If you are a railfan, you know about the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad in southern Colorado. This is a different view of the one I posted Wednesday. As with the HDR version, this image is also for sale as a print or a download in my online photo gallery.
Also, this is the last reminder to become a fan of my Facebook page. Do it before the end of the day Sunday and you will be entered to win a $50 gift certificate to my online photo gallery.
Watching the newest episode of Top Gear on BBC America the other night, I was inspired to revisit my images of the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad that I shot back in August of 2009. There was one 5 shot sequence where my intention was to make an HDR. I actually made it, but then I saw some ghosting from people moving, so I shelved it until I had time to work it out. Well, I went back in, and tried a different option for ghost handling in the latest Photomatix. The result is the image you see above. Well, kind of. After I got the HDR, I brought it back into Adobe Lightroom and applied some of the Kubota Lightroom Actions to the image. The result is an image that feels shot in the period, but has the benefits of HDR.
Available for sale in my online gallery, this is the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad engine #482. It is a Baldwin 282 steam locomotive, manufactured in 1925 by the Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Having served on the Denver & Rio Grande Western from 1925 to 1962, it was then sold to the Cu,bres & Toltec Scenic Railway in 1970. I have not been able to locate information detailing when it was sold to the DSNRR.
Shot in the fall of 2008, this is one of my all time favorites. Kind of a niche thing, but I love how it is framed by the trees. Order a print or download now for the astronomer in your life. This photo was taken with my Olympus E-510.
The image above is of a braided hose line on the primary lift motor of a Titan II missile. In September of 2008 I had the opportunity to visit the Titan II Museum outside of Tucson, AZ. The museum is actually a decommissioned Titan II complex, a relic of the Cold War. This photo is available for purchase as a print or digital download in my Art Gallery.
I took several interesting pictures on that day. It was one of the more fruitful photography days I have had, most likely because that’s all it was supposed to be. No doubt more of those images will make their way here as photos of the week.
More information about the museum can be seen at their website.
There is a spur that ends in South Fork, Colorado, and it is presently used for storage. There used to be a couple miles of spine cars here. Now they are storing a few miles of gondolas.
This is my favorite of the HDR compsites I created with Photomatix. This one was generated with the Details Enhancer as an HDR Image. This image is available as a print or digital download from my new online gallery.
As you may have gathered, I have been taking pictures of some local glassblowers and the work they produce. I have also been trying to take pics of the guys in action, but I was missing one key piece of equipment – a proper lens filter.
The glass that these guys use for their artistic glasswork is called borosilicate. When it is introduced into the flame, you get a very long sodium flare, as illustrated by the photo at left. The best way to counter this effect is to employ a Didymium filter. The glassworkers have eyewear made from it, and you can order large square pieces of it to use as a type of shield for a glassworking station. But you cannot easily find a camera filter made from this stuff. So I contacted the company that the glassworkers get their eyewear from. Turns out that Aura Lens, based in Minnesota, can take a normal UV filter, remove the filter element, and replace it with Didymium treated glass. Mine arrived last week (cost was roughly $70).
Friday I went to the glassworkers studio and took about 150 shots. The picture at the top of this article was shot through the Didymium filter. Compare that to the unfiltered shot further down and you can really see the difference.
Lighting these situations can be pretty tricky, depending on what you want to show. For a few of the pics, I wanted to be sure I got the workers hands in the image, or part of their workspace. To accomplish this, I placed my homemade softbox on my Olympus FL-36 flash, mounted on my Gorillapod and fired with the Cactus remote triggers. I moved it around a bit during the shoot, and was pleased with the results.
I love the doors that photography and website management and consulting have opened for me. I have been able to travel to some interesting places (Detroit Auto Show, Toronto) and also meet interesting people and learn about new things (the glassblowing, a recent photo shoot about wine). I am especially pleased to be involved in the main project these glassblowers are working on – The Community Carbon Project. Cool glassware that is recycled and useful. Can’t beat that.
