Indy 'n HDR

Before they came down, I got a chance at the beginning of January to get some pictures of the holiday lights strung from the top of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument on the circle. I shot it once before, but wasn't happy with the results. Much too flat. Of course now that I'm using HDR.....

 Some Colts pride in the lower right corner.

Didn't help them much, as that was the night

they lost to the Jets in the playoffs.

Image copyrighted by Erik Markov

 Image copyrighted by Erik Markov

Having the fisheye definitely helped in some of the tight angles and to capture much of the circle in one image.

I probably took this one too far in HDR but it's fun to experiment.

Image copyrighted by Erik Markov

 I also turned around for a shot of the capitol down Market St.

 

 Something about this conjures up the phrase

'The road to hell is paved with gold and good intentions."

Image copyrighted by Erik Markov

The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not 

necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Comments containing off-color or hateful language may be removed.

University of Chicago

While in Chicago over the holidays, I also spent a few hours at the University of Chicago. It's gotten to be a bit of a cliche I think to take photos there. There are photos of the campus all over Flickr, lots of blogs. Yet, it was still a place on my list to check out as I had never been there before.

A walkway outside Bond Chapel.

Image copyrighted by Erik Markov

   

Image copyrighted by Erik Markov

Since it was over the holidays there weren't many people on campus, which meant I had it mostly to myself. Also meant a lot of the buildings were closed. Will have to go back as there were a few other places that looked interesting which I couldn't go into.

 A bulletin board on campus with scraps

of notices and staples left over.

 Image copyrighted by Erik Markov

Bond Chapel.

 Image copyrighted by Erik Markov

Was an okay day to shoot, not the best but not the worst. It's December in Chicago so gray skies are the norm. Also why I played around with the HDR, the un-doctored images are not all that interesting. Some snow falling would have been something to play around with, Mother Nature wasn't cooperating.

 

I think this would be a cherub,

kinda hard to tell with the vines.

Image copyrighted by Erik Markov

The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

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Auto Yard

I spent the afternoon with a fellow Kokomo photographer, Roger Davis, at the local auto yard. I always thought it looked like it had potential for interesting images, but it was actually Roger who went there first about a month ago. We both have an interest in HDR images, so we spent the afternoon hanging out amongst car parts and old buildings. I was pleased with how they turned out.

Warren's Auto Parts building
Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

I've got a couple more images at my website.

The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Comments containing off-color or hateful language may be removed.

Painting with strokes of light

Dove into the deep end of light painting the other day. I've talked about the technique before. Except for the cemetery, that was all relatively small stuff. And even the cemetery was only composed of three main images, and didn't have a huge amount of lightpainted items composing it.

I've got all sorts of memos for myself typed into my Blackberry. I've got a phone that's a couple years old, but I bought it new from Ebay last year, so it doesn't have internet access etc. But the one thing it's really useful for is making notes to myself about interesting places I'd like to get a photograph and people I've met that might be able to help me etc.

Notes for projects, techniques I want to try. I've got four or five places noted that I thought would make for interesting light painting projects. One of them was a place I went to last year for an assignment. The assignment was about a small gathering of antique Dodge owners from around the country. Where they met was at a house near Kokomo. The gentleman (who I won't name because I don't want people mobbing him) has a really cool antique gas station. He collects antique gas pumps, vending machines etc. He has over the years collected a good amount of items and now has a gas station in his backyard that looks straight out of the 30's.

First attempt of light painting the gas station.
Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

I finally decided to give him a call and see if I could get a picture of the station. I explained what I wanted to do, which admittedly sounds pretty crazy. "Sir, I'd like to stand in your backyard for two or three hours - in the dark - and take pictures. Oh, by the way, I'll be running around with flashlights, just generally looking a little bit crazy." That's not the way I sold it, but it might was well have been.

And he still said yes. I think he understood I just wanted to do something different and creative. Not many people get that anymore.

The above image is composed of seven separate images. I shouldn't admit this, light painting "purists" probably see it as an abomination. Doing this on film meant you light painted the whole scene in one long exposure. I decided to use technology to my advantage.

