As I sit here, trying to heal from another cold, I have been Flickr-ing about, and in doing so, I have noticed that my simple little picture of the small little creek near my house, has reached 1,100 views!
I think back to that day, it was the day after the first snow of the new year, and at the time, I had know idea how this capture would be received.
It just seemed such a simple capture, and simple HDR processing.
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Since I posted this pictures, it has received several Flickr group awards that I am very proud to have gotten, including the following:
Andromeda "50"Elite Club of Photography for RecreationAbove and Beyond - 500+ Comments
It was Friday night, and after everyone was off to bed, I finally got my chance to transfer my “110204 Chester Springs (Rt. 401) Field” images from my camera, converted from cr2 RAW to DNG and into Lightroom for evaluation.
On another computer, I fired up my test virtual machine (VM) and installed HDRSoft.com’s Photomatix.
I have seen many images done with Photomatix, and what normally comes to my mind, is the surrealistic side of HDR images, which seems to be the “in thing” to do these days.
Most of the time, I think, the surrealistic effects are over done, and have been a main reason I have not tried Photomatix before.
When I loaded my first single exposure, and started to play with the first few pre-sets, I realized that I had been sadly mistaken by my preconceptions.
Having worked with several HDR packages before, including Adobe Photoshop CS3/CS5 and HDRLabs.com’s Picturenaut, I found the Photomatix application to be very fast, even in a Virtual Machine.
I was very happy that I could open/import a DNG file, instead of converting it to TIFF like one has to do for Picturenaut 3.0.
The GUI interface was easy to work with and allowed for very easy adjustments. I do wish, that the sliders had a little more control, in that one could enter a number or use the arrow keys to make finer adjustments.
When playing with the various pre-sets, I could easily understand why people would succumb to the surreal side. It is quick and easy, and makes for a dynamic looking image.
In my initial steps, I selected a preset that was close to what I wanted, and then used the various sliders to tweak my image from there. Photomatix also allows you to easily save your custom pre-set for later use.
I also imported a multi-exposure HDR image from (5) DNG files, and again found the application to be quicker than Adobe Photoshop CS5.
When finished with Tone Mapping, I was able to save the image out as 16-bit TIFF file (there are 8-bit and jpeg options). A nice additional option, is that after processing your image, Photomatix will open the image in an external editor, such as Photoshop!
I have only worked on four image so far, but I plan to add Photomatix to my regular HDR/RAW work-flow.
Tuesday night (2/1), we got struck with an ice storm that came in from the mid-west and headed up to New England, and in the morning, many people and business were delayed, if not closed.
Both my kids were home from school, and we watched as the thick ice that had accumulated over night on the branches, slowly melt during the day.
By Thursday morning, the sun was out, and life was getting back to normal.
While driving to my client along Conestoga Road (Rt. 401) in Chester Springs, I noticed the bright sun was creating many interesting patterns and shadows in the ice glazed fields, and I was kicking myself for not having brought my camera.
This morning, my camera bag was packed and walked out the door with me, but the conditions were much different.
It was now an over cast day, with the anticipation of some more snow, changing into rain for the rest of the weekend.
After getting my kids off to school, I started off to the clients, hoping to salvage something from what I saw on Thursday’s commute.
As I traveled by the first field, some of my hopes had be dashed. The flat light from being overcast gave no texture to the scene, so I continued.
Cross County ski tracks (013)
When I got closer to the second shoot area, I noticed that some of the incoming storm clouds where lining up with the sun rise in a very interesting fashion, so I pulled up ???? Road, and quickly parked with my flashers going.
Getting onto the field was very interesting, especially in Business Casual Work clothes! – It was Friday… Dress Down Friday (DDF)
Anyhow, I was barely able to get in far enough to get into clean snow, because of what had been plowed into banks…
Also hoping that I was not going to lose a good shoe, made the whole experience, it all the more interesting….
Note to self – Next time, wear different shoes in deep snow!
In under 10 minutes, I was done, and heading off to my clients with very wet cuffs on my pants…
I did take a passing look at Shoot #3, but had to continue…
For the rest of the day, I was trying to figure out when I was going to be able to return for Shoot #3.
It HAD to be today!
Between the forecasted weather, and family life at home… When was I going to do this…
Then around 3pm, I was driving back home to meet my daughter, as she got of the bus.
As I got closer to the Shoot #3 location and was looking for a parking spot.
Guess who was sitting there…
The Townships finest.
How dare they take my Parking Spot!
I needed to get this shot!
Finally, I got home, greeted my daughter, and got her afternoon snack.
After about a half hour or so of unwinding, I mentioned that we needed to go out for our Friday afternoon errands, and that I needed to do something special.
Cross County ski tracks (hdr 01)
Blah, blah, blah… Some time passes…
I’m walking down Conestoga Road, camera attached to tripod, trying to plug in the remote trigger, waiting for traffic to clear…
The traffic clears, and I am able to cross the street.
From there, I scaled some minor snow plow hills, and into some fresh snow, where I place my tripod down, and at first, it was stable, but as I aligned the head some more, the whole tripod settled…
I made corrections by means of pushing deeper into the snow, and was finally ready to “expose film”…
Where was my remote my remote shutter release!
Reaching into my pockets… Nothing…
With camera/tripod in place, I back tracked my steps, and it was not until I got to the plow drifts, that I noticed my remote trigger in the middle of the road!
Checking traffic, I was able to retrieve the unit and see it had not be run over.
Yeah!
I got back to camera/tripod location, plugged in my remote, and did a series of exposures with both Single HDR (HDRs) and Multi-Exposure HDR (HDRm) in mind, which were all captured in Canon RAW (cr2) format.
I was done within 5 minutes and we were off on the rest of our errands…
Publicly, again, I want to thank Madison for putting up with her father’s insanity.
Tech Talk
The following paragraphs are more informational in manner.
Last night, we were suppose to only get 6″-8″ over night… at mid-night, when we looked on to the deck, there was easily another 12″ inches…
This morning, there was over 19″ total inches on our porch, 4″-5″ of which was from the storm late last in the week…
I know many people saying that they are ready for Spring already, this has been one of the snowiest December to January’s on record, and we have not even gotten to mid-season yet!
The schools were closed for a second day, and it easily took me an hour and a half to get all the snow off our driveway, and then finally, I was able to spend a few minutes with my camera out in the snow.
In checking my Flickr email this morning, I was surprised to see the following:
Photo and Photostream for the month of November.
Andrew, I am happy to inform you that your Photostream and photo of Glen Hope Covered Bridge will be featured in our Group for the month of November. The photo is really beautiful and we do appreciate you posting it with us.
