An old shot that I’ve reprocessed in Photomatix Pro 4.2 (great little upgrade there, many nice enhancements) and Lightroom 4. I was never happy with the original processing but this is much closer to what I had in mind when I sat on the rainy corner early on Thanksgiving a few years ago.

Quick sidebar tip – if you were a Lightroom 2 or 3 user and you shied away from using the contrast slider because it was about as subtle as a sledghammer, try it in Lightroom 4. Much, much better. It’s not just useful, it’s good.

A quick handheld sunrise shot taken from Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood. I was actually standing on a pretty sheer drop on some broken concrete chunks that were slightly less than stable. A tripod would have helped tremendously but not bad for only 3 brackets handheld.

Happy Monday everyone.

This would have been a better shot if not for two huge limitations. The first was shooting handheld. Never a great plan on a good day, but on an overcast evening when the sun is fading, my only hope was to open up the aperture and cranky up the ISO (though this was only ISO 400). The second, and related issue is that on the D7000 I can only shoot 3 bracketed frames. Even at -\+ 2 that just isn’t enough range to get a nice smooth picture in my mind. Thats why things are just a bit…soft and muddy. Oh well still a better picture than any of the individual brackets and hell, I was still shooting at a BASEBALL game. How bad can life be?

Enjoy your Wednesday everyone.

Back from a great weekend in Cleveland. Great classes, great food, great photo opportunities. Hard to believe how much got crammed into one long weekend. In the span of a few days I:

• Had the best Mexican food I’ve ever eaten at Luchitas Mexican Restaurant (and I’ve eaten Mexican food from LA to New York)
• Saw a winning baseball game 5 rows from the field
• Watched an excellent fireworks display over the city
• Discovered one of the greatest cups of coffee to ever touch my lips at Civilization.
• Dined on upscale Vietnamese food at Saigon Restaurant & Bar.
• Saw the city from 42 floors in the air
• Shot the North Coast Harbor.
• Hiked in a National Park (Virginia Kendall Park)
• Devoured ice cream that should be against the law it was that good (Sweet Moses Soda Shop)
• Saw sunrise over a Great Lake
• Ate a very Grumpy breakfast. They made the corned beef hash with actual HUNKS of corned beef.  Not that Hormel garbage.
• and still crammed in the Avengers movie to take a break.

That doesn’t even touch on all the cool new neighborhoods I shot this weekend. Anyone who is still making Burning River jokes about Cleveland is living in the past. Just like Times Square isnt the seedy cesspool it once was, Cleveland is no longer that town. There is a real rebirth happening. Billions of dollars in new development, world class food, entertainment and sports (ok 1/2 credit on the sports), interesting architecture, a world famous zoo and park system are just a few of the things the city has to offer.

In my mind Cleveland is one of the most under-rated and overlooked tourist spots in the country.

However, HDR isn’t always great. For every problem it solves – it can create other. Ghosting, halos, overly dark clouds, “smudgy” skies etc are all problems that every good HDR artists struggles to eliminate. Sometimes this can take me hours, and even then I’m not always thrilled with the end result because the problems just can’t be corrected.

Still HDR was the best option for getting a decent exposure when you had extremes in range. HDR meant never having to choose between blowing out the highlights or losing all the shadow detail, unless I wanted to of course.

Enter Lightroom 4. I’ve shown on the blog how impressive Lightroom 4 is at recovering detail from shadowy areas and saving a poorly exposed shot. Today Iwant to show you why it might just be Better at creating an HDResque photo than HDR is.

Lets start with the base image. I think we would all agree this is a poorly exposed image. The highlights are too bright, hte shadows too dark. The colors are washed out. That’s what happens when you are shooting into the sun. That’s why I shot the shot as part of an HDR bracket set.

Base Image

Now lets look at this same image when processed as part of an HDR bracket set. Originally I ran the photo through Photomatix but didn’t like the result. Then I re-ran the brackets through Unified Colors Float 32 and ended up with a similar set of issues. The picture below is the one from Float 32.

HDR Image

At first blush the photo looks better. You can see into the shadows, you aren’t blinded by the blown out highlights. A definite improvement. Now look closer and you can start to see the problems creep to the surface. Look at the sky. Notice the dark haloing around each of the bridge cables. Both programs struggles with the change in contrast between the steel cables and the bright sky. It makes it look dirty and slightly out of alignment.

