Tag: HDR

Resting Spirits

Posted on by Nick Roberts
Whisky barrel warehouse
Resting Spirits

Yesterday morning I joined 25 or 30 fellow Louisville Photographic Society members for a tour and photo walk at the oldest continuously operating distillery in the United States, Buffalo Trace Distillery, located in Frankfort, Kentucky. The tour included a great deal of the lore and history of bourbon making and it’s deep roots in the central Kentucky region. We were very fortunate to have as our guide a third generation employee of the distillery Freddie who gave us a behind the scenes look at the distillery and the history of whiskey in Kentucky. Freddie took us into the warehouses and explained the way that the whisky ages in the barrels and why they are placed where they are in the warehouse. The barrels placed at the lowest levels are there for a long slow aging process that imparts the characteristic flavors of the charred oak barrel and the tannins in the oak to the bourbon inside.

I shot this image as a bracketed set of exposures for HDR processing. I first processed it as a color HDR image in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 where I tone mapped it using the realistic preset before returning it to Aperture 3 for final adjustment of the vibrancy, clarity and sharpening. Once I had completed that I created a duplicate image and reopened the duplicate in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 where I used the Black and White preset to convert it. I then applied a yellow filter which enhanced the highlights and deepened the shadows.

The image below is the color version that I started with to create the Black and White photo. With this image I am showing you that there are sometimes several ways to create a memorable image by taking advantage of the tone mapping ability of NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 and then applying different presets to the final image.

Resting Spirits #2

I think the composition is strong in both the images due to the perspective and the leading lines taking the viewer’s eye down the corridor to the lights in the background. The HDR process allowed me to capture the detail in the structure and the barrels which would not have been possible in a single exposure.

1948 Pontiac

Posted on by Nick Roberts
1948 Pontiac

I went back into the vault for this image. I shot this several years ago but I had never done anything with the image. The original file is a little overexposed and judging by the shadows it was probably shot in the middle of the day. I liked the camera angle but the colors were very washed out. I wanted to try a psuedo HDR approach to see if I could give it some depth.

Yesterday I started by using NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 on it to see what I could create. I tried several different presets and finally settled on Deep 2 as the start point for finishing the photo. I then adjusted several sliders which really brought out the clouds as well as revealing the green reflections under the headlight. Some times when working on an image with the adjustment slider I will simply grab the slider and move it all the way to the right or left to see what happens. Most of the time it is way too much but I liken it to having an eye exam where the doctor places two sets of lenses in front of you and asks “better here or better here?” when trying to find the right combination for your vision. Once I know what the extreme effect is I can then decide whether to use that adjustment slider or not. If the effect is in keeping with my vision for the image I can then dial it down and fine tune it’s effect.

I was pleasantly surprised at the way the sky came to life after the initial adjustments in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 but there was still a problem area on the left side of the image. Just to the left of the headlight there was a red car that was drawing my eye away from the rest of the image. I returned it to Aperture 3 and then I took the image into NIK Vivesa 2 where I used a couple of control points placed on the red car to desaturate the red of the car. After that I took the image back into Aperture 3 and finished it with a little tweak to the vibrancy slider and some minor sharpening.

HDR Ohio River Panorama

Posted on by Nick Roberts

This image is along the Ohio River in Louisville, Kentucky. The building on the left is the Muhammad Ali Center which serves as a multicultural center with exhibits, classrooms, distance learning facilities, an archival library, exhibit galleries, a retail space and a café. The mural on the side of the building is made up of individual tiles that really pop when shot with the HDR technique.  Here’s a link http://alicenter.org/site/ for more information about the Ali Center and it’s mission. I shot the panorama from the Louisville Belvedere in downtown Louisville using exposure values of +2, +1, 0, -1, -2 inorder to capture the full range of tones in the scene.

I created this image from twenty exposures of the scene which I stitched together in Photoshop CS5 after first merging each section of five exposures in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2. I used five exposures for each section of the panorama which I first brought into NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 from Aperture 3. Once in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 I applied the Realistic Deep preset which I then adjusted to suit my concept for the overall image. After merging and adjusting the first set of exposures in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2  I created a custom preset that I then applied to each of the other sections of the image after merging them in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 in order to create a consistent tonal range in the final panorama.

After completing the HDR merges in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 I took the four resulting images into Photoshop CS5 where I used the Automate Photo Merge setting to create my panorama. I then cropped the Photoshop image to clean up the edges before returning it to Aperture 3 where I made some final adjustments to the vibrancy and sharpening before saving the final image.

NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 did a fantastic job of anti-ghosting in the HDR processing which kept the texture of the water and definition in the clouds. I had it set for 100% anti-ghosting which seem to work very well in these types of situations. I hope this helps you the viewer see the possibilities that using NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 along with Photoshop CS5 and Aperture 3 offer when making panoramas.

Alabama Morning

Posted on by Nick Roberts
Alabama Morning

These Fords were in a wrecking yard in Alabama a couple of years ago. The cars I find in the southern states have a much different patina of rust on them than the cars out west of the Mississippi River do. The climate in the south is much more humid and therefore the rust is more agressive. The oxidation process creates a much rougher surface which in turn traps more moisture that then eats away at the metal more aggressively.

I liked the way the early morning sun was lighting the scene and how it really emphasized the texture on the 1949 Ford in the foreground. The contrast of the smooth chrome and glass in the headlights really caught my eye. The cars are framed to in a typical rule of thirds composition and the rust on the roof in the background draws the viewer’s eye back in the scene while reinforcing the colors of the cars.

There wasn’t much I needed to do in processing to get this image finished. I used a little of the Spicify preset in Topaz Adjust to punch up the texture and saturate the colors before returning the image to Aperture 3 for final sharpening and output.

Freebird

Posted on by Nick Roberts
Chevy
Freebird

This image is another pseudo HDR I created a couple of years ago using  Topaz Adjust. The advantage of using these plug-ins is that they can often salvage an otherwise flat image and allow me to create something rich and dynamic. The ability to extract information and enhance the colors and details within the original file is the main reason I started using them. I don’t think they are an answer for every situation, if the image is poorly composed they won’t help it, but if the exposure range is too extreme they can be invaluable and allow me to rescue my original idea for the photo.

This image works because of the composition which adheres to the rule of thirds. By giving the car the bottom two thirds of the frame and placing the hood ornament at the intersection of the of the upper right third of the frame the viewer’s eye is directed there. The colors of the sky reflect in the chrome and tie the blue of the sky into the dark browns and oranges of the rust on the car. The yellowish orange of the clouds further emphasizes the complimentary color scheme of the photo too.