Photo of the month: November

This is a HDR image of St Paul’s Cathedral in Melbourne, I placed my camera on the floor on a small tripod and took 3 photographs -2, 0 and +2 stops. The images were loaded into Lightroom and a virtual copy was made of the under exposed image, the exposure was then dropped on this image a further 2 stops and the 4 images were loaded into Photomatix. They were then processed into one image and edited in Photoshop where I added the dark figure which was an image of my son dressed in a black hooded gown.

St Paul's Cathedral
St Paul's Cathedral

Photo (s) of the month August

Running late again, as they say the older you get the faster time passes, I have found this to be true. These couple of of photos from a series were for a client of mine that wanted to sell his Dodge Dakota R/T. I tried to capture some of that 250 horsepower aura that is a part of this classic American pick up. These photos were processed with Photomatix and a little extra processing in Lightroom 3. I have had Photomatix for some time and found that the images it produces look a bit overdone. But with images of vehicles it gives a great effect. Most of the photos of this vehicle were taken just before a storm on a school oval. The sky was dramatic, the green grass and lack of objects near the vehicle produced favorable reflections on the glossy black body. In one of the images I had to remove a reflect of a small ladder that I used to get a couple of high view shots, it was about 10 meters away, I was astounded at just how well it was reproduced on the tailgate of the Dakota. If you have to photograph vehicles keep an eye out for unwanted reflections. I also use a polarizer on almost all the images in this series. The polarizer helps control the reflections in the paintwork and windows. You can view more images at Vehicle Phtography click the icon at the lower right hand corner to view full screen.

Photo of the Month: May

Wellington, New Zealand. This is another HDR image down near Wellington wharf as I said previously the weather was against me with grey overcast sky and intermittent rain. The rain was actually quite a help as it made the pavement stand out. This image was made up of 3 exposures then processed and enhanced in Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom. I was quite happy with the final image.

Photo of the Month: April

This is a photo of the “Natural Arch” in Springbrook, Queensland, Australia. It was originally taken as 3 images with exposure bracketing to render using one of my HDR programs. I just could not get it right so I used Photoshop, masking out sections where necessary. I would love to return and try again, next time I would bracket manually over 5 or 6 frames.