servalpe's photostream  

© Servalpe. Photos are copyrighted. All rights reserved. Pictures can not be used without explicit permission by the creator.



Photography is my passion. I love to capture the 'light moment' and specially cityscapes, architecture and landscapes. I also like to shot cars and aircrafts. My favourite techniques are HDR and DRI.

I am a newbie with HDR Techniques, but I have been practising a lot since the beginning of 2010.Although I have been shooting since I had my 1st point and shoot camera on 2004. And you will find in my galleries some older stuff that I try to enhance re-editing with new versions.

Thank very much for all your visits, favs and comment. They encourage me to go better with my photographic skills and to know although I still learning and learning , I am going in the correct way.

Visit my daily posts at my blog and check my portfolio

I am member:







servalpe on 500px

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For prints:







My Current Gear:

Camera:

► Canon EOS 450D

Lenses:

► Canon EF-S18-55mm f3.5-5.6 IS
► Sigma 10-20mm f4-5.6 DC EX HSM
► Canon EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM

Tripod + Head:

► Manfrotto 055XPROB Tripod + 322RC2 Joystick Head

Filters:

► Lee Wide Angle Filter Holder + 77 mm adaptor
► HiTech 100 ND 0.3 , 0.6 , 0.9 filters
► HiTech 100 GND "Soft" 0.3 , 0.6 , 0.9 filters
► HiTech 100 GND "Hard" 0.3 , 0.6 , 0.9 filters
► Hoya HD Digital CPL 77 mm filter
► 2 x Hoya HD Digital Protector 77 mm filter
►Lee Big Stopper filter (NDx1000) (crashed)
►Hoya ND400 77mm filter
►Close-up filter Canon 500D 77 mm

Bags:

►Rushbag Kata DR 467


My HDR Workflow

1) Export from Lightroom to Photoshop the raw files to generate a 32-bits hdr file with HDR Pro.

That's because Photoshop is better aligning pictures, reducing noise and with CS5, a great removal ghost tool is included.

The advantages with this step are that you get less noise that using directly Photomatix to process Tiff o raw files and also you get more details.

The disadvantages are problems with colours and WB that I have to resolve later in PS. I There is a problem because by default, the colorspace for LR is ProPhoto, and Adobe RGB 1998 for PS. So for example, if you try to export directly from LR to Photomatix or you export to PS to generate HDR file and later open this in PS, not only the noise is different, the colour is too.Take care and assign correctly your colour space to be coherent during your workflow.

2) Open the HDR file in Photomatix and do tonemapping. Save the processed file as TIFF 16 bits file.

My usual settings or around them:

Strength 75%.
Colour saturation 46%.
Light smoothing, very high.
Luminosity +7.
Gamma is 0.7.
Temperature set to 0
Micro-contrast 7.
Micro-smoothing 2.
Highlights smoothing 0.
Shadows smoothing 0.
Shadows clipping 0.

3) Open the TIFF file in PS and adjust the colours and WB with curves, shadows and highlights and hue/saturation.

I am also using Topaz Adjust and Details plugins with default presets. My usual ones are Photo 'Popup' for Adujst and 'Feature Enhancement' or 'Micro Contrast Enhancement' for Detail.

Color Efex Pro with Tonal Contrast and Glamour Glow as my favourite presets

Silver Efex Pro for BW, with favourive preset 'High Structure'.

I sometimes do a little burning/dodging, creating a new layer with fusion mode set to Soft Light and a pencil with low opacity (around 10%) .This is a non-destructive technique for dodging and burning. When you set your pencil to 50 % gray, there is not effect. If you paint with blacks you are burning and if you do with whites you are dodging.

To reduce noise I use Imagenomic Noiseware plugin.

Finally, I sharpen the pic using a High Pass filter in a new layer with fusion mode set to Overlay and radius around 3.

Awards

►One of the winners of International HDR Day


Published works:

PHOTOGRASURF: FLICKR MASTERS: SERVALPE

52MONOCHROME Blog

Photocritic: 100 FLICKR STREAMS MADE OF PURE AWESOME


Books

► See and buy my 1st HDR book at Blurb:


B W H D R Black And White Hi... By Sergio Valverde Pérez Book Preview