Secondly, the brightest part of the water was bad after HDR processing There were hundreds of tiny “rips” in the waves. Not visible at first but the closer I inspected, the more distracting they became.  There are lots of other tiny flaws, things you don’t always catch at first but that show up like a sore thumb when you print. Not a good image.

[NOTE: The image was further processed with Nik Color Efex Pro 4 to try to salvage it hence the color difference between image 2 and 3. It didn't work. So much for that 30 minutes of my life]

Finally this is the image as edited using just Lightroom 4. I was able to recover most of the important highlights, a lot of the shadow (I could have pushed it more, but liked it a bit darker), detail on the bridge and fix the colors to look more natural. I have none of the weird “dark halo” issues that I had in the HDR image – look at the difference in the cables – and the sky is cleaner. All in all it’s a better photgraph, took 1/10th of the time and only took 1 frame not 7.

Light Room 4 Only

Doest that mean I’m over HDR? No, not by a long shot. There are still times when I’ll use it as an artistic choice or to solve other issues. It’s just nice to know that Lightroom 4 gives me another viable option.

I posted this shot because after all the aggravation of taking the picture, I’m using it dammit! It is not a great shot and not one I’m likely to print and frame, but it IS going up on this blog out even if that’s just for spite. OK let me explain.

On New Years Eve we were going to dinner at this great little BBQ joint in Toronto. As we were driving along the freeway, I spot this really cool white building along the lake. “What’s that?” I ask. “Oh that’s the swimming pool and some park” I’m told. “Wow, I need to take a picture of that.” Silence…silence…”I mean some night when we are not heading to dinner with other people.”

So I planned to go back in a few weeks to shoot the building at sunrise. Only its an hour away, and sunrise is kind of early. Go figure. I tried 3 times and each time I woke up to rain or freezing temperatures. Finally, Saturday it was clear and bright. The weather wasn’t too cold (32 degrees F) and I had no other plans. Up at 5, out at 5:15. There in time for sunrise.

Almost.

Helps if you know where to park your car. And how far you need to walk. And where the sun will rise in relationship to the thing you want to shoot. Oh…and it helps to know whether the building itself is worth photographing Before you head out for leisurely 5:15 AM drive…

It certainly looked cooler from the freeway. Not that it isn’t a neat structure, it’s just not one that was particularly inspiring up close. I got there and my first thought was Meh…Never a good sign. I took a few detail shots, some side shots etc but none of them jump out at me. So I’m posting the boring “stand in front of the building and shoot it” shot.

In order to get it all in, I had to stand as far back as the oncoming traffic would allow – which I should point out wasn’t very far back – maybe the width of a drive way and a sidewalk. Even at 11mm (on my D7000) the front was so wide I couldn’t get it in easily so I cropped in on the important bits. I guess it’s OK, just not what I was hoping for.

Oh well, you never find the great shots if you aren’t willing to risk a few bad ones.

Happy Tuesday everyone.

I’m excited about Saturday’s new Composition in the Field class at Cleveland’s North Coast Harbor. Part class, part photo-walk, it should be a great location to have fun, learn a bit more about photography and enjoy a nice day by the lake. It’s a great location with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Great Lakes Science Center, Browns Stadium, etc. If you are in the area and are interested in a fun and informative morning check out the information on the Digital Photo Academy website. (May 5th, 2012)

If  nature photography is more your style, I’m also teaching a Composition in the Field class at Virginia Kendall Park in Peninsula, OH from 2:00 – 5:00 pm on Sunday May 6th). It’s a great way to finish off a weekend. Info on this class can be found here.

Happy Monday everyone.

I guess I have a thing for oceans, beaches and piers. Not uncommon I guess, that’s a pretty typical type of picture. Common or not there is just something almost mystical about an empty pier stretching out into the vast unknown.

That or I just like an excuse to go see a nice sunrise.

This shot was taken last year as part of Rick Sammon’s Florida Photo Caravan. I’ve mentioned it before but if you get a chance to take a class with Rick, it’s a great opportunity. I don’t get paid for that endorsement (though hey Rick feel free lol).

Two stories up and now way down. That sounds like an emergency exit only to me.