British Car Show

British Car Show

One part of the Greenville Scottish Games that I enjoy is the British Car Show. It is held on Furman University's shaded mall in front of the main gate to the games. There always seems to be a slightly different mix of cars in the show each year. Many of the cars are older restorations, but there are sometimes new British branded automobiles as well. The new Lotus sports cars are almost always a crowd pleaser.

The car show is now kind of a sentimental favorite of mine since it was some of my photographs of cars from a couple of years ago that got me invited to be a photographer for the games last year and now this year. I wasn't able to get many photographs from the car show last year due to the VIP's schedule. However, I did make it a point to get some shots from there this year.

This particular photograph shows that the cars are lined up for quite a long ways down the mall. In fact, they are lined up down both sides of the mall. Quite an impressive collection of classic British automobiles. The photograph is also a handheld, three-shot HDR composite so that the shadows are not blocked out to complete black. I tried to process the image so that it would look fairly natural without the over exaggerated colors that HDR can sometime cause. It's not perfect, but I think it gets close to it.

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Blue Ridge Parkway Sunset, Day 2

Sunset over the Blue Ridge Mountains

Sunset on the second day up on the Blue Ridge was nice. Not spectacular, but nice. There were no clouds on the horizon to add texture and drama. There was a haze that ... well, hazed over the distance. I was having a hard time during this sunset getting a good exposure for the sky and the foreground. As you can see in this shot, the foreground went dark very quickly. The one little bit of light kissing the nearest ridge does add a hint of the ridge's texture. Again, this was an HDR blend with a little additional post-processing in Lightroom 3 for color and contrast.

All in all it was a good workshop, and I did come away with a few images that I liked.

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Sunbeams

Three Trees

After the close-up session, we waited for sunset at a particular overlook that Richard had decided to use. We were hoping for some clouds to form as the sky was very bare and uninteresting. Some clouds did form over us, but none of them made it to the western horizon for the sunset.

This image is an HDR blend I took as the sun was getting lower in the sky. The "sunbeams" are actually formed by using a very small aperture with the sun in the field of view, in this case f/22. It is also cropped just a little for compositional purposes in order to get the sunbeams coming in from the very top of the frame.

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Blue Ridge Parkway Sunset, Day 1

Parkway Sunset

The first day of our trip to the Blue Ridge Parkway ended with a sunset session. This image is an HDR in order to get some detail in the ridges while maintaining the colors and textures in the sky.

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Stumphouse Tunnel

Stumphouse Tunnel

Yesterday we took a day trip to Walhalla, South Carolina to visit the Stumphouse Tunnel. The tunnel is an incomplete railway tunnel started just prior to the Civil War. The state ran out of funds for it and it was never completed. Clemson University purchased it in the 1920s and used it to store it's blue cheese until they perfected modern refrigeration systems later in the century. The area surrounding the tunnel was saved from development in 2007 by a coalition of local conservation organizations and businesses. It is still owned by Clemson University, but the park is operated by the City of Walhalla.

This photograph is an high-dynamic range (HDR) composite of five images taken at different exposure settings. I thought HDR would be the best way for me to get some depth into the tunnel otherwise it would have been a black void in the mountain side. I'm fairly happy with the image, but it could be better. I forgot my tripod, so the individual frames didn't line up as well as they could have, hence the final image is not as sharp as it could be. Plus, I still am having trouble with the colors getting a bit over saturated by the processing. The greens and especially the yellows seem to get boosted too high for my liking. HDR is still something I need to practice more of ... if only I would remember to take my tripod more often.

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HDR Gone Wrong

Reedy River Falls at Night

I tried to capture quite a few different angles of the Reedy River Falls and the Liberty Bridge. After the sun had set and the light was turning that beautiful blue, I thought that I would try to get a set of images of the view you see above. Unfortunately, I made several mistakes taking the images to merge into the HDR software. This left me with an HDR image that I didn't really like at all. However, as I was playing around with the various settings I got the image you see above. Everything about it from capture to processing was "wrong", but there is something about this result that I find intriguing.

"Correct" doesn't always give the best results. "Wrong" can sometimes be more interesting. Something to think about I suppose.

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Falls Park in HDR

Falls Park and the West End

Here is another HDR image taken this past weekend. I posted a similar view earlier this year which was taken on the other side of the river. I like this one because of the reflection in the water and the people enjoying the park.

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Reedy River Falls in HDR

Liberty Bridge and Reedy River Falls

This past weekend I went back to Falls Park in Greenville, South Carolina to try to photograph the Liberty Bridge and the waterfalls again. It is one of my favorite places to photograph although I have not yet gotten "the" photograph of the bridge that I want. The bridge's unique lateral, suspension arc and position make it a difficult subject for a photograph to do justice.

