Garrett is a senior at Bear Creek High School in Lakewood, Colorado. We had a great time shooting his senior pictures at Corwina Park in Jefferson County. The photos came out great, and Garrett was fun to work with.
If you need senior photos taken for JeffCo schools (Lakewood, Bear Creek, Green Mountain, Golden or Evergreen), contact me today to get your session scheduled. Slots are filling up fast, and yearbook deadlines are right around the corner.
I recently had the pleasure of taking Senior Pictures for Golden High School Senior Chris K., Class of 2011. We had a great time shooting in Corwina Park outside of Evergreen.
Headshot due dates are closing fast. Contact Chester today to schedule your Senior Picture shoot for this year.
The inbox and calendar are starting to fill up with Senior Portrait requests. I am local to Lakewood High School, Green Mountain High School, Alameda High School and Bear Valley High School. Yearbook headshot deadlines will be upon you faster than you know it (indeed, I can’t believe school starts in roughly 4 weeks), so get your photoshoot scheduled today. We can do urban or mountain. Favorite locations include Red Rocks and spots along Bear Creek toward Kittredge. Rocky Mountain National Park is an option too, but additional fees would apply for travel time.
Over the weekend I had the pleasure of doing a senior photo session for Victoria, from Lakewood High School. She chose Red Rocks Park for her shooting location, and we could not of had a better day. Blue skies, mild temps and little wind made for a fun time. We captured some great images of her that her family and friends will treasure for years to come. Thank you Victoria, and good luck to you.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Slots for Senior Pictures are going fast
With the kids back in school, everyone wants their Senior Pictures soon. Slots are filling up fast, book yours today. Urban or mountain landscapes, we shoot on location for Seniors in Alameda, Bear Creek, Green Mountain, Golden and Lakewood High School’s.
Yearbook Headshot Due Dates: