kcowan
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
I don't know if anyone has mentioned the HDR applications for smartphones. Takes 3 pictures and blends them into one final. Great for dawn and dusk shots. Many are free.
You guys are inspiring me to stop stop taking snapshots and get serious again. Downloaded a free HDR program last night, just to look over the basic controls, and did a little studying. I can see the advantages to having HDR available for tough shots or a bit of surrealism. I like mathjak's barn photo, but something didn't feel right looking at it, and I think I figured out that feeling. Though the eye can discriminate a large tonal range, like the camera it can not do so all at once. So being able to see detail of the snow AND detail inside simultaneously didn't feel quite natural. This isn't a negative critique of the image, just an observation. Art doesn't have to be realistic, although realistic art is my personal preference. Yet, in ItDontMeanAThing's recent examples, the HDR did add depth and detail to the images, without making the shadows look unrealistic.
I'm also a big fan of chiaroscuro, and black shadows play an important role in a composition, to me.
Just talking out of my posterior, here...
RonStar
You guts are making me feel lazy... Nice composition and lighting. Amazing how nice subjects are often just laying around the house.
Kcowan
Got a favorite you like?
Just for information - was having a discussion elsewhere and mentioned a focussing technique some hadn't heard of: it's called back button focussing.
Fooling around in my home office. Natural light coming through the window seemed about right
Nice, Ronstar. I like using available light. It sure is a lot easier than hauling heavy lighting gear around!
...RonStar
You guts are making me feel lazy... Nice composition and lighting. Amazing how nice subjects are often just laying around the house.
... I like mathjak's barn photo, but something didn't feel right looking at it, and I think I figured out that feeling. Though the eye can discriminate a large tonal range, like the camera it can not do so all at once. So being able to see detail of the snow AND detail inside simultaneously didn't feel quite natural. This isn't a negative critique of the image, just an observation. ...
This is a place that I hope to go in a few years. Nice shot.A photo from my iPhone when walking The Great Wall on vacation in China.View attachment 18608
slash , brighten the dark object a bit.
+1 Walt. I keep warning DW that I'm going to get an 800. And yesterday i found that I owe only a few 100 in taxes, not a few 1000. So if I get one and a lens, it's almost as if it's half paid for.
Although this is not really practical with a landscape type scene, if you're shooting smaller scenes or portraits outside, you can often reduce the dynamic range by using flash or strobes to fill in the shadows a bit.So I have a situation where, in the same frame, I have very bright light and very dark objects (say I am in the woods. It's very dark under the tree canopy, but bright sun light punches through here and there) . What can I do to make the shot more evenly lit? I tried HDR but I am not happy with the results. It looks too surreal but maybe I did it wrong. I took seven shots at one stop intervals from -3 to +3 and combined them with Photomatix. I also played with highlights and shadow brushes in Aperture, the result is more realistic but it is very time consuming. Anything else I can try?
Although this is not really practical with a landscape type scene, if you're shooting smaller scenes or portraits outside, you can often reduce the dynamic range by using flash or strobes to fill in the shadows a bit.
Another approach is to ask yourself whether it is really important to the particular image you are shooting to keep details in both highlights and shadows? A lot of wonderful images have very deep shadows and/or blown-out highlights.
+1 for back button focussing.
Only drawback is when you give your camera to someone else to take a quick snap, they get confused by the removal of focus from the shutter.
Downtown Los Angeles. Jan 2006
Not sure if I even like these images, but I enjoyed the time spent to see these scenes and frame them.