This time I went to the park during the late afternoon and stayed into the early night. That was really only about an hour and a half to two hours considering how quickly the sun sets this time of year. I was hoping that would allow me to get good exposures on the sky and the surrounds. However, in actuality, the sun was close to and even sometime even in the frame due to needing a wide angle of view to encompass the entire bridge. I also had some ideas on how to get some better angles of the bridge.

Considering the bright sky and shaded areas of the park, I thought that maybe some HDR (high dynamic range) techniques might work in this situation. I took quite a few sets of bracketed exposures and later merged them using Photomatix Pro software. In the end, I still think I can get a better image. There were several problems with this set of images. I made some mistakes while shooting the brackets. I didn't pay as good attention to the compositions as I should have while shooting them. I also think I need to more practice on the HDR processing.

Still, I did get a few images that I liked even if they are not quite what I ultimately wanted. Practice, practice, practice. It is what makes hobbies fun and it gives me a reason to go back to the park again.

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I'm back

New River Gorge Bridge (Black & White)

Hi folks. I'm back from vacation. We spent a week up in Niagara Falls, Ontario visiting with a friend. The weather was touch and go most of the time with either rain or gray skies. However, I did manage to shoot some 1400 photographs that I am sorting through. I have gotten through the first two days of the trip which is when we were on the road up to Ontario. During the drive up we did manage a little impromptu sightseeing. Those two days only added up to about 100 photos though, thus it did not take long to sort through them. I've got much more to go though.

More after the jump.

The image above is the New River Gorge Bridge in the mountains of West Virginia. It is the longest single arch span in the Western Hemisphere and is one of the tallest in the world. It stands the height of the Washington Monument plus two Statues of Liberty on top of it above the river to the bottom of the arch. Driving over the bridge, it just seems like any other concrete highway bridge. What caught our attention were the signs for a "Bridge Overlook". We wondered why there would be an overlook for a bridge and stopped to see what it was all about. I'm glad that we did. It is an impressive feat of engineering.

This image is a black and white conversion of an HDR (High Dynamic Range) image I made with Photomatix Pro. It was made from three photographs that were two stops apart. I am new to HDR in general and Photomatix specifically. I did not really like the original color version that I got from the processing. I did however like the increased tonal range and thought that it might work as a black and white image. One thing that has always confused me about the HDR wave that is happening now is why people don't try black and white conversions with the resulting images. A great many of the HDR images you see are of the stylized, almost fantastical saturated color variety. This is especially true of people just starting to learn how to make HDR images. It seems to me that the increased dynamic range and tones between the shadows and the highlights from HDR techniques would be advantageous for black and white images as well. You could push the tonal ranges farther without the overly saturated colors becoming a problem. Anyway, this is my first attempt at an HDR black and white conversion. Not the best, but I see some potential with it.

More images from the vacation to come.

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Morgan Square Holiday Lights

Morgan Square Lights

Christmas Eve evening I went downtown to photograph the city's holiday light display. I arrived before the sun had set, but it was cloudy with intermittent rain. One thing I wanted to try was a tip I had read over on the Stobist's blog about photographing holiday lights. His tip was to set the camera's white balance to tungsten. This accomplishes two things. It color balances for the holiday lights which are usually small tungsten bulbs, and it also causes a the sky to turn a deep, vibrant blue. Due to the weather conditions, I thought that might turn out better than a bland gray, cloud-covered sky. I like the effect it had in the images. So, I'll have to remember this trick in the future.

The above picture was one of my favorites from the trip (click the picture for a larger version). It is an HDR from three different exposures. I didn't use my tripod as I was working relatively quickly to get out of the rain. The exposures were taken hand held, with the Sigma 10-20mm lens, the camera was set to bracket + and - 2 stops, and the shutter was on continuous. All I had to do was frame the shot, hold the shutter button down and the camera took captured three frames; one frame was properly exposed, one was underexposed by 2 stops, the third was overexposed by 2 stops. The set was then converted from RAW straight to Tiff files with no adjustments and then the HDR image generated in Picturenaut. Picturenaut then was used to tonemap the HDR to a 16-bit Tiff which was then brought into Capture NX2 for final processing and JPEG conversion. A bit of swapping around applications, but it didn't really take very much longer than it usually takes my to process RAW images. Picturenaut seems to be fairly speedy, even on my older desktop PC.

Anyway, I hope Santa treated you well this holiday and that your families are safe, warm and loving.

