Tag: HDR

First Racer of the Day

Posted on by Nick Roberts

The early morning runs on the Salt Flats are something I will always remember. You can hear the engine screaming at redline long before you can see the motorcycle come into view. For me this image captures some of the majestic beauty of the Salt Flats and the daredevil who is willing to try to go faster than anyone in this class ever has.

Land Speed Racing is a solitary sport because once the flag is dropped it is rider and machine against the time clock. It takes a special man or woman to attempt it on two wheels. At Bonneville gender doesn’t matter, it’s all about skill and courage; there are many world land speed records that are held by women as well as men.  I don’t know who was riding this bike that morning but I do know that they were having the thrill of a lifetime as they rocketed by at well over 100 miles an hour.

Yum Center Louisville, KY

Posted on by Nick Roberts

This shot is a true HDR image merged from 5 separate exposures. I use the EV (exposure value) control to change my exposures. I find that these late sunset images work really well when I expose at +2, +1, 0, -1, -2 EV. Doing this gets detail into the shadow areas via the overexposed frames and prevents blowing out the highlights by underexposing the two minus (-) EV frames while the 0 exposure gives good mid-tone information. I took these images straight from Aperture 3 into NIK HDR Efex Pro to tone map the image then returned the tone mapped image to Aperture 3 where I cleaned up the sensor dust spots, boy do I hate dust spots, and gave it some sharpening to wrap it up.

I shot this from the Clark Memorial Bridge with my Nikon D90 set at 200 ISO and f11 using my Nikkor 12-24 mm wide angle lens. Another thing to keep in mind is to always use a tripod and cable release when shooting multiple images for HDR processing.

I was trying to balance the building with the sky to create a balanced image that would give a sense of depth to the scene. I also chose to include a small amount of the bridge railing in the frame to add some foreground interest and added texture to the composition.