Doing this on film back in the day had its positives and negatives. Film was more forgiving of mistakes, yet you couldn't see what you had until it was developed. You probably could combine shots form different negatives into one image in the darkroom but boy does that sound like a pain in the ass.

What the station might look like for a decent exposure, without light painting.
Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

Using digital means you can see immediately what you have, but digital is also less forgiving than film I think. It used to be shooting digital was like shooting slide film, every exposure had to be perfect. Digital has gotten away from that quite a bit, but I still think you have to be pretty precise. The good with the bad.

In doing all the HDR I've kept myself occupied with this year, a technique I came across was using HDR software as a part of processing a light painting image. The basic idea is you light paint each item or person or place in a different exposure, then with the HDR software, you combine all the exposures. Similar to what I did with the cemetery, except I cut out the specific items in Photoshop and then pasted them into a final image.

It's much easier to let the software do it, than spend the time to do it myself. As I said, "purists" probably consider this an abomination. I see it as working smarter. Painting the individual objects in the scene is still work, there are still choices to be made about what kind of light to use, how long to make the exposure etc. The difference between doing this on film or digital is that with film, one mistake can screw up an image that was a 30 minute exposure. And you might not realize the mistake until you got the negatives back.

With digital that mistake can be seen immediately and corrected. Yet doing this scene in one 30 minute exposure can still mean you might make one small mistake at the end of the exposure, wasting that 30 minutes. I think it makes more sense to make one exposure painting a small portion of the scene, and see how that turns out. If it's good, then move onto the next item in the scene. If it's bad, make another exposure until it's right.

Second attempt of light painting the station.
Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

I started about 8pm setting up for the first attempt of the station. I played around with that angle for 30 minutes maybe before deciding the second angle had more potential. I felt like being able to see into the building more along with the door, read the station sign to the right and several other factors made for a more complete image. More of a storytelling image. In processing both attempts, I realized both had things to like about them.

I'm sure I'll forget something important to mention here should someone want to try it themselves. One thing is, it's not always as dark out in b.f.e. as one might think. There were some clouds in the sky, but I wouldn't call it completely overcast.

Depending on the night tho, the glow from the light in Kokomo can be seen for 10 or 20 miles. I was only 10 miles from Kokomo here, so in some of the longer exposures the light reflecting off the clouds affects the image a little. My exposures were from 20 seconds to a minute usually, since I didn't need the time to light the whole scene. That's something to think about in a longer exposure, say 5 minutes or more.

I adjusted the sky in each of the images in PS before I combined all the exposures, to correct for some of the weird color casts I had.

Another thing I learned in combining the exposures in Photomatix was not to combine all the exposures at once. The first attempt was 7 separate images, the second attempt was 18 images. The final image worked better from Photomatix if I combined two or three of the exposures at a time. Once I had 7 images that each had two or three images making it up, I started combining two of those images. Basically just a process of stacking the exposures.

There are ways to do all of this exposure stacking in PS, for myself I just find it easier to do in Photomatix. I think the same results, just different wys of going about it.

After doing this one, it's got me excited thinking about the potential of the other places I'd like to try light painting. It also has me thinking about a quote I just came across from comedian Stephen Wright.

"I've been doing a lot of abstract painting lately, extremely abstract. No brush, no paint, no canvas, I just think about it."

He was joking, but thinking about how to excute the light painted scene is probably more important than actually creating the image. Doing the later without engaging in the former probably is going to result in a quite spect-crap-ular image.

The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Comments containing off-color or hateful language may be removed.

Turbines seem to be the next big thing in central Indiana. I first noticed some turbines already erected along I-65 north of Lafayette in July, with more structures being worked on. Every time I would drive back and forth to Chicago I would watch the progress as another few turbines were set up. And the scale of these are amazing.

It's a little too far out of the Kokomo Tribune's coverage area for a local story so I knew I wouldn't be going over to shoot them, but whenever I'd look at them while on the interstate I would think how I might shoot the assignment if I had it.

