sheilnaik's photostream

I bought a Professor Kobre's Lightscoop (www.lightscoop.com) a few weeks ago as a Christmas present to myself. Always wanted one, and when I saw it on sale, I jumped on it. This shot's from a test run.

Learning how to best use it will still take some time since it's a cheap workaround for a bounce flash. On my first run, I took this photo of my cat (the only living object in the room at the time) and it came out well, but the creme-colored bed was overexposed and ruined the shot. I brought a few exposures it into Photomatix to see what it could do, and I was pleased that it didn't completely kill the shot. Instead, it brought the exposure down on the outside of the shot, while still properly exposing his face (after I adjusted some settings). Not bad.

Honestly, I used to think HDR imaging was a cheap way to make some boring image look interesting, but when used like this, maybe it's not so bad. This is less about altering the original image and more about getting a full range of exposures than can normally be captured by my (crappy) camera. I figure if it still looks natural, no reason it can't be used.

I visited Christkindlmarkt Bethlehem, a Christmas arts festival in Bethlehem, in the middle of December with Julie and her mom. While browsing around, I left the group to go to the outdoor bathroom, and immediately fell in love with this factory I saw above the port-a-potties. I knew I had to shoot it as an HDR because the bleak cloudy sky matched the look of the building and I wanted to capture both, so I took a few handheld shots and moved on.

Unfortunately, I quickly realized the problem with shooting handheld HDRs using a crappy camera. My Rebel XS is a fantastic camera, but it shoots multiple exposures way too slow, resulting in bracketed exposures that don't line up properly in Photoshop or Photomatix because of hand movement. I assumed my HDR experiment was a failure.

At least, that was until I realized today (half a month later) that I had shot in RAW and could fake bracketed exposures by bumping up and down the exposures in Lightroom and exporting the photos as separate images. Yes, once again, RAW and Lightroom came to the rescue!

I exported five exposures from Lightroom, threw them into Photomatix, and out came a fantastic photo that really captured the detail behind the deserted factory and the dreariness of the cloudy day. I kept this one in color because I loved the detail that showed on the factory. I'm usually not a big fan of HDR imagery, but I'm pleased with this one.

It was hellishly cloudy in Washington DC this weekend, so I wanted to take the opportunity to shoot at least one really great black and white HDR. This one was shot on 7th Street looking eastwards towards the Capitol Building.

Took the three exposures and merged them into an HDR in Photoshop CS5. Imported the HDR into Lightroom, converted it into black and white, added a Red High-Contrast filter, added a graduated filter to decrease the exposure in the sky, decreased overall contrast of the entire photo, added a vignette, added grain for an even darker effect, re-exported to Photoshop to clone out a stray crane, and re-imported into Lightroom. All for one photo.

An astronaut part of the Apollo Lunar Module exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.

Eating a gigantic turkey leg for lunch. The face might look crazy, but this is really the only way to conquer this thing.

Added a tight crop to get rid of the overexposed sky and added a black and white preset found on the internet (the Who Is Wolf B+W Deluxe preset from Chris's collection: www.presetsheaven.com/2010/12/08/28-free-lightroom-preset.... I don't like the default black and white presets that come with Lightroom (they're not contrast-y enough), and I always have a hard time figuring out how to create a black and white image I like myself. Until I decide to actually teach myself, I'm cheating and using free presets found online.

Thanks, Julie, for taking this photo. Nice work.