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HDR

3 questions to consider when shooting HDR

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Earlier this week I wanted to try and see what all the HDR photography was about. I had seem some that were really awesome and I was hoping to get some that I thought would compete with the stellar ones I had seen. Well, after an hour shooting inside the Joseph Smith Memorial Building (yes, I have used other photos from this in previous posts, but this was the true HDR I was attempting with this one), I had some shots that I later took into Photoshop CS5 to merge together and see what appeared.

Here is the result.

JSMB_HDR

I like it, but I don’t at the same time. Here is a cross comparison of the HDR photo and the one with a more normal curve histogram.

JSMB_HDR_Pre-Post

The HDR photo has a second floor that is pink in color. The bottom floor isn’t as white as the non-HDR photo and has a sort of green tint. I do like how the furniture on the bottom floor looks in the HDR photo, along with the chandelier, but overall, I maybe have a few things to learn about HDR. I guess I had to start somewhere.

Here are the three things I think I will need to consider next time I try HDR.

  1. Does the view I am shooting have a dynamic range, or is lighting already pretty consistent?
  2. As I capture the three shots (-2, 0, and +2), how do the histograms of each photo look? (if I understand correctly, the -2 histogram should spike on the far left, the 0 have a sort of bell curve, and the +2 spike on the far right)
  3. Should I use Tv, Av, P or go all manual (including focus) so I have more control over the camera and what “normal” light it wants to use?

So, photography is a lot of trial and error – I don’t know if many people get it right, right off the bat, but I think I am willing to try again, just in a different setting that warrants more of a HDR look.

~signed, Carltonaut

HDR, Just for fun

Starbursts on the chandelier

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The other morning, while photographing in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, I noticed the chandelier  hanging in the center of the room. How could I not photograph something so elegant?

Chandelier_HDR

The longer exposure allowed the lightbulbs to have that starburst effect, which I really liked with this photo. Otherwise, it would have just been any other chandelier, right?

That morning I was also playing with some HDR in the grand lobby (which I will share in another post), so I gave this chandelier a shot, too. When I combined the photos in Photoshop CS5 today, the third +2 exposure compensation photo made the whole photo look terrible – which means the above photo is a combination of only 2, but I think it turned out pretty snazzy.

~signed, Carltonaut

Alphabet Photo Challenge, Just for fun

E is for Entrance

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When I started thinking about what I wanted to shoot for this weeks alphabet photo challenge with CTE Salt Lake City, the revolving door entrance at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building (JSMB) in downtown Salt Lake City came to mind. Weird, I know. But it worked.

Finding a time to get to JSMB was the biggest challenge, but when I got tired of adding air into one of my car tires that apparently had a slow leak, I called Big O Tires and brought it by early this morning. It was going to take an hour to fix the flat and do an alignment, so I walked the block-and-a-half to the building and set up shop on the Mezzanine level.

My biggest concern was getting a shot of someone and posting it to the blog, without getting their consent. To avoid this, I went TV priority to set a slower shutter speed. This would also allow for movement in the revolving door. Here is the photo I thought was the best out of all the ones I took.

E is for Entrance

TV Priority | 1-second | 5.6 | ISO 100

I didn’t like the ones that had blurred people in them (check out the outtakes here). I REALLY didn’t like the ones that had no blur in them – they just looked stale. This one had the right amount of blur, because you can tell it’s a revolving door in motion. It was a matter of luck to catch the door in that 1-second where the blur was mostly symmetrical. So while photography is a matter of skill, I also think it’s a matter of luck.

~signed, Carltonaut