Ferns in French Canyon
The weather did not fully cooperate on the day I went to Starved Rock to lead a landscape photography workshop. It rained in the morning, was sunny in late morning but began to cloud up after Noon, just the time we were going out to shoot. Sure, you say, shooting landscapes at Noon is crazy but as an experience in composition for workshop participants it has a world of value. Anyhow, back to the subject at hand. I chose to explore in French Canyon, a canyon in the sandstone carved by flowing water fed by snowmelt and rainfall alone. Even with an evening and morning rain, the “river bed” was dry with the exception of a few remaining puddles here and there.
As I walked along the dry river bed I saw this bunch of ferns growing from the sandstone wall of the canyon. Surrounded by fallen leaves, the green of the ferns just popped out at me. The pattern of the fern leaves and the random scatter of the fallen leaves that surrounded the ferns implies an unresolved tension. I simply couldn’t walk away from this image.
I decided to shoot using HDR technique. By exposing for highlights, shadows and midtones in three separate exposures I knew I could overcome the gloomy gray skies and the soft, shadowless light and have an image that reflected the saturation I saw in nature. I was right. The green makes a statement among all of the fallen leaves.
French Canyon Foot Bridge
Near the fern patch this foot bridge crosses the river bed just above a small falloff that, in the wet season, sports a small waterfall. Because of the rain there was a wet streak in the center of the falloff that, from this view is covered by the fallen leaves. I saw entropy in the colors of the bridge and the fallen leaves carpeting the river bed. The foot bridge caps the curve of the riverbed as it falls off into deeper recesses of this inspiring canyon. Of course, the way I framed the image a viewer is not privy to specifics about where the bridge comes from or goes to. The bridge is just there, much like the landscape, only it is placed by some organizing purpose while the landscape simply is, a random occurrence peculiar to the geology of the area and the erosive forces of water and ice.
Here are some shots of participants applying some of the ideas discussed in the workshop. The day was a mixture of sort of dull light with some interruptions of bright sunlight. There was a threat of rain, mostly in the morning when we were inside talking. No one seemed to mind the weather and all went out shooting up a storm. I was out there with a gray card and my light meter which gave me an opportunity to talk about how one uses the gray card to control white balance along with manual metering to assure a proper exposure in the camera. One might want to rely on the in camera meter for some shooting but for greater control a manual meter and manual adjustments is needed. I even had a chance to explain what I was doing to a group of hikers walking through French Canyon where we were shooting at the time.
When we returned to the conference room to look at the work we did it turned out that because I shot in RAW format, my computer would not read the .cr2 files on my card. What a bummer, I thought. We looked at a number of images made by participants, looking at them through the critical perspective of composition. But I didn’t get to show any of mine. Well, I can now correct the error and show off four images that I shot while out in the woods. These images, all of them HDR conversions, were shot using 5 exposures in a range from 2 stops under to 2 stops over at one EV intervals. The first image is a ferns and leaves that I though presented interesting visual patterns. The second image is made from an overturned tree root structure. One can see the embedded dirt throughout the entire frame. I shot this fairly close with a long lens (I was using a Tameron 70-200mm f2.8 lens wide open) looking to capture the irregular patterns of the roots as they spread out from the center. The next image is of a hollowed out log at the base of an intermittently flowing waterfall. I was struck by the contrasting shapes as they contributed to the almost surreal nature of this scene. Finally, a fence line leading along the path at the top of a canyon. To the left of the fence is a several hundred foot drop to the canyon floor. I was taken by the almost strange leaning of the fence as it serves to protect hikers from doom.
The Early Morning Mist image shown on the left was shot with a Canon 30D and a 70-200mm f/2.8 Tamron lens. Using aperture priority at f/18, I shot a 5-shot bracket with each exposure differing by 1EV. The resulting merger of the full bracket was unsatisfying mainly because the dynamic range of the scene was low. No more than 4-stops separated the extreme shadows from the extreme highlights. What’s a fellow to do?
HDR photography allows one to stretch one’s creative approach to the photographic image in ways that never before seemed possible. Like any approach, however, one must learn some basic elements of the craft before one becomes truly proficient in the art afforded by the technique. In this post I explore some basic concepts of dynamic range, contrast and EV range and how one may approach different conditions with HDR image making.
When creating hdr images one must be concerned with the HDR look. But what exactly is the HDR look? If one wants to be technical then the look is defined as a tone mapped look; an image that is the product of the merging of three or more bracketed exposures that is the result of tone mapping and not the merger alone. So what! In reality, the HDR look is a creative look, the tone mapping that produces an image that resembles a traditional photograph but no longer looks like a traditional photograph. Colors are richer, more saturated. Edges are better defined and detail is clear across a wide tonal range. High levels of localized contrast along side richly detailed areas of shadow luminosity where tonal barriers are crossed to the point of surreal presentation. Now one is coming close to a definition of the HDR look. It is recognizable if not definable; much like the definition of pornography when someone said, “I can’t quite define it but I know it when I see it.” the HDR image is clearly recognizable by all who see it.
Shot with a Canon 30D with a Tameron 70-200mm f/2.8 set at 70mm, I set the aperture at f/19 with aperture priority and shot a 5-shot bracketed exposure with each exposure separated by 1EV.
Not 5 miles from the scene above, the remains of this truck rusts in a field, internal parts removed. Shot with a Canon 5D with a Tameron 28-105mm lens set at 28mm f/2.8 lens with the focal length set at 28mm and the aperture set at f/16 on aperture priority mode. This image was merged from a 5-shot bracketed exposure with 1EV between each exposure.
I shot Tractor in Hayfield with a Canon 30D with a Tameron 28-105mm f/2.8 lens. I set the ISO to 400. Using aperture priority, I set the aperture at f/16 and varied the shutter to capture a 9-shot bracketed exposure over a 5EV range, exposing in 1/2EV increments. I shot in RAW.
The image to the left was shot with a Canon 5D with a Tamron 28-105mm f/2.8 lens. Shot at ISO 200 at 28mm I used aperture priority mode at f/11 and shot a 5-bracket exposure spacing each exposure by 1EV. I created the hdr file using Photomatix Pro and tone mapped the .hdr file saving the tone mapped file to a 16-bit TIFF. I then converted the 16-bit TIFF to an 8-bit JPEG for purposes of displaying the image on the web.
In HDR photography, RAW does provide one with a possible advantage. RAW exposures create a digital file (not an image) that captures all that the camera’s sensor is capable of capturing. The RAW image displayed is prioritized to the camera settings but all of the other image data is present in the file as well. In single image shooting, RAW offers one a wide range of fixes for shots that simply got away, that are over or under exposed or the white balance is way off. Because all of the data is already there, poor RAW images can be salvaged. In HDR the RAW file allows one to create a faux HDR image in a number of conversion/merger software solutions. Photomatix Pro, the software I use allows one to create a good HDR image from a single RAW formatted file. The image to the left is one I captured recently while visiting the Volo Bog in Northeast Illinois. I was on a walk with my wife (it was a slow day at the studio) and, of course, I had my camera along because I intended to take some macro prairie flower images. This shot presented itself; I shot it hand-held in RAW with the intent of creating the faux HDR image. In this case, I made a good choice.
