Of course HDR still happens here. I’ve just been experimenting with several dozen other items beyond HDR. 🙂
Now and again I come across an image that I forgot I shot, and then I toy with it a little. In between running prints, color matching paintings, scanning 4×5’s and all the rest. Oh, things have picked up on the print business side, so that’s a nice plus.
Recently while waiting on a few prints to finish I took a look back through the images from the latest White Pocket trip and I found one that I’d forgotten about. Best part, I bracketed the shot with the intention of making an HDR out of it. Glad I did that too!
On last week’s White Pocket Photo Workshop I personally didn’t spend much time shooting stills. Instead I was roving around shooting video for a project I’m still working on. You’ll learn more about that soon enough. I used both the 5D Mark II and a Sony High Def Hard Drive camcorder to do the work. But we’re going off on a tangent here.
Sunday late afternoon I came across this scene. We were walking in one area of White Pocket that I had not explored enough yet. The rock formations coupled with the barb wire fencing and the tree pieces got my attention. Since it was extremely windy I decided not to take out the 17-40mm lens, and I stuck with my 24-70. Changing lenses in blasting sand just isn’t smart, and it’s not good for your camera! Because of the lens I was using I didn’t get the full scene I wanted. Stepping further back would have made an odd shadow in the foreground that I didn’t want. So, I went with this composition.
For HDR’ing I used my standard workflow. Lightroom 2 to Photomatix, and then saved and stacked back into Lightroom. As you can see, the right hand side of the image has some light haloing going on. I didn’t pay close enough attention when I processed this one, and I’ve got to go back to deal with it. I’m really trying to get away from the haloed look. And with Photomatix you can easily manage halos.
I should note that while I was experimenting with CS5 and the new HDR process in there, I wasn’t fond of it. Maybe with time I can adjust. But honestly, Photomatix is an integral part of my digital workflow for HDRs now. I don’t see that changing any time soon.
So, there you have it. HDR still happens here. Along with a lot of other photographic techniques that I’m working on! 😉