HDR Auto Shops

HDR Auto Shops, a set on Flickr.

A guitar building class, and an Auto car class in my high school was a perfect place to try for HDR shots.

My First HDR Collection

HDR first attempt, a set on Flickr.

My First High Dynamic Range (HDR) Attempt

I started getting interested in HDR photography. It adds so much more fun for shooting in anywhere you go, and you start looking at things in a different way. Now anything I look at, I test it in my eye seeing if it work for HDR or not. I feel I can't do any more photography unless I use this technique. So yesterday I was in our carriage with the tripod, and a wide angle lens... I tried to look for a good compositions to take as many exposures I can. I catched a spot where my dad paint and draw... there was many details in that composition, canvas, painting colors..etc.

So I took 5 different images with different exposures. It was hard the first time because it is needs accuracy and good focus.

- First, I set the tripod still and I focused the lens by Auto then locked it on Manual.

- Put the F-stop on 11, it will give you the sharpest image.

-Then I looked at the Exposure Composition scale, it will look like a ruler with (-2,-1,0,+1,+2). This is where you can set each shot on different exposure. This is the general set of exposures you usually take, for my first attempt, I went with the general rule, You can take +3,-3 or whatever.

- Put it on self timer (10 secs are good ). You don't want your camera to move, it needs to be freezed in order to take the same exact shot in those 5 exposures.

As a result, this is what I got...

After that, you need a software to combine the images and add some effects. You can use Photoshop, but it is not focused on HDR. There are some Softwares like Photomatix Pro. This is what I used. You can play with the sliders after combing them, and it will look much nicer than you expected.

The result of my first attempt is this:

I took other compositions... and this was the result:

Learning and Applying

Its been forever until my last post, but I just didn't have time to give some thoughts to write. I have been busy in school and college, but I still have so many ideas to write. I am still on my promise to write the last basic post for Visual Basic and then I may dig deeper into more learning. I am trying to find a good book for people in my age and beginners about programming or software engineering in general, just for the sake of knowledge. I know there are many references in the internet, but I like to have the book with me all the time rather than going to the website and read.

This quick post is only about few pictures I enhanced few days ago in Camera Raw and Photoshop. I just felt I didn't posted my photographs since months, and I needed to do that. I have more pictures to share but I need to fix them first. Here are few images I like to share:

I love the drops on the flower. I sharpened them and used different blending modes to have this result. I used macro lens and without a tripod! I got this image by my luck laying down on the ground in a rainy day.

This is heavy processed. I took it to Camera Raw and played with the temperature, then into Photoshop with using different blending modes and blur too.

My sister look like an old lady after editing with wrinkles under eyes ( sorry sofie! )

The pupil had the most attention in this picture. I kept using different sharping to get a little bit of reflection. I am still not very satisfied with it, but I just chose to share it.

I learned this trick of Black and White from The Mac Lab Video Tip of the Day from my Digital Arts class. I liked it and it is so easy... it gave a whole lot meaning to the picture.

Thats all I wanted to say for now. Hopefully this weekend I have another update for programming or photography.

The Moon

Suddenly I was interested in taking pictures for the Moon. It was pretty fun; running from room to room to see which spot is the best to capture a clear picture for it. In the beginning; it wasn't easy for me to figure out the setting and where to stand to capture the entire circular moon. My friend had experiment it before and told me which is the exact setting for such images. I wasn't sure which one of those below pictures are the best, so I decided to post the best three.

The setting are:

Lens- Canon 70-300 IS

F-stop- f/22

Exposure time- 1/100 sec

ISO speed- 100

Focal length- 263 mm

White Balance- auto

Exposure program- manual

Photography Update

Here's another photography update. Today I was trying to take pictures for the Float Project for my Digital Art class... I don't think I got good ones but this is the first day I started and I like to share them. Here are two pictures I took for my sister.

By using Fish Eye Lens, I lay down on the ground under the heated sun. I tried to get the sun beams clear but I couldn't do it in this picture.

I wanted to make them look like cartoons, so I just played with the sliders of contrast, brightness, shadow , saturation and the highlights. I did the same things for the first two pictures. Those are the camera information.

F-stop: f/7.1 , Exposure Time: 1/400 sec , ISO speed: ISO 100 , Flash Mode: No Flash, compulsory , Focal Length: 15mm , Mattering Mode: Partial , Attributes: A , Exposure Program: Manual

F-stop: f/22 , Exposure Time: 1/60 sec , ISO speed: ISO 100 , Flash Mode: No Flash, compulsory , Focal Length: 15mm , Mattering Mode: Partial , Attributes: A , Exposure Program: Shutter Priority

If you noticed; the sun beams are clear here and thats because the Exposure time and the F-stop are different in this picture. I liked how the body is curved with the jump.

This is not for my Float Project, it is just a picture I took in my father's birthday, but I guess it is good enough to include it in this post. I edited it of course by giving it black and white effect then kept the colors on the top fire of the candle.

F-stop: f/9, Exposure Time: 1/200 sec , ISO speed: ISO 400 , Flash Mode: Flash, Auto , red-eye , Focal Length: 40mm , Mattering Mode: Pattern , Attributes: A , Exposure Program: Normal

You can see those new pictures and the recent ones on my photoshop site

Comment and tell me what you think! :)

Zoo

"I went to the zoo yesterday and took some pictures. Of course, I barley got 3 or 4 good pictures from all the 400 pictures I took. I took pictures for objects more than the animal." - Mr.Skocko - my Digital Art teacher

Here are the best 3 pictures I could share with you.

Randomly walking and captured this image from the left ( I was standing on the left side ) to make a good competition and show the rest of the way ( also the stairs ).Then I edited it and gave it black and white effect.

Does it looks like a real elephant?

That's my favorite picture. I tried like 30 times till I got the sun beams perfect like this. Especially this object was moving so it is hard to get the sun just in place. Did you notice the clouds and sky? they are kind of circular and that's because I used Fish Eyes lens. Then the rest, I just adjusted it's contrast.