Sunset Over the Lake (AuroraHDR, Graphic Novel and Photocopy filters)

Cropped Original

AuroraHDR HDR edit

Graphic Novel filter

Colorized Graphic Novel filter

Photocopy edit

Colorized Photocopy edit

AuroraHDR soft edit

Cropped Original

AuroraHDR HDR edit (with Corel Paintshop Pro Magic Eraser)

Graphic Novel filter

Colorized Graphic Novel filter

Photocopy filter

Colorized Photocopy filter

AuroraHDR soft edit

Deer at Sunset

I was trying to think of what I would call this photo. "Do you see what I see?" or something clever like that. Well, as I got to putting together my labels, I had "deer" and "sunset", from which I drew my less clever title: "Deer at Sunset". If I had wanted to go even further, I could have tagged the trees and said, "Deer with Trees at Sunset." But, it's not really the best tree photo. Now that I mention it, it's not the best deer photo, either, nor really the best sunset photo. I like the color of the clouds, though.

Thanks for stopping by! :)

Fiery Sky (Dry Brush Filter)

It's been a little while since I've added a Dry Brush filter photo (at least, it feels like it's been a little while since I've added a dry brush filter photo,) so here we go. I usually use the dry brush filter when there is something 'off' in my image, either noise (or sometimes focus), but I still want to redeem the image. What I especially liked about this image was the play of the fading sunlight on the clouds, making it look as though... the sky were on fire. That's today's image; thanks for stopping by!

Mackinac Bridge Sunset (Aged Newspaper Effect)

Corel PaintShop Pro X7 has an effects filter called "Aged Newspaper" which can make your picture look like something from... an aged newspaper. Actually, there are various settings between 0-100; the setting I used for this photo of the Mackinac Bridge at sunset was 100. It took out the vibrant color in the image, but I was having fun playing around with the yellowing newspaper effect. Here's the original (from 3 exposures processed through Photomatix):

Thanks for stopping by!

Autumn Lake Sunset (Dry Brush Filter)

This photo dips back into my archives, processed for HDR in DxO and then filtered with a Dry Brush in Photoshop Elements. I liked the stripe of the cloud formation across the sky as the sun was setting that day. Thanks for stopping by!

Sunset Under the Bridge

This is a sunset view from underneath the Mackinac Bridge, in HDR, processed in Photomatix and cropped and otherwise edited in AfterShot Pro. I was going to make a joke about trolls (under the bridge) but decided against it. Thanks for stopping by!

Sunset at the Beach

As warm as this title sounds, the temperature was floating around somewhere in the fifties. The sun had already gone down, and these were some of the 'after colors' that I was getting after sunset.

Colorful Sunset at the Lake

This picture was taken at the end of a rainy day. The sky was still fairly well overcast, and toward the end of the sunset, there were some very pretty colors. (The bugs, however, were so bad, as I was standing on one of the docks - out in the water - with my camera on a tripod, I was swatting bugs and squashing them on my head, while also trying to press the shutter button at the same time. I'm sure that it would have been quite a picture, if someone had been there to observe...)

Colorful Sunset Reflected in the Lake

Here is another angle on the sunset that I posted yesterday. (This one is HDR from three exposures.) I'm still working through my crab apple tree blossom photos; they sure are fading fast this year.

Dandelions Going to Seed at the Evening Sunset by the Lake

At yesterday evening's sunset by the lake, the dandelions caught my attention. As I saw the sun shining through the field of dandelions (that had gone to seed,) I thought that there was something here that might make a good photograph. (I realize that few people love dandelions, and a lot of people hate them with such vengeance that they meticulously pick and spray and even pay others to fumigate their lawns to get rid of them, but I kind of like them. I thought these seedy dandelions added something to the image.)

Ghosted Bird at Sunset

One of the neat things that you can do with Photomatix is to create what is called a 'ghosted' image. Normally, this is something that you would try to avoid. (There are even features built into the software to deal with 'ghosts'.) Basically, what happens is this: When you merge more than one exposure together, the differences between the two pictures will appear in the merge at a lighter shade -- perhaps even appearing to be transparent.

For this particular photograph, I was taking sunset pictures (three exposures, set to autobracketing -- so that the camera automatically took the pictures very quickly in succession). In one of my sets, a bird flew across the scene. I didn't really notice it until I went to merge the photos in Photomatix, but I thought it looked kind of cool to see the progression of the bird's flight, so I kept it. And that's how I came up with my Ghosted Bird at Sunset.

Thoughts on Making an HDR Sunset Video

For a while, I've had the idea to take a series of HDR pictures and string them together to create a video. You might find my first attempt at this a little bit laughable. (I find it a little bit laughable.) Yet, I take it for what it is -- a first attempt. While such things should probably be hidden and not really shared, I'm putting it out there anyway as a starting point. A lesson teacher. I've got a lot to learn.

Here are some of the lessons that I've learned in the course of making this video.

Lesson 1 -- From start to finish, I spent about 15 minutes taking these photos. It seemed like forever! (Ha, ha, lesson 1... this stuff takes a while!)

Lesson 2 -- Having set the camera to autobracketing mode, I was firing off 3 shots (3 different exposures) every few seconds or so. I ended up with a little over 300 image files, which gets processed down to 100 frames of HDR pictures.

Lesson 3 -- I've learned this lesson before, but there are times in autobracketing mode when my Sony NEX-7 will not shoot the darkest exposure. I'm pretty sure that I've had it shoot the zero twice. This time, I ended up with a range in the darkest exposures going from minus .3 to minus .7 to minus 1. As the setting became darker, the exposures shifted, although I never got the full minus 3 that the camera had been set to take in the automatic mode.