I think all photographers are like that to some extent. Whether it's watching a football game on television or being at some event in your off time, those creative thoughts are always flowing. Would I choose this angle or that, how I would light that subject etc.

One of the turbines emerges from the fog above

an Indiana cornfield.
Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

Something about the turbines just fascinates me. I don't know if it's the size, the complexity or it's just something new and unique.

I had to go up to NW Indiana for the day recently. It's an errand I could have and should have taken care of when I was there several weeks ago but I ended up putting it off. Maybe it's fortuitous that I procrastinated. I left Kokomo about 6 am and as it turns out it was extremely foggy that morning. It can get pretty foggy in central Indiana occasionally, but it usually burns off fairly early. That morning was a little different, as the fog was still hanging around at 7 am when I got to Lafayette where I was getting on the interstate.

At some point I figured I would go over to the area where the turbines are to get some photos, mainly just because of how unique they seem, particularly for Indiana. I just didn't plan for it to be that morning.

The fog was sticking around as I got to the area where the turbines are located near I-65, so of course I stopped to take a look. The sun was just coming up, making some cool colors as it reflected off the fog. One of the unusual things I had never seen was that there seemed to be almost two layers of fog. There was a layer closer to the ground, then a break, then more fog. As in the photo above, it almost made it appear as though the turbines were just magically appearing in the area.

A turbine rising above grain silos.
Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

One of the things I found interesting is the old and new competing, like in the photo above of silos being dwarfed by a turbine.

After I did my errands up north, I headed back to Kokomo. As I got farther south, some nice puffy cumulus clouds started to dot the sky, making for interesting background scenery.

Classic Indiana scene: Cornfields on either side of
a gravel road that disappears in the distance.

Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

Turbines sprouting up from cornfields. Who woulda thunk?

A turbine far in the distance framed by an old

barn in the middle of a soybean field.
Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

From what I've found on the internet, there are supposedly hundreds of more turbines that will be sprouting around central Indiana. It should be interesting to see what that means for Indiana's future development.


The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.
Comments containing off-color or hurtful language may be removed.

HDR and Balloons

Apparently it is possible to completely contradict yourself, even within the space of a week. It turns out I proved myself wrong. From 4 days before, the exact quote, "...so good that you can't even tell sometimes it's an HDR image. I think that's what to strive for..."

I spent the first weekend of May down at the Indianapolis Speedway shooting hot air balloons. Before the Speedway was a racetrack, there was a balloon race in 1909. To celebrate the centennial, they had several balloon events over the weekend. Friday night was a balloon glow where they keep the balloons on the ground and light them up, creating some very cool colors. The same thing for Saturday night. Sunday morning there was a balloon race that took off from the track.

I played around with HDR some more and had what I think was some success with it. While also proving my self wrong, or at the very least short sighted.

Balloons wait to launch at the start of the balloon race Sunday.
Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

Like I said before, seeing the images that are going to make good HDR is proving to be the most difficult part of this. If you just want to shoot a series of exposures and make them real gritty, contrasty photos... well that's easy. The software will allow you to do that without a hitch. Trying to take it to the next level and make an image that's unique, that's difficult.

I had 500 image files by the time I got done from all the balloon events of the weekend. That's from shooting with the D700, D70 and my Canon G2 p&s. It was a variety of 3, 5 and 7 series exposures. All told if I made HDR images from all the series, I might end up with 50 HDR images. And of that it's hard to say how many might actually work in reality.

Part of shooting HDR I'm finding very quickly is scouting out your location and shooting conditions. The range of light values, what the weather is like, amount of motion in your subject. The above image was shot with the D70 handheld, 3 exposures 1 stop apart. The balloon on the back right you can see where the software had some difficulty lining things up. Not sure if that's because it was handheld, movement from the balloon or the fact it wasn't the balloon I was focused on and thus the depth of field may have played a part.

