Author Archive
Building Your Photog “Tweet” Cred
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So you’ve gone ahead and created your very own Twitter account. You’re hoping to spread the word of your work and boost traffic to your website, blog, and maybe even cash flow. A few days, some weeks, a couple of months… they all go by but nothing is really happening. What should you do? Write Twitter off as a failure? Chalk it up to a misfired experiment? Nah. I think there is an interesting dynamic when you first create your Twitter account and the time shortly thereafter. That is to say, there are some noticeable phases or progressions that one goes through as they try to establish themselves as a resource for other photographers. I’ve gone through these phases in my attempt to be viewed as a credible HDR photography resource and I’m sure that everyone else has gone through similar paths to get to where they are.
Along the way of wading through your own Twitterverse field, you pick up slivers of ideas that either jive well or don’t. The key to navigating through this field is two-fold: the first revolves around how well you can actually pick up on these slivers and the second revolves around how effectively you deal with and manage them.
So, this is my attempt to share some of the practices that I religiously follow and wholly attribute to getting to where I am now and to how I have been able to meet, and shoot with, some of the most talented, fantastic, and generally great people in the industry. Read More→
HDR Best Practices Guide – Part II: Image Management
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So, you finished reading ‘HDR Best Practices Guide – Part I: In The Field’, and went out for a shoot. You had all of your wits and your gear about you when you set up your tripod and fired off those lovely brackets. You’ve got the raw materials (fine, pun partially intended) and now it’s time to refine them into something truly beautiful.
My original intent for Part II of this HDR Best Practices Guide was to delve into the actual tone-mapping and post processing steps around HDR. But, I felt that I would totally be glossing over an extremely important part of the whole HDR photography lifecycle by ignoring Image Management. So, I decided to devote Part II of this Guide to this topic because a clean home is a happy home. Part III will nose dive into the goodness of Photomatix, Photoshop, and everything in between.
I could write a whole book on the importance of image management. Many people already have. Your images are your primary, precious resources. As such, they have to be properly cataloged and inventoried so that you know exactly what you are looking for, how to find it, and how to deal with it. Image Management is critical when you’re simply dealing with single images. Imagine what happens when you’re dealing with several brackets per HDR image. Here are some ‘Best Practices’ that I religiously follow to help prevent myself from losing sanity over my abyss of brackets.
Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye, 15mm, F 5.6, ISO 100, HDR, 9 Exposures - Click on image to enlarge
The Importance of Correct White Balance & DNG Color Profiles for HDR Images
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One of the most common questions that I get asked by readers is how does While Balance and Color Profiling play into my HDR work flow. I think it is an extremely valid question to ask and it is critical that you address in your own work flows. Unfortunately, I don’t think that many people consider this when shooting brackets. So, I wanted to add this blog post that I wrote for X-Rite some time ago and breathe new life into it. I hope it helps give you a better idea of how integral it is to achieve correct white balance and color profiles.
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As photographers, we all have stories about how we have grown, refined, and crafted our individualized techniques, all with the goal of capturing the best picture that is within our means. For me, it has been more of an evolution than actual growth. It wasn’t so much building on top of what I knew as it was morphing it into something different. It was about addressing a mental itch and experimenting with all sorts of deviations until I took my next evolutionary step in digital photography. And that is how I found myself truly immersed in High Dynamic Range (HDR) Imaging. Read More→
HDR Best Practices Guide – Part I, In The Field
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Hello. My name is Brian and I love HDR.
Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Canon TS-E 17mm f/4L, 17mm, F 4, ISO 100, HDR, 9 Exposures
Ok. It has been said. So, what do we do now? Well, I figure that if you’re going to obsess about doing something, at least obsess about doing it the best that you can. And that is what my hope is with this post – to share the knowledge that I’ve picked up after over the years shooting brackets for HDR imaging.
I have been inspired by the selfless sharing of knowledge from some of my favorites in the HDR world, notably Trey Ratcliff and the wonderful folks at The Windy Pixel. And so, I began putting together notes that I have kept in my head or in my Evernote book and compiled what you are about to read.
I recently had the opportunity to present on HDR Photography to a group of photographers and one part of my presentation dealt with the best practices that I follow every time I go out to shoot for HDR, as well as when I’m at home processing the shots. It turned out that this part of the presentation was very well-received and so I figured that it may help to share these tips here. Read More→
