Sunday, November 13, 2011

Homework

I feel bad for neglecting my new blog.  But I’ve been neglecting my old one too.  Most of my time has been spent taking pictures and editing pictures.  Well, that and my usual tasks like taking care of children, home, animals etc.  Anyway, I thought I’d start sharing some of what I’ve been doing in my photography class.  I’ve been learning and relearning a ton.   The first week in class we were supposed to take photos of common objects in uncommon ways, try night photography using flash and take a stab at HDR.

Here are my common objects:

Cats eye marbles.  To get these I lined an empty diaper box (have plenty of those) with black fabric, I wanted to avoid light from other sources, and used the flashlight app on my iPhone.  I placed the marbles on my phone and took the picture with my macro lens on a tripod.

LostMy2-0271

 

LostMy-

A partially submerged leaf.  We have plenty of those around here and one happened to find its way into one of the black rubber pans we used to feed our goats in but is now filled with rain water.  How handy for me.

WaterLeaf-9948

And lastly.  Toilet paper.  How common is that?!  I used the same black lined box only with natural light coming through the dining room window.

NotBW-9965 

Here’s one of my night shots using flash.  I only have the pop-up flash on my camera which is not a flattering light and typically causes really bad red eye and gross colors.  But I had to make do and I think I did an OK job, still there are things I’d like to try differently.

Amanda-0873

 

And lastly, my HDR photo, Mr. Rainier.

MtRainier-2

 

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range.  It is how we can get a photograph to look a lot more like what our eyes can see.  I’m sure if you have ever had a camera in your life then you’ve encountered situations where the darks are very dark and the lights are very light and the colors are dramatic only to be disappointed with the resulting photograph which is either way to dark or entirely blown out and the colors just don’t compare.  HDR helps with that. 

 

What you need to do is take 3 or more exposures of the subject WITHOUT moving.  You can’t shift or reframe or it won’t work.  The exposures need to be with different settings as well.  One or two will be underexposed, one will be in the middle, closest to “correct” and one or two will be overexposed.  Then you run them through a program which stacks them and takes the different exposures and mashed them together in order to present the most detail and best information.   The result is often spectacular.  My first attempt at HDR is pretty good I think.  If I hadn’t taken this picture with HDR in mind the clouds and snow would have likely been blown out and all the colors in the trees darkened and a lot of detail lost.  I really enjoyed it and want to take a lot more HDR photos but you’ll notice watermarks on the photo.  That’s because the program I used offers a free trial but it puts the watermarks on.  If you don’t want the watermarks you can purchase the program.  It’s on my wish list!

Well, there you go, an update and a short lesson on HDR.  You’re welcome!  ha ha

1 comment:

  1. The marble shots did come out really cool! I'm glad you shared them! I guess I can also claim an iphone is a much needed photo accessory?

    ReplyDelete

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