Lesson 4 -- In order to get a truer dark exposure (in the hopes that this would give greater depth to the image), I manually generated a darkest exposure by taking those minus .3s and .7s and 1s over to the Image Data Converter program that came with the camera. This program has a feature in which you can take RAW image files and edit them, and then you can also save them again as RAW image files. Before I put myself to the trouble of doing this 100 times, I should have tested one to see if the resulting picture was noticeably better in my generated version than it was using the files that came directly from the camera. (Perhaps next time...)

Lesson 5 -- 100 frames of pictures gave me a little over 15 seconds of video.

Lesson 6 -- When your video only has 15 seconds of photo content, you might be better off finding a way to squeeze the titles and credits down to less than the length of your actual content. It reminds me of something that was said to me, when I was eating French Fries and would squeeze out a pile of ketchup. Someone would invariably ask: "Would you like some fries to go with your ketchup?" Here, it's: "Would you like some content to go with your credits?"

Lesson 7 -- In the hopes that people might be a little bit more forgiving of the said 15 seconds of video (and the 37 seconds of titles/credits), I mention the fact that there is only 15 seconds of actual video footage in the title.

Lesson 8 -- Even though the camera remained in the exact same spot the whole time I was taking pictures, it is more than obvious from the resulting footage that there was some kind of movement going on with the camera throughout the process. Maybe I could find a way to mitigate this by setting the tripod up on a sturdier surface.

Lesson 9 -- The batch processing feature on Photomatix 5 is really handy for this kind of project. It takes a little while, but - once everything is ready to go, it is really handy. I took one set of exposures and adjusted the settings in Photomatix until I was satisfied with the results. Then, I saved the preset and went into the batch processing and applied the same setting for each set of exposures. (For a future project, I could see going through and individually processing each of the frames differently. It would take a while, but it might give the project an interesting sense of variety.)

Lesson 10 -- To round out my lessons, I'm sure that there is more to learn and more to pick up along the way. If you've experimented with this kind of thing, drop me a note in the comments. I'd be interested to hear what you've learned.

Light Pink Sunset in the Cloudy Sky

Out at the city park where the local lake is still (mostly) frozen, the sun was setting behind the trees in the background of the local fishing pier. Shooting handheld on the exposure bracketing setting, it was easy to get the minus 3 and the 0 exposures; the tricky shot is the plus three. I made the shot several times, and the brightest exposure always came out blurry. Two tricks I tried to steady the shot: I balanced the camera on a post, which was somewhat effective. (It was still hit or miss as to whether I could hold the camera steady enough to get the least blurry shot.) The other trick was to sit down, hold the camera on my leg, and take the shot. I think that this trick worked a little bit better, as there was 'more' underneath the camera to keep it from moving. (Again, it didn't do as good of a job as a tripod would have done, but in the situation, I think it was the best option available.) 

Abandoned City Park -- Mosquito Park

This stone wall is part of a local city park called 'Mosquito Park' (probably not the original name), This was a Works Progress Administration project that has fallen into disrepair and has fallen prey to vandalism/graffiti artists. I only recently found out about the park's existence and thought that it might be nice to take a look around (before spring comes and the park lives up to its name...).This particular image is composed of 11 exposures tonemapped in Photomatix and edited for color, etc. Thanks for stopping by to look at my post! :)

Sunset through the Trees

As I shot this sunset through the trees, I was wishing that (a) I would have had my tripod and that (b) I would have had a clear shot of the sunset, as the sky had all sorts of beautiful colors that evening. However, upon running my images through Photomatix, I was really liking what I was seeing in this processed image. The way that the color appears through the tree branches almost reminds me of stained glass, which is kind of a cool effect. (I used a Surreal preset and warmed the temperature, also adjusted the black point setting.) I think I really like the resulting image.

Sunset Over the Frozen Lake

I just caught the end of this sunset over our local frozen lake. I was shooting handheld (no tripod) and came out with three exposures (minus 3, 0, and plus 3) that I was able to merge in Photomatix. I took the results over to Aftershot Pro for further editing. (I really like how Corel's Noise Ninja is able to clean up some of the noisy weirdness that I sometimes find in my images.)

Reflected Sunset off a Really Long Window

Reflected surfaces can often be used in one form or another to make an interesting photo. Walking by this building yesterday evening, I was pleased to catch the clouds and the sunset reflected in these really long windows. For the process, I tonemapped my 3 exposures (zero, minus and plus three) in Photomatix, and then I cleaned up some of the noise in Aftershot Pro. 

Fiery Clouds at the Sunset over the Mackinac Bridge

This HDR image of the Mackinac Bridge at sunset (from October 2013) is a fusion of 3 exposures (-3, 0, and +3). I love the colors in the clouds, and how they have taken on a fiery orange (and some purple hues) from the sunset.

Impressionistic Sunset (Looking for the Transit of Venus)

As I looked closely at the unedited version of my picture here, looking for the Transit of Venus, I did not find the planet (which was probably hidden behind the street light, anyway.) Instead, I found all sorts of dust specks in my picture (yuck!). 

Rather than trash the picture, I took it over to Photoshop Elements 2.0. I applied the Dust & Scratches filter (Radius 37 pixels, Threshold 9 levels) and... voila! The dust specks are gone! Together with the dust specks, you've also lost the street lamppost (or, from what you can see of it, it looks nothing like a street lamppost) as well as the trees looking anything like... trees. But, since you couldn't see Venus anyway, the image has been somewhat salvaged to leave you with a pretty picture of the setting sun. (Canon XTi; June 5, 2012).