Showing posts with label HDR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HDR. Show all posts

Friday 5 August 2011

Weekly commented photo # 31 - Dusk light on the Alpine meadow

Dusk light on Grand Cret d'Eau mountain
Dusk light on Grand Crêt d'Eau mountain


That's another scheduled post because i'm not at work this week. No office work, no blogging and a very few photography. I hope to retrieve a better posting rate here during next week.

As you can devine, this image is from the same serie that the previous one of my Weekly commented photos. It was done a little later and i was still around the Chalet du Sac on Grand Crêt d'Eau mountain.

Usually, chalets are built with wood logs but the word also designates these little houses used by sheperds spending summer with their flocks in the mountains.
This one is not still used by sheperds but i've read that anyone hiking there can stop here and spend the night in a safe place.
That's not difficult to devine that i will probably try that in a short time, just to be sure not to miss the first lights of the day.

The photo is a HDR one done from 5 exposures and processed with SilkyPix and Photomatix.

Why did i use HDR photography here ?
Just because that the scene dynamic range was really too high to give a nice and good result even with a very strong GND filtration.

Friday 22 July 2011

Weekly commented photo # 29 - Saut Girard in Herisson waterfalls

Saut Girard in Hérisson waterfalls
Saut Girard in Hérisson waterfalls



Hérisson river runs in Jura mountains and offers one of the most famous range of waterfalls in France.

If you look for an english translation of the word Hérisson you will find things like Hedgehog or Urchin but the name of the river doesn't come from this pretty animal. It comes from Yrisson which means sacred waters in old jura language.

I wanted to visit this area for a long time but i never took any time for that when i was living in Provence. Now i'm closer and it's easier.
I went there for a few family holidays at the end of the past week. It was not intended to be a photography trip but decently i couldn't go there without a camera.

From top to bottom of the river, there are seven main waterfalls :
  • Saut Girard
  • Moulin Jeunet
  • Saut de la Forge
  • Château Garnier
  • Gour Bleu
  • Grand Saut
  • Eventail
The river runs mostly in the forest and autumn is probably the best season for beautiful photography. In summer beautiful lights are really shorts in time and i didn't want to spend most of my days running from top to bottom, looking for nice point of views and trying to guess when the light would be at its best on each waterfall.
So, before leaving home i did some internet searches and decided to work in two places :
  • Saut Girard, because the access is easy.
  • Gour Bleu, because it's really in the forest and i love that.
We arrived on Thursday evening and it was easy to find a place for our van not too far from Saut Girard.

The sky was really cloudy and i started to try different compositions on one side of the waterfall. Suddenly, the clouds left some place for the late evening sun and all the area wath painted with this beautiful golden light.
I mounted my Sigma 10-20 on my camera and ran with my tripod to the middle of the little lake. It's probably the best place to show the waterfall and its neighborhood but it's impossible to find an interesting foreground. That's why the photo is cropped to 16x9 aspect ratio.

The contrast was huge between the sky, the bright rocks and the shadows under the trees. After a few tries, i decided to go for an HDR work and the photo posted here was done from 4 exposures processed with Picturenaut and Silkypix.

Friday 10 June 2011

Weeky commented photo #23 - Rural landscape, mountains and clouds

Rural landscape before dusk in Haute Savoie
Rural landscape before dusk in Haute Savoie


I'm still working on the serie about The rural landscapes around my home.
This image was done about one month ago. I was making photos of some rural fields in the light of the end of afternoon when i noticed these beautiful clouds formation over the mountains in the far background.

Scenes with such a dynamic range are not easy to capture :
  • You can use some GND filters to balance highlights in the sky and foreground shadows
  • You can make several shots of the scene with different exposures and then blend them digitally (using HDR method or not)
The day was a little wendy and i felt a little too lazy for multiple exposures.
So i mounted a 1.2 soft GND filter in front of my lens and could capture a raw file where highlights and shadows were both respected.

No information was lost but the raw file was difficult to process to obtain a nice photo. After many tries with curves tweaks, manual masking, etc i developped my raw files with three different exposure ajustments.
Then i used Picturenaut to produce and tonemap an hdr file.
The result was then saved as a 48 bits TIFF file that just needed some minor adjustments do give the photo you can see here.