I don't think it's enough to drastically affect the image tho. The image is probably entering the surreal area, but I like it. There was room in Photomatix to take it even further, but I felt this was about right. Part of what affects whether an image comes across as surreal or not is what the subject is. I might be wrong about this, but balloons being the subject helps I think because it is kind of a whimsical type of event anyway.

Friday night's balloon glow, shot with the Canon G2.

Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

The above image is entirely surreal, no doubt about it. The desaturation is a result of what I did in Photomatix. The heavy cloud cover also gives it a bit of an ominous feeling. That was shot with the G2 which only allows me a series of 3 exposures. The normally saturated image I didn't like as much, that's why I tried going to the extreme. Granted there are a couple easy ways around the bracket limit, but I wasn't too concerned about what images I would get from that camera, I was more just playing around.

Friday night's balloon glow, shot with the Nikon D700.

Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

This image, shot with the D700, was a series of 7. This is a mixture of the realistic with the surreal. One exposure of this image probably wouldn't yield both a good exposure of the balloons, the pagoda and the sky, but I don't think it looks too unreal. The grass, yes. I used Photomatix to add some contrast and texture to the grass, I could have backed off some more to make it look more natural, but I kinda liked it this way. Someone else might think it's too gritty.

The pagoda at the Speedway Friday night, shot with the D700.
Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

The images of the pagoda are a perfect example of the possibilities with HDR. To expose for that photo typically, there are going to have to be compromises. Expose for the lights along the sides, allowing the sign on the front and the sidewalk to go dark? Expose for the sign to be able to see the historical photo, and completely blow out the same lights causing some massive flare? There really isn't a good option for one exposure.

Image copyright Erik Markov 2009


Image copyright Erik Markov 2009


Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

The sprint cars are something I played around with during an assignment to shoot the season opening of the Kokomo Speedway. I'm not a huge fan of going out there, find it kinda boring really. It's muddy, it's boring watching cars just going around and around.... and around the track. That's why there are so many types of racing, to each his own. After shooting the stuff for the assignment the next day, I played around for a little while with the HDR. Kept my mind occupied for a little bit.

Now, you're not supposed to be able to shoot moving images and make them HDR. Most of the time, the image layers aren't going to line up properly. That made it a challenge just for the heck of it to see if I could do it. There is a little bleed thru on some parts of the image from one layer onto another, but I was really surprised how well it did turn out. Most of the bleed thru is stuff that could be fixed in Photoshop. Certainly not something you would do for an image that was going to run in the paper and represent what an event looked like. It strays into an ethical gray area. But just to play with, it's a lot of fun.

For moving images there is another option for HDR, which is to shoot RAW. Once in the computer you create your 3 or 5 or 7 exposures, then make the image in Photomatix. This could also be used if you just don't feel like shooting the bracketed exposures. For those that shoot RAW all the time and then convert to JPG, they can choose to do an HDR image anytime they like without having to plan ahead of time. I've tried playing with this some and haven't had much success. I've just found the bracketed exposures to be easier for the time being.

HDR.... is it just for fun, or is it a legitimate tool to add to a photographer's bag of tricks? I don't have the answer to that. I do know that right now it has me thinking about creating images in a different way. I've got a list of places that I want to visit again to shoot in HDR. I think that's the frustrating thing about HDR (in a good way) and photography in general. Just when you think you've shot an image that is as good as it gets, along comes a technique or a piece of equipment that gives you a new idea of how to shoot that image. Oh, well.

HDR = WOW

I had the day off so I went to Indianapolis today. Had to pick up my credentials for the "Greatest Spectacle in Racing." (Indy 500 of course) Always a good day when it's time to get those. After that I went over to the Indianapolis Museum of Art to take some pictures.

The museum has a really great garden, lots of different flowers depending on the time of year, some cool architecture. Just a really nice place to spend an afternoon on a nice warm spring day.

Back in March I picked up a Nikon D700 to replace my D70. The D70 still works great, but after five years it just seemed time to replace it with something that had a little more punch. One of the main things I wanted as the ability to use a remote switch, something the D70 doesn't allow. Plus the full 35mm frame of the D700 means all those wide angles are, well... wide again. And the D70 I will keep around, plan on sending that out to be converted to an infrared camera.

