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After my last post (where I mentioned HDR) I got a lot of emails, mostly asking what the heck HDR is! Here is a fairly short synopsis, with pictures. The basic idea is that it combines 3 photos, with 3 different exposures, into ONE, so (in theory) you get the best of all 3. Often when I take pictures outside, either the sky is white or the shadows are black, or both! HDR "fixes" the problem (FYI, there is software for this that is FAR better than what you get with the HDR setting on an iphone). But it can also sometimes remove all the contrast. Which is why I was curious whether other people have had luck with it. But it's maybe a little new yet? That's ok. I'll try it out myself soon and let you you guys know what I think. Meanwhile, here's a rose.
12 comments:
The article you posted the link to mentiones HDR feature on phones etc. If you have a camera where you can adjust the settings manually, you don't need to buy a new one. Usually, taking an underexposed picture and a correctly exposed picture will do the trick. Just add both layers on top of eachother, play with the layer modes in your favourite editing software (overlay, multiply, soft light, hard light, etc) until you get a satisfying result, and you're done.
There's just one thing to keep in mind with this method: make sure you use a tripod to take your pictures as you need them to be exactly the same, compositionally spoken. In this, if an HDR feature on a camera can take 2 or 3 differently exposed pictures in a fraction of a second, you'd have the advantage that if you keep your phone camera fairly still, it would be ok. For that, one must have a lot of light though to avoid a slow shutterspeed.
Have fun experimenting!
Carol, have you tried 'Value Viewer'. It's an app that gives you gray scale and/or contrast and something else? You can use it on current photos and you can take photos with it.
Unbelievable luminosity! I will have to figure out how you did it.
I love the glowing heat inside that rose! Very sexy rose!
Carol - As a photographer coming back into painting, I have been thinking about this quite a bit.
In photography - particularly portraits, the goal (and the popular style these days) is to get really nice, even light on the subject. Almost high key. Quite specifically, I was taught that during retouching, you want the blacks to just barely come back in to your shot. Programs like lightroom will even highlight when all of your pixels go to black so that you are "warned". Because in a digital shot, as those pixels go black, you lose all of your detail. Photographers call this "opening up" your shadows.
However for painting, I've been finding most of my all photos rather unsatisfactory as resources. Precisely because there is very little value range. Should I use them as resource material, I'm going to have to add those values back in.
I think HDR style shots are useful as resources because you can get a photo with the detail of the entire scene/subject captured. So when you go back to paint, you will have those details available for use. However, my tentative plan is to shoot an HDR for reference, but to also capture a photo with the range of values that I actually want to see on my canvas. That second shot may not be a good reference for the details, but it will be a better representation of the "look" that I want in my painting.
Thanks for the info on HDR! It is worth giving a try for better photo references. I love your rose painting!
Thank you all for the great info! This gives me a lot to think about. I will post more on the subject when I've tried it out. Thanks again!
beautiful rose Carol!
Ha, Carol, you're under the spell of Brenda...check out her painting from last February, Pink Petals,posted here: http://brendaferguson.blogspot.com/2013/01/pink-petals.html, and on here 2014 calendar; the two of you are painting variations on a theme even though a year apart, and perhaps you two aren't even consciously aware of it, eh?
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