This past weekend I was tasked with taking photos of the Community Carbon Project, a Boulder/ Longmont – based company that is recycling glass bottles and making useful products out of them. This was part of a website development project I am doing for them. I wasn’t sure what the lighting situation would be like, so I brought some umbrellas, my Cactus trigger, and my homemade softbox. Turns out I didn’t need the umbrellas. I set the softbox on my Olympus flash, connected it to the Cactus wireless trigger, and kept it camera right and on a medium setting, 7.7GN if I recall correctly.
From there it was a matter of aiming it at what I was shooting. I got the guys in action, turning Red Stripe beer bottles into drinking tumblers, and also some action at the furnace where they heat the glass to a working temperature.
I also tested a filter that a generous DPReview person let me try. It did not get the desired effect though, so I will be sending it back to him and instead sending a UV filter to a company called Aura Lens who can insert one of their Didymium filters into the frame. If I am going to be shooting glassblowers as much as I think I will in the near future, it is a sound investment.
I really enjoyed being in the shop, watching these artisans do their thing. We are all excited at the potential their business idea has, and I should have the website done this week or next for you to order items from. They are making some seriously cool, functional items. And I get to document it all, including all the product photos. Not a bad gig at all.
Also, a special thanks to Ryan, Angelo and Regist for putting up with me while I was there. They let me try making my own glass. I failed miserably, and they were great about it.
Dan Achatz, a regular in the Flickr PFRE group, put together one of the best HDR tutorials I have seen yet. He goes through his process of compiling the images into a realistic representation of what he saw in person. It is well worth taking some time and watching the video.
After watching it, I followed his steps when making the HDR image shown above. It’s the used tire warehouse at Metal Movers, a Denver, Colorado based auto recycler. I am doing some website consulting for them and needed some photos of the different products and services they offer. A tire warehouse of this size is a lighting challenge due to all the dark colors and shadows, so I thought it would be best to do an HDR to represent it. This particular image is a combintation of 5 exposures, taken at the intervals that Photomatix recommends. I think it came out pretty well, the notable exception being the fluorescent overhead lights. I need to practice with HDR more, but I am really pleased with the results I am starting to get.
HDR – I Still Love It
I started shooting High Dynamic Range (commonly known as HDR) images roughly 2 years ago. I don’t shoot many (26 in my flickr gallery), but I enjoy shooting them. The gondola rail car in the photo above is the best one I have shot I think. Shooting HDR takes patience, at least with older dSLR’s like my Olympus E-510. Newer camera models, mainly ones that have arrived in the last 6-12 months, might have enough exposure bracketing built in to them to accomplish HDR captures with one click of the shutter release. Still others might have had a firmware update to accomplish this. It is my biggest hope that whatever Olympus brings out to replace the E-3 will have this feature.
I could write a tutorial on taking HDR images, but really, it would pale in comparison to the master, so I’ll let you have a look at Trey Ratcliff’s HDR Tutorial instead. I would also encourage you to check out his new book – “A World in HDR
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After the captures, you need software. I have been using Photomatix HDR since I started doing HDR images, and highly recommend it. Trey does too, and he has even worked out a 15% discount with Photomatix (follow the link to see how to get it). Once again, Trey tells us the best way to use the software. For me personally, I usually play with a couple different settings in Photomatix to get the photo looking just the way I want to. For the gondola above, I think there were 4 versions, this one being the best (in my eyes). I would encourage you to experiment as well, and get the look that pleases you the most.
If you are looking for inspiration in other people’s HDR work, or if you have your own portfolio of images to show people, you need to take a look at hdrspotting.com. This collection of images is extraordinary, and I hope I produce something worthy of inclusion. To become a contributor, you need to obtain an invitation code. While it is not clear to me how people get codes to give away, if you watch #hdrspotting on Twitter or ask around in the HDR group on Facebook, you should see a code pop up. I will post them to my Twitter feed if they ever come my way.
If you are a flickr user, you should look into the HDR and Photomatix groups. Great pictures and discussions happen in both.
Get out and try your hand at HDR, and put links to your pictures in the comments below. I love seeing what other people do with this new type of imagery.