Vast and Beautiful HDR Landscape

I recently spent the night at the Club at Hammock beach in Palm Coast, Florida. I spent the night with my sister and we were trying in a fifth floor condominium. There was a nice covered balcony and the views in the morning were just beautiful. So I decided to in the scenery with my camera. I took several using HDR technology where you combine photos with multiple exposures to gain a more evenly exposed shot. I did these shots handheld but using Photomatx 3 and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to process these images I thought they came out looking beautiful and surreal. Enjoy the results shot below. I have also added the multiple exposure shots so you can see where I started.

Beautiful Gardens in North Carolina

I recently returned from a trip to the Asheville North Carolina area. One of our afternoon trips was over to the North Carolina Arboretum. . We were there in early June and many flowers were in bloom and the gardens were just absolutely beautiful. The nice thing is they also allow us to bring our dogs, on a leash, picking up poop the usual rules..But it was a great place for them to walk around they are both getting older and there were not many steep hills. I was able to get a shot of the water feature inside one of the garden areas. I color corrected the original image some but overall was happy with the composition. I decided to add a slight lucis art effect and crop and print at an 8x10 size for framing. I printed it our on exhibition fiber paper using my Epson R2400. Its now hanging on the wall in my family room and looks great.

Original Image Below:



Color Corrected, Cropped, and Lucis Art Filter Added Below:

HDR Sunrise Shot from the Blue Ridge Parkway

I just attended a photo workshop in Pisgah Forest, North Carolina. This is just outside of Brevard, North Carolina an area in the mountains known for its many waterfalls. The workshop was for taking photos of waterfalls, but the first morning we arose very early , left the hotel at 5:30 am and drove a half an hour to the Blue Ridge Parkway where we setup our tripods and cameras to get a shot of the sunrise over the mountains.

I decided to do a 3 bracketed exposure shot with my Nikon D80 and later put the photos together using Photomatix with some color and sharpening adjustments in Photoshop CS4. I thought the image came out great, see the results below. Enjoy.

HDR with my Nikon D80

I decided to get out this morning and setup up a shot that I could edit in photoshop cs4 using HDR(high dynamic range). The theory behind this is take photos with multiple exposures and combine them into one shot resulting in more detail in the image. You have to use the bracketing option on your camera, the D80 is limited to three exposures. I have read that you really need to have at least 5 different exposures for this to work properly.

So I turned on my pool waterfall and setup my orange and blue Adirondack chairs on the deck. I took the 3 different expose shots. I loaded them into bridge and them use the merge to HDR option to take them into photoshop. I have uploaded one of the badly exposed shots and the combined shot of the 3 exposures. The results are below. I think it creates a very interesting effect with an artistic flair. I only used photoshop cs4 for this but am planning to download the trial version of photomatix and see what results I get.

Woody Woobecker on my Lot

I managed to finally get a decent shot of this huge woodpecker that likes to fly around our lot..I have tried to get him on many occasions..Most of the shots were out of focus because of the fact that the woodpecker is always moving his head..I had to crop it to get more of a close up..

I was walking around my lot on a different day and got a another shot of the big woodpecker after he landed on the ground. Again I cropped the shot to make it look like more of a close up shot.

My Mother's Professional Childhood Photo Restored

This is a portrait photo that was taken of my mother when she was 7 1/2 years old, so somewhere around 1938 when this photo was taken. It had faded badly and its a bit difficult to tell what some of the original colors were in the photograph. It appears that this photo was taken professionally.

One thing that I have found about all older photographs is just how out of focus most of these are. None are ever sharp around the face areas especially.

I decided to crop this photo and eliminated some of the distracting background elements..and I added a soft vignette to the edges..I did the restoration work exclusively in Photoshop CS3.

I see myself and both of my sisters as well in this photograph of our mother..

Sports Shot Artistic Effect with Lucis Art

I went to the Florida Gator-Kentucky Wildcat game in Gainesville, Florida On Saturday..I am never sure if they are going to let me through the gate with my Nikon D80, so I take my kodak point and shoot camera which has an attachable wide angle and telephone lens with it. I sit very high up in the south end zone, row 87. I took this shot when the band was on the field at pre-game and they were forming the state of Florida. It was a high sun time of day and the shots came out over exposed, along with the fact that my point and shoot camera does not take the sharpest image at a distance.

I did do some work on this photo in Camera Raw and photoshop...I then used this software program that I have called Lucis Art which creates some really interesting artistic effects on many types of different photos. But I have found that sports shots like these really pop after adding the whyeth effect and then trying out some of the different settings.

Enjoy..