I've done a little shooting with the new body since I got it in March, but nothing too exciting. Figured the colors of the garden would make for some fun stuff. Something else I've wanted to get into recently is HDR photography, High Dynamic Range. I've seen some other people online working with it and it seemed like fun. The first spot I tried was a waterfall that runs through the gardens. Plenty of shadows, color and even some motion from the water.

Color me impressed.

One the left is one image from the bracketed exposure,
probably what would be a decent exposure without HDR.
On the left is the HDR image.

Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

To get an idea of the setting of this photo, the water fall runs from the west down the hill to the east, and it's 1:30pm when I took the bracketed series of images.

For the HDR image I took 7 bracketed images from 1/60 to 1/15 of a second at f16. In the image you can see a little bit of ghosting in the trees because it was so windy. I was impressed though with how little ghosting there was in the water, I think it still looks fairly natural and I was a little concerned about that.

Update- Forgot to add the file size of the finished photo. 33mb, and the 7 files I used for the image in Photomatix were 7-9mb each. That was full res on the camera with fine compression. I just got a new desktop pc with 2.4ghx Intel quad core chip running 3gb of RAM which I used to process the images and I didn't notice any real slow down. Took maybe 20 seconds or so for Photomatix to compile the images into one. I say this only in the interest of full disclosure, I'm not positive how the software might work on a computer with a slower processor or less RAM. There is a FAQ on HDRsoft's site that might be able to answer some of these questions.

I put both images side by side so that you can see how much I lost with the processed HDR image. There was a small band I cropped off. This occurs because the HDR software has to line up the image as best as possible for it look correct. And there are a ton of settings in the software I am using, Photomatix by HDRsoft. Given more time to play around with it, I might be able to adjust it to eliminate that band. Just to be on the safe side I would watch what was on the edges of my frame to make sure I wouldn't lose anything important. Shooting a little loose is a good rule of thumb.

An HDR image with 9 exposures.
Image copyright Erik Markov 2009

I've seen some HDR images that look really good, so good that you can't even tell sometimes it's an HDR image. I think that's what to strive for, if you can get it so that it looks as though the image is lit by some sort of magic light, you've done a good job. And I've seen some images that are obviously HDR because they have been so overworked.

The above image with the 9 exposures skirts the edge of being overworked I think. Particularly in the grass on the left side of the waterfall. Also on the right side, the rock wall at the bottom of the falls, there is a highlight on the top of the rock that, at least to me, seems to have too much detail in it. In the series of 7 exposures, the highlight gets a little blown out which I think makes the image look a little more natural.

I've only played around with it a little thus far, but it's enjoyable process. it takes some playing around to learn what works and what doesn't. I shot some flowers that didn't work well as HDR images. The day was extremely windy and a small object like the flowers were getting sent every which way, causing a lot of ghosting in the HDR image.

To do an HDR image that will turn out well without wasting your time, a tripod is a near necessity. At the very least, a sturdy place, such as a rock to rest your camera on. A remote trigger is also helpful, keeps you from disrupting the frame. Any slight movement of the camera is going to result in an image that could be less than what you hoped for. And HDR software to process the image. Photoshop includes an HDR processor in its latest version and there are several companies that make software.

The great thing with Photomatix is you can download it and try it out to see if you like it before paying for it. It runs $99 so it's not exactly cheap, but considering how powerful of a program it is, seems pretty reasonable to me. As you can see from my images I haven't purchased it yet because i still have the watermarking on them, but I plan to rectify that soon.

This is just a guess on my part, but I think as I play around with it, it will be a long learning process finding out what works for a good HDR image and what doesn't. Shooting the image is the easy part, just bracket your exposures and you're good to go. It's being able to see before shooting the images what is going to work well that is the difficult part. Don't want to waste time shooting several series of images, only to process it later and find out it looks like crap for whatever reason.

The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Comments containing off-color or hateful language may be removed.