all year to do it and waited until now!  Since it’s been so cold lately, I’ve been pretty much confined to the house so it’s nice to get out once in awhile.  I grabbed my camera and out the door I went.

After my bit of shopping, I decided to drive down to the park to see if I could get some pictures.  I knew there wouldn’t be many people, if any, down there and the trees against the snow make for a nice contrast.

Well, as luck would have it, it was just too darn cold to really get any good shots.  So I thought I would take the opportunity to demonstrate the effect your camera’s white balance has on prestine white snow!

If you’ve ever shot in the snow, you know that it can be pretty difficult to get the right white balance.  Usually, the snow turns out looking gray and nasty!

I have 4 shots taken right from my camera, no post-processing involved.  I then have 3 that I processed the white balance in Lightroom.  And the final image is one that I corrected using Lightroom and Photoshop.

Image #1 - WB = Cloudy

Image #2 - WB = AWB (Automatic White Balance)

Image #3 - WB = Daylight

Image #4 - WB = Shade

Holy cow!  Four images with 4 different WB settings, giving 4 completely ugly results!  (I’m not talking about the subject matter, composition, etc.  It was way too cold to worry about that at the time!)

Here are the 3 that I edited in Lightroom:

Image #1 - WB = Flash

Image #2 - WB = Fluorescent

Image #3 - WB = Tungsten (Look out!)

Are you serious?  Unless you’re going for some retro-ugly, never do that!

Ok, so the last one is the one I manually adjusted the WB in Lightroom, along with the exposure, clarity, and tonal curves, and final adjustments made in Photoshop.  Not much I can do with such a sorry excuse for a picture, but hopefully you get the idea!

If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments.  Thank you!

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I’ve been spending a lot of time on Twitter lately.  Usually I’m just sitting on the couch watching the ball game, or working on my work, and have twitter open in the background.  Once in awhile I’ll pop on over to see what’s going on.

Quite often, I’ll find a great link to another photographer or designer.  I’ll go check out their site, bookmark it, follow the tutorials, or look through their portfolios to get inspiration.

Twitter is an amazing tool to network with like-minded people.  I know, that’s what they said about MySpace too!  But the difference is the lack of spam.  I don’t know how many times I’ve received a friend request on MySpace from a robot!

On Twitter, there’s no room for spam.  You start spamming?  You’re followers leave.  I like that.  People are also very friendly and are more than willing to help out when you have a question.  I’ve had a few questions answered, usually just within minutes, that have helped me with my work.

So here are my Top 10 Photographers to follow on Twitter:

1. http://twitter.com/hawridger
2. http://twitter.com/photopark
3. http://twitter.com/BrokenDoll
4. http://twitter.com/chancemasterson
5. http://twitter.com/jmanstudios
6. http://twitter.com/jcolivera
7. http://twitter.com/jessewright
8. http://twitter.com/JoannasPhoto
9. http://twitter.com/KirkwoodPhoto
10. http://twitter.com/thomashawk
11. http://twitter.com/JohnMilleker
12. http://twitter.com/kevinosx
13. http://twitter.com/whoisariston
14. http://twitter.com/rondavis007
15. http://twitter.com/cpichado
16. http://twitter.com/jaredpolin
17. http://twitter.com/PattyHankins
18. http://twitter.com/photogirl66
19. http://twitter.com/wmmarc
20. http://twitter.com/photowalklist
21. http://twitter.com/gtvone

BONUS:

1. http://twitter.com/nate_lawson (You didn’t think I’d leave myself out did you???)

Ok, so that’s a couple more than 10…oh well.  There are so many great people to follow on Twitter, you really can’t narrow it down to 10.  But that’s close.

When Nate asked me to guest blog, I went to his site and noticed he had a whole category dedicated to Sunrise/Sunset. Which immediately made me think of Golden Hour.

Golden Hour

For those of you who have never heard of golden hour, it is the hour right after sunrise and right before sunset. Because the sun is very low in the sky, the light has to travel through lots of atmosphere and this lengthens the wavelength and turns the light a golden color. This golden color is much coveted by people photographers.

For some reason we humans love the look of this light. We love the way it makes skin look, and most glamour and swimsuit photographers will only shoot in this color light. Everyone looks good in this golden light.

I remember way back in college - yes I can remember that far back - seeing a friend looking out the window. She had this beautiful golden light and I ran and got my camera, telling her not to move. But when I took the picture and got it developed, she didn’t look like my eye had seen her. At the time I had no idea why, but now I can make a couple of guesses.

First the film processor may have thought my image was too yellow and adjusted the color. The other was I may have waited too long and lost the golden hue.

So if you want someone to look extra good when you are shooting outside, try and capture at golden hour.

In the Studio

To me there are two big drawbacks to shooting at golden hour.

First, it happens only twice a day. You have to catch it during that time or it is gone. What’s worse, is one of those times is God-awful early in the morning. A time I don’t want to be up at all.

Second, is you can’t control the rest of the weather or scene very well outside. It’s just one of those things that shooting people outside means the light is out of your control.

Which is why I shot most of what I shoot in the studio.

But I and other glamour photographers still want that golden hue that humans find so appealing. So we fake it. We use a gel over our studio light source to turn it gold.

Golden hour light isn’t really orange, or even gold. So finding the gel is another challenge. Lucky for you I’m just going to tell you want gel to get. It’s the Rosco Bastard Amber. Hey, I didn’t choose the name. It works like a charm.

Another trick is to change the white balance of your camera. Just make the whole image warmer. Problem with this is that’s not natural. You might have another light source that isn’t warm in the image and changing your white balance effects it as well. Nor is the warmth directional, its the whole image. Lastly, my Fuji S3 doesn’t let me have that kind of control over the color temperature.

Yes, I know I could shoot RAW and change it in post. But I like to get everything I can in camera, so I don’t do that either.

While we’re talking about white balance, if you are going to use a custom white balance, set it before you gel the light. Otherwise the custom will just take all the gold right out of the image.

Hopefully this will help you improve your people photography by capturing that warm glow you get at sunrise and sunset, either in the wild or in the studio.

Ron Davis is the photographer behind GlamourApprentice.com His goal in life is to take stunning pictures of beautiful women and teach others how to do the same.

I had the worst headache I’ve had in a long time.  It hurt so bad I couldn’t lie my head on the pillow.  So after about 30 minutes of tossing and turning, I got up.

Of course, we had no asprin in the house either.  What was I gonna do?  Go get some, that’s what!

And being the photographer that I am, I grabbed my camera.  Even though my head felt like it was going to explode with every beat of my heart, I couldn’t help but thinkk there might be some nice shots waiting for me.  It was after midnight on a Sunday night after all!

After a quick stop at the gas station, I started driving down Main Street.  Yes, we actually have a “Main Street”!

I know that it was late on a Sunday night, but didn’t expect it to be completely deserted!  There’s usually a stray car or two driving to or from work.  Not tonight.

Creapy!