I like to name things by their real names and for me such a worflow is not HDR Photography. There is no magic and whatever the algorithm you choose to process a single file, it can't give you more information that what is included into this single file.
If i would have shot the scene without the GND filter i would have exposed it to protect the sky for clipping and then the foreground would have been really underexposed. Then using any method to retrive informations in the shadows would have revealed more noise than image details.

Friday 4 February 2011

Weekly commented photo #5 - Visitation basilica by night in Annecy

Visitation basilica by night in Annecy
Visitation basilica by night in Annecy


I've to say the truth : i've never liked this monument. But when i arrived back in Annecy in july i saw it by night and thought it could make a beautiful photo.

I love night images but that's not what i'm doing most. I usually prefer the special lights of dawn or dusk. So that's only in january that i decided to try this image.
One afternoon i went to the lake for some dusk shots on the Imperial beach and took a long lens with me for the basilica.
When the night started to fall, i left the beach and walked along the lake until i found a nice point of view.
After one first test, exposing the shot for the highlights on the bell tower, i was sure that HDR would give a relly better image.
Keeping in one single exposure all the details in the highlights would give dark shadows on all the left part of the church. So i did 5 shots at f11 from 4 to more than 80 seconds.
As the evening was a little windy, i weighted my tripod with my bag and as usual i used mirror lockup plus a remote shutter release for each exposure. Getting sharp images with long exposures while using a long lens in the wind can be a little tricky but this night, i was lucky.
After this 5 shots, i walked deeper in the city to make images of some other monuments and also to warm me up.

I processed the raw files 2 or 3 days after with silkypix and Photomatix, trying to keep the tonemapping at a soft level.

Sunday 16 January 2011

Annecy - Palais de l'Isle at night

Annecy - Palais de l'Isle at night
Annecy - Palais de l'Isle at night


An image from this night.
I went to Annecy in the end of afternoon to make some images of the lake at dusk and when it was too late i moved to the heart of the city for a few night shots.

I you want to know more about this place and see how this place looks in day light, you can have a look here.

And for people who like this kind of information, this is an HDR work done with Photomatix from 5 exposures.

Sunday 19 December 2010

Saint Jean chapel illuminated at night

Saint Jean chapel illuminated at night
Saint Jean chapel illuminated at night


I stopped last night in front of this little chapel. The sky seemed to be black but as usual, i was surprised to see the light a one minute long exposure could reveal.

Of course if one minute was perfect for the sky, it was also really too long for the snow ...
So i did a bunch of exposures from 2 to 60 seconds. Once in the "darkroom" i choose 4 and processed them with Photomatix.

Note : There is a road just near and the people driving there last night seemed surprised to see a crazy man with a tripod and a camera standing out in the cold :)

Saturday 30 October 2010

Annecy lake and the Swans Island

Annecy lake and the Swans Island
Annecy lake and the Swans Island


The Swans Island is an artificial island done on Annecy lake in 1854. A couple of swans was given by Geneva city and they started to live there ...

I've tried GND filters on this scene but i prefer the result of this HDR image done from many exposures processed with PictureNaut and Oloneo PhotoEngine. Autumn colors and details on the island are really better.

Friday 29 October 2010

Annecy - Palais de l'Isle

Palais de l'Isle in Annecy
Palais de l'Isle in Annecy


I've eared that this very pretty little castle was one of the most photographed monument in France. I don't know if it's true but this place is hugely touristic and you can read anything about Annecy without seeing such an image.

This castel was built in 1132 and is also very well known under the name of Les vieilles prisons because it was used as a jail during a while.

You can learn a little more about it with this english page of Wikipedia and much more on the french page.

And for peoples who like technical info : this image is the result of a HDR work done from 3 exposures and processed with Photomatix and Oloneo PhotoEngine.

Monday 18 October 2010

Big sky over the autumn vineyard - HDR

Big sky over the autumn vineyard
Big sky over the autumn vineyard

Some vines giving a very good white wine, just around our new place.

HDR done from 6 exposures, converted to TIF with Silkypix and then to HDR and tonemapped once with Picturenaut and once with Oloneo PhotoEngine.

Sunday 22 August 2010

Barbennaz waterfall and some news from the Alps

Barbennaz waterfall
Barbennaz waterfall


So on july 24 after some weeks spent packaging our stuff, we left Provence to come and live in the french Alps.
A few days later i recovered a decent DSL connection but just used it a little bit. Too many hard word in our new but very old house and no really time to spend processing images i've started to make while exploring the landscape all around.

