I’ve decided it is time that I combine all my various forms of blogs into one to talk about my true passion – that being photography.  I figured I could go into further detail about my photos, how I created them, and share the details and tips for those starting out like me.  I’ll begin with this shot taken at Massabesic Lake in Auburn, NH a couple days ago, and the tools that were used to put this all together.

The Equipment

• Nikon D80
• Sigma 10-20mm EX
• Tripod

The Location

Massabesic Lake is one of my favorite locations to shoot.  No matter how many times I go to this location, the scenery always seems to change.  Be it a sunset with clouds licking the horizon, or a misty dawn, the lake always holds a magickal life.  For this shoot, I went down to Claire’s Landing on a bitter cold afternoon.  It had been sub-zero temperatures all week and I knew the ice would be forming around the edges.  At this point, about 20% of the lake was frozen.  The edge is thick enough to support my weight, but it drops off quick.  About 5 feet in, the ice crumbled beneath my weight.  Another 5 feet out and you were coming up to open water.  So, I chose a spot along the shore where you could really see the ice forming, yet have a good hint of the open water out in the middle.

The Shot

For this shot, I had my D80 mounted on my Bogen-Manfrotto 725B Digi Tripod in portrait format.  I set the bracketing to 3 exposures at -2, 0 and +2.  These were shot in RAW as follow:

The Magic

The magic happens when the three photos are imported into Photomatix Pro.  This tool really does all the work for you.  I had it align all the images during the import to HDR process, then I adjusted the lighting to keep it as natural as possible.  I can’t really detail this process, as it is different for every shot.  My goal with Photomatix is to make the photo as real as possible, capturing it as close to my eye as possible.

Once I was happy with the look, I saved the file and imported it into Photoshop CS4 for some curves and color balancing, and a slight sharpening.  The colors and saturation are pretty close to what Photomatix spit out.  It truly is a wizard with HDR and DRI photography.

End Result

It does sound like quite a bit of work, but from export of my camera to export of the final product was about 5 minutes.  There are many opponents to HDR photography, but I think with the right subtle touch, you can make some stunning shots that look like they were painted by nature.

Let me know what you think!

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 20th, 2009 at 6:03 pm and is filed under Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.