Work the area

I visited one particular spot on a small river in the smokey mountains, It was extremely scenic and the trees were nice shades of yellow, The first time i arrived there was already a photographer there, I let her shoot whilst i had a quick look around at various angles imagining the images in my mind, She took some shots at track level and went, I say track level as we were above the river-see the image above, I shot a few images and some more photographers arrived and took the same image, I worked that part of the river and then decided i would return and try again in different conditions and when the area was quieter, This one particular stretch of river seemed to have unlimited possibilities but all the photographers that i watched shooting there all took the same images, I returned and when the area was free i clambered down the bank and set up at water level and spent a pleasurable hour shooting all kinds of angles of the same scene and still felt that i hadn't covered half of what a good landscaper could walk away with, Here are a few of the images taken-all HDR of the same scene, I shot the whole time with my D3 and 24-70, I used a Lee filters Circular poloriser to reduce the reflections and enhance the colours, My camera was set to manual mode and daylight white balance, I took test shots to get a perfectly exposed image and then bracketed both side +/- 1 and 2 stops giving 5 images in HDR to create one, In the portrait mode image i also used a 2 stop Lee grad filter at an angle to tone the bright trees on the right of the image, Landscapes don't move so you can take your time and explore the scene,If the area is a good one make sure you return at different times of the day/year and in different conditions



Dave

Smokey Mountains-wet wet wet 2

Today was an improvement over yesterday, The rain stayed most of the day but I had changed my plans to match, Instead of joining the masses at Cades Cove I had a lie in and after breakfast went to a small lane that runs at the side of the river, here were many rapids and small waterfalls and at the end after a 15 min hike a larger fall, the tree colours here were great, not the deep reds but various shades of yellow/gold, The inclement weather was good for this type of work where low shutter speeds are the name of the game, I would normally fit a polariser filter to saturate the colours and slow the shutter speed down but due to the rain and low light I decided against it, The only reason I would have liked it would be to take the shine off of the rocks, So all was well with the world-not quite, After taking a couple of hundred images in sequences of 5 for HDR the D3 packed up giving me the cd Error again, I had this problem in Colorado in June and the body had been sent back to Nikon for repair, It seems to me that the problem lies with the 2nd card slot and it was the same then, I havent had a chance since to shoot enough to fill the 1st card and spill over to the 2nd until today, Unfortunatly for me I didn’t have any other cards on me and it only happened after I had climbed down to the base of a waterfall and I only managed 3 images which luckily were enough for an HDR image-see below, Tomorrow will see the last of the bad weather with a chance of frost and snow on the higher ground and after that clear skies and sunshine for the rest of the week, Monday will see me back in Cades Cove for the white tails, Once again these images were processed on my uncelebrated laptop

Dave

Photomatix HDR software

HDR or high dynamic range has been popular for sometime, Its where you take an image at a variety of different shutter speeds and blend them together to make an image that would be impossible in camera due to the huge difference in the tonal range, A scene where the sky is bright but the foreground is dark for instance, When i was in Colorado in June i took some scenic shots with HDR in mind but have only recently purchased the software to do it, I have tried HDR in Photoshop but the images never really came out the way i had hoped, Photomatix name comes up time and time again and seems to be 'the' HDR software so that's what i purchased, The software is very easy to use
1.Take the images that you want to process under generate HDR, In the image below i shot 5 images with the camera bracketing shots at -2,-1,0,+1 and +2 so i had a well exposed image and then under and over exposed images giving me a good range of tones
2.Once you have clicked ok you get a menu where you can tick boxes for aligning image,reduce CA,reduce noise and ghosting and change white balance etc if needed
3,Once you click OK it will blend all the images together and come up with an image which looks truly awful-full of blocked shadows and blown highlights, but if you place the cursor over the image it will show you what the image will look like in the small window
4,Click on the Tone Mapping button
5, Now the image has been transformed,There are 2 tabs at the top 1 says Details Enhancer and the other Tone compressor, The detail enhancer gives a Paintery effect and the Tone compressor is more like a photograph, For the landscapes i took i quite liked the paintery effect as long as you don't over do it
6,The screen on the left gives a list of things to play around with so you can customise the image as you like, Once you have moved a slider you can either click on the 'show original' tab above the image to see what the image was like or just click on the go back button at the bottom to go to the previous setting,
7, Keep an eye on the histogram top left when making adjustments
8,You can click on the image and a loup screen comes up so you can take a closer look
9, Once you are happy press the Process button the image is ready to be saved
10, Open up in photoshop and finish levels,sat etc
The software is very intuitive and not expensive at $99
Its still early days for me using this but the results so far are OK

Here are 3 images
The first is normal processing in PS-No HRD
The second is HDR using Detail Enhancer (paintery effect)
The third is HDR using Tone Compressor





3 very different looking images from the same RAW files,HDR images can look very over done if you are not careful but like all processing if you are subtle with the changes it can really enhance your images

And here is an example of where HDR software comes into its own, Again in Colorado, I shot this scene but to stop the snowy mountain tops blowing out i had to under expose the foreground and the tree area was dark, If i had used the traditional ND Grad filter to even the sky and foreground out i would have ended up with the tops of the near mountains and the top of the trees darker than the rest which would have looked unnatural, By blending the images in Photomatix HDR software i now have detail in the sky/mountains and the tree/foreground area


Dave