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An HDR Comparison

Poinsett Bridge - HDR

As I have mentioned previously, I have started experimenting with HDR photography and thought I would try a comparison between an HDR image and a standard photograph with my typical processing. This weekend my family and I went out along US Highway 11, aka the Cherokee Foothills Scenic Highway. Along the way we stopped at the Poinsett Bridge in Greenville County which is part of the Poinsett Bridge Heritage Preserve. The foothills were in full Autumn colors and we had a great afternoon drive.

More after the jump

While at the Poinsett Bridge I attempted to capture a few series of exposures to process using the open-source Picturenaut HDR software. The photograph above is the best of the attempts. It is seven frames of the same scene taken with the camera on the tripod and changing the shutter speed for each shot. I goofed up the exposure bracketing in the other attempts and didn't get acceptable results when I tried to process them.

I like the above photograph for a couple of reasons. It has a kind of dreamy look to it that is enhanced by the blurriness of the background trees and the foreground water and leaves. I think this happened because of the movement of the water between frames which also moved the leaves, and there was a wind which was moving the upper boughs of the trees. All of that movement combined to cause Picturenaut to average the tonal values on the various exposure together resulting in the blur you can see. I think it actually lends the image a painterly impression.

The quality that I like the best about the image is the lighting on the bridge itself. The highlights are fairly well controlled and the shadows are not too dark. However, even the bridge looks a tad impressionistic to a degree and required additional, selective sharpening to reduce that quality. I also tweaked the contrast and color saturation a tad in Capture NX2 for the entire image.

Pointsett Bridge

This photograph is one that I took "normally". It was hand held and exposed so that there were few if any blown out highlights on the LCD screen. I processed it using Nikon's Capture NX2 RAW processing software. While developing it, I added my normal contrast curve, boosted the colors a bit, and used the high pass filter for sharpening as I do with most of my photographs.

I like this version of the scene as well, but for different reasons. Everything is crisper and more clear in this photograph. It looks more like a photograph, I suppose, than a painting. However, I don't like the lighting on the bridge quite as much as the bright areas are just a bit too bright and bleed out some of the details. The differences in this quality can best be seen by looking at the keystone in the arch. In the HDR version, the keystone is nicely exposed/blended, while in the regular version it has lost some detail due to the bright sunlight.

Both images could certainly be improved with better field techniques and better processing knowledge. However, I think it does give a good look into the differences between HDR and normal processing. I am excited to continue playing around with HDR images. It seems to be an area that could broaden my processing capability.

In the end, both images serve their purposes and that is what it is all about.

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A couple of Freebies

Bald Rock Panorama

This panorama was taken from the Bald Rock overlook on US Highway 276. It is comprised of three overlapping images taken with the wide-angle lens. I then used the new Microsoft Image Composite Editor to stitch them together into one image. It is a very simple utility to use. There are a handful of different algorithms you can choose from depending on if you took the images by rotating in one spot as with a tripod, or if you panned side-to-side as if you were moving in a vehicle. You can also crop the image as necessary. All in all I was quite impressed with it. A couple of cons that I noticed is that it didn't support RAW file types so you have to convert to TIFF or JPEG prior to stitching them together. Plus, it doesn't support the Mac OS. Still it is free, easy to use, and gives good results. Just a note, Microsoft Research is the same group that made Photosynth. Also, check out their Worldwide Telescope project.

Another free application that I recently found is Picturenaut. It is used to create High Dynamic Range (HDR) images. HDR images are created by taking several photographs of the same scene with each photograph being exposed differently. You then use a special application to blend them together to produce an image with greater dynamic range than can be captured with just one photograph. HDR photography has really started to pick up steam in the past couple of years and there are several mature applications that are commonly used for it. However, the choices available for those of use wanting to try HDR imagery without purchasing expensive software were quite few. Picturenaut is one such application. I have just started playing around with it and don't have any final, presentable images yet. However, so far it does most everything that I want for now. It is an open-source application with a small community growing around it. I hope to have some presentable images processed with it in a week or two.

I found out about Picturenaut as it was included on a CD in a book that I am currently reading. The HDRI Handbook by Christian Bloch is a fairly technical book that delves into imaging technologies in general and HDR techniques and uses in video, still photography and computer graphics/animation. While it does get into technical details in some chapters, the reader never really feels bogged down by them. Well, at least I didn't, but that might just be my science background coming out. If you want to have a better understanding of the theories as well as general applications of HDR imaging, then I do recommend the book. As mentioned a CD is included that contains the Picturenaut HDR application for Windows operating systems, an HDR application for MACs, and sample images you can practice with along with the reading.

Tonight is Halloween. Stay safe if you are going out.

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