A Piece of History

On 01.27.10, In HDR, Industrial, Photos, By Chester

Durango and Silverton Steam Locomotive #482

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.

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Golden Gate HDR – Photo of the Week

On 01.08.10, In HDR, Landscape, Photo of the Week, Photos, By Chester

Golden Gate in HDR, as show by Chester Bullock

This HDR image came out far better than I expected it to in the wind and water vapor surrounding me. It has been chosen as an editor’s pick at HDRSpotting.com, and HDR afficionado website. And now you can hang it on the wall of your home or office by placing an order from my online gallery. White space has been added to the gallery version, allowing proper cropping for standard prints and frames.

Also, if you like my work, consider becoming a fan of my Facebook page. On January 31, I will select one fan at random to receive a $50 gift certificate to my online gallery (for a print purchase only, not for session fees).

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One Shot HDR – Torrey’s Peak Reflection, Colorado

On 01.06.10, In Commentary, HDR, Landscape, Photos, By Chester

Torrey's Reflection - Tonemapped

For as long as HDR has been a processing option, there has been debate about whether or not a single tonemapped image constitutes and HDR image. Classic thinking would say no. However, Photomatix is capable of taking a RAW image and doing the tonemapping actions that come with HDR processing. In fact, the guy who is now producing the best HDR books, Trey Ratcliff, encourages you to try the technique. So I did, and you see the result above.

I personally am happy with it. Some photographers like heavily tonemapped HDR, some don’t. For me it depends on the image. More importantly though, the image consuming public likes it, and wants more of it. To that end, I guess I will do my part and keep contributing.

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HDR – I Still Love It

On 12.30.09, In Commentary, Industrial, Photos, Software, By Chester

HDR image of a gondola car taken near South Fork, Colorado with an Olympus E-510

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“.

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.

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Another picture of our lights

On 12.28.09, In Commentary, Photos, By Chester

HDR Lights
After I took a picture of our holiday lights a couple of weeks ago, the snow melted, and we added a few more lights. Tuesday night it started to snow, so Wednesday morning I went out and took some pics, then combined them into an HDR. Didn’t come out to bad at all.

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Photo of the Week: End of the Line

On 11.13.09, In Industrial, Photo of the Week, Photos, By Chester


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.

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Review: Practical HDRI: High Dynamic Range Imaging for Photographers

On 06.03.09, In Book Reviews, By Chester

Practical HDRI: High Dynamic Range Imaging for Photographers Practical HDRI: High Dynamic Range Imaging for Photographers by Jack Howard is the latest book I have read on the subject. I haven’t touched my Photomatix software (indeed, even my camera) for some time. Reading through this book helped inspire me to get back out shooting photos, and also to see if Olympus was doing anything to help with the capture of HDR images. As it turns out, the recently released Olympus E-620 has far better support for proper image bracketing to get the exposures you need.

The book itself is fairly short – just 168 pages. But these pages are full of good information and practical examples using more than just one software package. What I like most about it is the frankness of the author when it comes to producing realistic HDR images, as opposed to some of the cartoonish extremes that have come to symbolize the genre. I much prefer a realistic image that has great depth in all ranges between the darkest and lightest sections of the image. In addition to the software examples (Photoshop CS3, Photomatix and FDRTools), the author tells you what to watch for when capturing the images, well before they see the computer.

All in all this was a very worthwhile book, with more than enough interesting bits for the novice and experienced alike. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is looking for more information on HDRI.

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Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays

On 12.25.08, In Commentary, Photos, Software, By Chester

Christmas Lights HDR
Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays to all. I have been seeing great pictures of holiday lights this season, and finally decided to try and take one of my own. The photo above is an HDR Exposure Blend (using Photomatix) of 7 exposures I took one morning. I also took some photos just using the ambient light and not doing the HDR thing. After reviewing these shots on the computer, I decided the white lights just aren’t very interesting. Normally we decorate the two large fir trees in front of our house with colored strings, but we opted not to this year. Rest assured, we will next year. That will give it some “life” I think. So instead, I will go out in search of other homes in our neighborhood to take pics of. I had better hurry, only a week to go before most people take their lights down.

Oh, and I should point out that the inspiration for this, besides the photos I linked to above, was a Strobist article about holiday light pictures. As is the norm with Strobist help, this article was wonderful for a rookie like me.

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In Pursuit of Realistic HDR

On 12.24.08, In Industrial, Photos, By Chester

HDR of a used tire warehouse
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.

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HDR Done Right

On 10.23.08, In Photos, Software, By Chester

Ferringway #8 As previously mentioned, I took some time while in Durango recently and worked on my HDR images, specifically where real estate is concerned. I even followed the directions from the Photomatix people. While I actually took several HDR images on my trip, I was particularly pleased with the real estate ones.

The best one, the exterior shot above, is a combination of 4 exposures. I imported all of my images form the weekend into Lightroom, then selected them and corrected the white balance. I had shot them without resetting my settings from earlier experiments – thank god for RAW and Lightroom. I then took the 4 images and exported them using the HDRSoft Photomatix Lightroom export plugin. I then combined the images in Photomatix, adjusted the tone map until I had an image I liked, then saved it and went back to Lightroom.

I had some really bad converging verticals though, so from Lightroom I chose to edit the image in Photoshop CS3. Once in PSCS3 (say that 5 times fast), I used the Distort feature to straighten the verticals and make everything look proper. All in all, I am quite pleased with the outcome. I know there are free tools out there to generate HDR images, but none of the ones I tried came anywhere close to Photomatix in terms of resultant quality or ease of use. If you are seriously considering HDR photography, you really should invest in Photomatix.

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