HDR Workshop

I went to an HDR workshop last week that was taught by Richard Hockett, http://www.sunridgephoto.com/, a great photographer and very smart man. He has a great sense of business and knows how to shoot as well. A decided advantage in this economy. Anyway back to the HDR workshop. It was great to go out and shoot with other photographers and to get an idea of what other people see when they are out and about. I had a great time and it was a long day but I got a chance to learn a few more things and really hone my shooting skills when looking at making an HDR image with them. This first image is just above a church in Ventura. I thought that the whole facade was a little boring at first, but then I got a little lower, tilted one leg of the tripod way out and tilted the camera the other way. Then I tilted myself into a funky shape so I could see through the lens. I pretty much sat on the ground leaning backwards to get this shot. The sky in the original shot was pretty flat as we were shooting late in the morning with no real dramatic lighting. With some boosting in HDR and little more contrast added in Photoshop I was able to get the nice vibrant blue into the image that I remember from that day. Just with the HDR software Photomatix Pro, http://www.hdrsoft.com/, I was able to get the details in the shadows of the building to come through without losing any of the highlight detail. I know that it is very difficult to do this just shooting straight up because you have to decide what you are going to leave out such as some cool detail in the shadow of your image or even in the bright part of the image. Well now you can have it all.



So the church image is fairly straight forward with just a little bit of a grunge look to the building, but the bikes I love. The colors are so cool and to have the old green bike looking like an old timer in between the two purple cool bikes looking like a couple of punk kids sitting next to an old man on a bench was a happy find. I love the vibrancy of the colors and the contrast of the bikes with each other. I added a lot more of a grunge look to the color and over saturated a bit to really make the colors pop. If I were to print this image I would have to probably tone it down a little so that the colors would not block up but otherwise this would make a great funky poster. Maybe even on velvet with black lights? Or maybe not, but it would still be cool. Tell me what you like and thanks for watching.

Thanks to Laura for letting us use her studio to hang out in and drink coffee. Check Laura out at http://www.lauradphotography.com/. Thanks to Randy for shooting with us, I would love to go shooting with you sometime especially those cool cars of yours (Laura's to). Thanks to Richard for putting together a great workshop, can't wait for HDR 2.0.