Category: Photography

August 7, 2011

Blue Angels HDR

After shooting the Blue Angels inÂ a mid-afternoon light for so many years, I thought I would try something a little different: I camped in front of Boeing FieldÂ to view ofÂ take-off and landing, and processed my favorite pix with Photomatix in single shot mode.

Blue Angels in formation

Blue Angels with HDR processing

For comparison, below is the same shot as above converted to JPEG from Lightroom using LR’s built-in editing. (Adjustments made: slight boosts in exposure, blacks, sat, sharpening, and noise reduction.)

Blue Angels with standard processing

Of course, this could also be a testament to my post-processing LR skills, which I’m always looking to build up.

More Blue Angel shots, including some favorites over the past few years, are up in this gallery.

June 6, 2011

My first HDR

I just became a HDR convert. Holy cow. Let’s see what you think…

BEFORE

Mountain range east of Mt St Helens - single RAW capture. Colors are flat, and there is little depth to the picture.

AFTER

Mountain range east of Mt St Helens - after HDR post processing with Photomatix and Photoshop. Notice the colors and overall vibrancy.

What a difference using a single RAW capture. Higher fidelity and more even exposure is typically achieved with 3-5 RAW shots spanning across exposure settings like (+2, +1, 0, -1, -2) or (+2, 0 , -2). Multiple exposure execution would have taken care of the blown highlights in the clouds, which were too far gone to compensate in Photomatix or Photoshop. Very impressive processing.

Photomatix is now on my recommend list.