Saturday 19 June 2010

Notre Dame de Pitié

Notre Dame de Pitié at Collobrières in Provence
Notre Dame de Pitié at Collobrières in Provence


This little chapel is about 100 meters far from my home.
I've ever posted another HDR view of its interior some years ago, this one is really more quiet :)

For people interested in the technical side of photography, the final image was obtained by tonemapping the same HDR file once with Photomatix and once with Picturenaut. The 2 resulting TIF files were then blended.

Thursday 17 June 2010

Rural landscape under the clouds near Manosque in Provence

Rural landscape under the clouds
Rural landscape under the clouds


I spent a few days in the Alpes de Hautes Provence region about one week ago.
On sunday i was driving back home across a very rural countryside and decided to stop on a little path to catch some of these cereal fields under the storm light.

I also stopped a few kilometers after this place when i saw some realy old barns. I'll probably post one or two images here next week.

Wednesday 26 May 2010

The forest under the clouds

The forest under the clouds - Massif des Maures
The forest under the clouds - Massif des Maures"


A morning view of the Provence forest in the Massif des Maures.
Taken a very few hours after dawn the light was changing every second.

This one was done from 3 exposures with Photomatix.
Some other with a most impressive sky but no HDR should come in a few days.

Tuesday 18 May 2010

Place Rouget de l'Isle

Place Rouget de l'Isle in Collobrières - Provence
Place Rouget de l'Isle in Collobrières - Provence


For the peoples interested in technical things :

This image was created from 3 exposures blended into one real HDR image with Picturenaut.
A first tonemapping was done also with Picturenaut and then the HDR file was also tonemapped with Photomatix.
The 2 tonemapped images were then blended to give the final result.

The most difficult thing is to wait for the wind to stop :)

Wednesday 5 May 2010

Green spring

Green springtime on the Massif des Maures - Provence
Green springtime on the Massif des Maures - Provence


Early on Monday morning i had some photos to make for a client in this part of the hills around my home.
I could work before the sky was too cloudy and after i had a little time to make a few shots for me before the rain.

I like this one showing all the green hills. Colors will change quickly in the next months ...
It was done from 4 exposures processed with Silkypix and Photomatix. I also have one done with a 0.6 GND filter but i prefer the HDR one, i think it gives a better rendition of the green nuances.

Wednesday 28 April 2010

Corsica - Corte by a winter morning

Corsica - Corte by a winter morning
Corsica - Corte by a winter morning


Done by tone mapping with Photomatix,an HDR image produced from 3 exposures.

This kind of photo can of course be done without any HDR process but i love the tone mapping effect with this kind of mood. And applying tone mapping to a real HDR image gives a better file quality than on a single exposure. So ...

Friday 9 April 2010

Wednesday 24 March 2010

Corsica - Corte HDR panorama in the morning clouds

Corsica - Corte in the morning clouds
Corsica - Corte in the morning clouds


Some words about the making of :

This is an HDR panorama made from 6 frames with three exposures for each frames so 18 images done with a long lens where used to produce this one. The result is an about 24 megapixels file.

As most often when shooting for HDR with a long lens i used a remotre controler plus mirror lockup instead of the intervalometer function of my camera, it avoids vibrations.

The nef files where first converted to 48 bits tif files with Silkypix. The only adjustments done here where just white balance and sharpening. For color and tones i prefer to work on the entire image.

The tif files where then stitched into a real HDR file with PTGui pro.

The HDR file was tonemapped in Photomatix, i find it easier than tonemapping in PTGui.

The tonemapped resulting tif file was lastely processed with SilkyPix for tones and colors adjustments.

Note : my general tips for HDR landscapes are here.

Tuesday 16 March 2010

Corsica - Tagnone river in winter - black and white HDR

Winter mood on Tagnone river - Corsica
Winter mood on Tagnone river - Corsica

Thursday 25 February 2010

On the road to home - Corsica

On the road to home - Corsica
On the road to home - Corsica


That's the only road driving to our temporary home in Corsica.
This image is an other HDR work done from 4 exposures with Photomatix. I also have one done with my GND filters but this one is really more detailed.

We still have an awfull weather and non raining hours are very rare. The day before i took this photo we had some wind at more than 150 km/h according to the meteo services.
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