Invisible light – Part 2

reply I found you by googling "HDR photography explain", and you did. Kind of. Thank you! What do you think of Trey Ratcliffe (found his work the same way)? My interest is theoretical. I have a friend developing a game/interactive system involving HDR and he's sworn to secrecy about it, so I must educate myself before telling him to get stuffed. I particularly liked the backlit saucisson.

reply Hi Vince Thank you for the words of caution. No, I was simply miffed at being so excluded from the (fulltime, time-consuming)process...And I do tend to shoot my mouth off! Good luck with your Marukawa search. I'd be happy to ship!

reply Hello Marie, Glad to have been of service. I am relieved by your "kind of" because my posts never pretend to be too serious nor do they aim at defining HDR by themselves. Other people do that much better. I'm merely dropping my own grain of salt into an already very salty and agitated ocean... Somebody else did mention Trey's blog a while ago and I paid it a visit back then but haven't had a chance to return. I seem to remember he skilfully uses Photomatix (or similar) for slightly abstract and painting-like results. That was my first flirting with HDR too and although I've drifted towards a less-traveled road, I still enjoy these kinds of very dramatic pictures. As for your interest being purely theoretical, never say never: I have a feeling the only way to photograph a backlit saucisson on a 12.5 by 5.5 terrace would be to use HDR... ;-) But seriously, HDR as used in a gaming development context might turn out to be radically different than when applied to photography, so don't be too quick telling your friend to get stuffed... Cheers!

reply The fourth photo is my favourite of the set. How much processing did you do to these photos? I'm curious about the techniques you used.

reply Hi Andrew, These are actually not HDR, they were just single long exposures shot in auto white balance mode. Of course at night with such long exposure times and all the mercury lights, the auto mode gets fooled and the result is a strong yellow/orange color cast. So when processing the RAW file, I basically bring back the white balance to a much colder setting until the colors seem natural and almost day-like. The rest is a routine adjustment: white and black points, boosting the midtones, increasing contrast and saturation, reducing color noise a little, etc. In other words, the regular Camera Raw or Lightroom work. Then in Photoshop, advanced denoising and sharpening with my favourite tool, FFDD5.

reply Hi Vince ....WOW! Marie

reply Now did I mention the very special HDR effect achieved by bracketing shots of duck prosciutto slices on a Pacific Northwest sandy beach? ;-)