I Hear Mars is Gorgeous this Time of Year [Concept Experiment]
August 15, 2010 by Kivus · Leave a Comment
In order to take a bit of a brake from some of the cases I’m analyzing, I decided to take 20-30 minutes to go through and process some photos for upcoming snapshots on the site. I had taken an HDR image of dirt to test out something else I’ve been trying to experiment with, but the various shots of the reddish clay made me think “I wonder if I can make that look like a version of Mars”. With Nik Software‘s Color Efex Pro doing most of the heavy lifting, I ended up getting the image I was looking for.
A Chapel Hill Landmark
August 14, 2010 by Kivus · Leave a Comment
One of the tips that Scott Bourne gives is in his Going Pro podcast is to try to market your photography to your local market. I guess it’s should not be surprising then that, as a North Carolina resident, I have sold more copies of my Old Well picture than any other of my images. I took some other shots of the Old Well that day, but my HDR technique at the time was lacking. I didn’t take dark enough exposures to get all the detail in the sky. Also, if I really wanted to make this image stronger, I would process it with software that has better anti-ghosting than the version of Photomatix. The Photomatix 4 Aperture plugin & new Nik Software HDR product cannot come soon enough.
If You Build It
August 12, 2010 by Kivus · Leave a Comment
I’ve driven by this particular construction site a bunch. It’s fairly amazing to see how quickly they cleared out this lightly forested field, and turned it into this mass of red dirt and clay. I’ve always meant to stop and take a few pictures once all the workers have cleared out, but I really didn’t want to end up covered in red dirt. Last night I made a special trip, including wearing shoes I figured would get destroyed. I ended up getting some pretty good photos….but my red mud covered shoes are now in the dumpster.
Time for some HDR News
August 11, 2010 by Kivus · Leave a Comment
(UPDATE: Trey Ratcliff’s HDR DVD ( Basic Edition and Premium Edition ) are now officially available for sale on his website. I’ve embedded his preview at the end of the post).
Last night was kind of a big night on the HDR news front, with two major bits of news breaking.
First, Photomatix 4′s beta program is now open to the general public. Photomatix is the leading HDR creation program and their new beta has some solid improvements over previous versions. I have used the beta some, however, their lack of an update to the Aperture plugin means that I have not used it as often as Photomatix 3. With Nik Software’s HDR plugin (most likely titled HDR Efex Pro) getting closer to a release, HDR Soft had to start getting Photomatix 4 in front of more people.
Also, on the instruction front, a huge announcement from Trey Ratcliff. His HDR DVD should be available on Friday (yes, the 13th…gullp). This DVD is going to follow him in both Photomatix and Photoshop as he creates his HDR images. The DVD will be available in a Basic Edition for $197 and a Premium Edition for $397. I consider Trey to be the foremost authority on HDR Photography, and I cannot wait to get my hands on the DVD. I hope to have a review of it up in a couple of weeks.
UPDATE: The following is video Trey created to show the type of things that will be available in his HDR Training Video:
The Sky is on Fire
August 10, 2010 by Kivus · Leave a Comment
Last night was one of those nights where I went out to take a certain picture (which I did end up getting, though I’m not as blown away by it as I thought I would be) but ended up getting a whole bunch of other photos to go through. I use Nik plugins on almost all of my images, but sometimes I forget that I have the full suite of Topaz Labs plugins as well. One plugin that gives some particularly interesting results is Topaz Simplify. It allows you to give a painterly look to your photos. I used it to create the image of the Old Well that now hangs above my television and also used it on this photo. I was interested to see what would happen with the red sky contrasted against the green foliage in the foreground and I ended up really liking the result.
Storm is Brewing
August 8, 2010 by Kivus · Leave a Comment
I need to work on fixing ghosting more in HDR images (especially in the trees), however, in this case, I wouldn’t have done anything with the clouds anyway…maybe a little touch-up work if I was going to print this photo, but I like the motion of clouds in HDR, especially in black & white.
I wonder if Photomatix 4 (which I still don’t believe has an Aperture plug-in for its beta) or Nik’s new HDR offering (whenever it’s released in “late summer”) will be able to handle selective ghosting correction
Where’s my Fountain?
August 6, 2010 by Kivus · Leave a Comment
I was watching a Nik Software webinar today that was put on by Lesa Snider. She was discussing how to prepare images for iStockphoto and, even though I’m not a stock photographer, some of her trips were pretty interesting. One of the tips I particularly liked was how to use the “Ink” filter inside of Color Efex Pro to make a photo look faded and “old timey” (technical term). I think I have one or two photos from my walk around the Brier Creek golf course that the effect will good on, but I was looking for another photo to give it a shot on first. I decided to use this pano I took of the gazebo / fountain location that I photograph fairly often. Sadly, the water in the lake is fairly low and the fountain was not going when I took my picture.
From a technical perspective, this photo was stitched together using Photoshop. Additionally, I’m starting to experiment more with brushing in highlight / shadow adjustments instead of doing global versions of them. I think this allows me to bring out some areas (in this case, the trees and bushes bordering the lake on the side I’m standing) without effecting other areas (the sky looked a little funky when I did a global shadows adjustment).
Hitting the Back
August 4, 2010 by Kivus · Leave a Comment
Taking a break from writing a couple of different things for the site. Here’s a look from the tee box on 10 at Brier Creek just before the sun goes down.
Worldwide Photo Walk 2010
August 2, 2010 by Kivus · Leave a Comment
Last year’s Worldwide Photo Walk was one of the first photography related events I ever attended. I was nervous. I had only owned a camera for 6 months, and though the literature on the photo walk website said that you could bring a point and shoot camera, I figured I’d be the only one who didn’t have a SLR on the walk. Well, I was right about the SLR thing, but I ended up having a great time. In fact, one of the images from that walk is currently hanging on my wall. Also, It made me really excited for this year’s photo walk.
This year, I chose to attend the Cary photo walk instead of the Raleigh one. I have spent some time in downtown Raleigh, but I was looking for something a little bit different and thought there might be something in Cary that would catch my eye. Also, I brought someone along (Elyssa, who some might call a ringer, with her photojournalism degree and all) so I knew I’d know at least one person on the walk. I also figured that my buddy Eric, who I met on last year’s photo walk, would be there; a back injury kept him from attending.
I was once again brought my trusty Nikon P6000 but I wasn’t too worried about being the only person on the walk with a point and shoot (which I was). I did bring my ZipShot tripod (I think I was the only one with any type of tripod) to do some HDR work though. The area we shot In felt almost like a ghost town (I think we saw maybe 2 or 3 other people the whole morning) but I guess 90 degree heat at 8 am on a Saturday morning will do that. Unlike last year where I ended up with one of my favorite all time pictures, I didn’t get any shots that I thought were top tier. I did end up with a bunch of shots just below that though (I’ve already posted one of them, and I’m sure that I’ll be putting up more as time goes on).
Part of the experience in these photo walks is the social component that comes along with it. After the walk, we met up at Chatham Street Cafe. I’ll start off by saying their French Toast is delicious, and I figure I’ll drive back out there purely to have that again. The conversations that were had were a mix or photography and, strangely enough, computer programing. Apparently a number of the other photo walkers worked at SAS and all had a programming background. There was also some light discussion about legal issues since one of the walkers was a prosecutor and both me and Elyssa are currently in law school. I’ll leave out the details of the cases that were discussed, but let’s say that they were something right out of Law and Order:SVU. After about an hour / hour and a half of conversation, we all headed back to our cars. Luckily, a train was coming by as we were walking back to the parking lot and we all managed to get a few more pictures. It was a well timed ending to a really great morning.
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