Foto Friday – First HDR

Taken with the Nikon D40 in Washington City, Utah on October 21, 2008. Manual Exposure Mode, 23mm, HDR of (1.0, 1/3, 1/10, and 1/30 sec) at f/4.5, ISO 200, Nikon Raw Format converted to Adobe DNG format. Edited in Lightroom 2.2, HDR in LR Enfuse.

I posted a few pictures in the last while that appear to have an “HDR look” that I created in Lightroom. Those are fun but I have really wanted to make a real HDR (High Dynamic Range) photo. This post documents my first attempt.

While in the St. George area I visited a mock town that was hidden inside Washington City. I saw these two sheds and was instantly fascinated by them! Alas that they were facing the wrong way (the background sky was brightly illuminated and the facades were shrouded in shadow. I didn’t bring a tripod but had my trusty bean bag (hey Mom, thanks for sewing that for me) so I was able to make this shot. I made a suite of exposures (see exposure data above and click on photo to see a super large version).

After import into Lightroom I used Timothy Armes LR/Enfuse Plugin to create the HDR photo. I used the automatic settings for my first run. I have provided the raw output from LR/Enfuse below.

So this is a good start. I now have a neutral exposure of the entire scene. Finally I did some extra tweaks in Lightroom to correct the white balance (ideally I would have fixed that before merging) and bring out more of the contrast to arrived at the version at the top of the post. So the photo isn’t amazing itself; however, I felt the process and knowledge gained were worth sharing. Please send any questions in the comments. Have a great new year and make time to enjoy yourself behind the lens this coming year!

Hubba-licious

WOW! Rob is H-O-T!!! Doesn't this look like the cover of GQ Magazine?

These are some fun pictures I took of him when we had the studio lights set up.

I was going through some saved emails I have from our dating time and found this. It's an excerpt from April 8, 2002. I wrote it to a good friend of mine detailing my first date with Rob.

"You ready to hear about my wonderful weekend? Why don't you just wish me congratulations right now and get it over with. Because it was so good."

"So I was going to call Rob Friday afternoon to finalize plans for that night. But HE called ME before I even got a chance. We chatted for a while then decided on him meeting at my house and I'd drive down there (Sky Box)."

"So he comes by and he looks cute. I did too. I had curly hair and you could tell he really liked it. So we're driving and all the while chatting and chatting. It's just so easy for us to find things to talk and laugh about. So we get there and eat and watch the Jazz game...well kind of...we mostly talked and didn't pay attention to anything else. We even shared our food with each other. Pretty cute."

"After the game we decide that we HAVE to run through the fountain. It's a must. So we both get wet and have fun doing it. At this point I know that we are having a blast...but I'm not sure if we are having a blast as friends, or as more. But then he puts his arm around me and I got my answer. Smooth. We drive back to my place all the while laughing again and talking about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Hilarious. So we hang out at my house for a while and then go to his to watch "The Three Amigos". This is where it starts to get interesting."

"During the movie we FINALLY put it out on the table and cuddle and more importantly...hold hands (don't you think that means more than cuddling? Definitely. No more questions about whether or not we only like each other as friends. So after the movie we're just sitting there talking and he says he needs to tell me something. I'm thinking...oh, crap. Here it comes. I'm going to be pissed. But instead this is what he says. "Just so you know, Kristie and I broke up this last week." wwwwwwwwooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhoooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"I WANTED to say, "It's about freakin' time!" But instead I say, "Oh, I'm sorry." He just says, no, it's cool. So she is totally and completely OUT OF THE PICTURE!!! Like I said before...you can congratulate me now."

"So it's getting late and he's driving me home. Then we get to my house and it's the somewhat awkward part of the date where you are on the doorstep saying good night. He gives me a hug and then we stand there with our arms around each other for like 5 minutes just looking at each other. In my mind I was thinking "is he going to kiss me, is he not going to kiss me." And I'm sure he was thinking, "should I kiss her, should I not kiss her?" Finally we just left it at that. But I know it won't be too much longer."

I'm SOOOOOOO glad I kept so many of my old emails and text conversations. There are so many amazing and funny things that I would never remember otherwise. I'll have to post more excerpts later.

Hope you enjoyed this little trip down memory lane with me.

Stuff For Sale

We have been trying to sell a few things on KSL Classifieds and Craigslist for a while now, but due to the holidays and tons of scammers, we haven't been able to yet. We are VERY willing to negotiate prices. So if you or anyone you know want any of this, let us know!

Couch--$175.00:



Neutral colored couch with 2 pillows. Good condition.

Pet free, smoke free home.





TV--$45.00:

20" Toshiba Quatro Bomba. 8 years old but has great picture and sound. The screen is flat, not curved, so there isn't any distortion in the picture.











TV Stand--$20.00:

Dark brown with 3 shelves on side and two inside. Very good condition.

Golf Clubs and Nice Bag--$65.00:



Grand Regal Plus Oversize Irons. 9,8,7,6,5,4,P,M,S. Acushnet Putter. Fairway 420 7 Wood Driver (Graphite). Very nice Knight golf bag (thick and padded shoulder strap and auto extending legs. A great deal.



Ilford Multigrade Black and White Contrast Camera Filters--$10.00:



Your student (high school or college) will need these for their photography class.

The twelve MULTIGRADE filters are numbered 00-5 in 1/2 steps, with the lowest filter number corresponding to the softest contrast. They can be used above or below the lens and can be cut to fit the enlarger filter drawer.

MULTIGRADE filters are very easy to use: no complicated calculations are needed when changing from one filter to another. The exposure time for filters 00-3 1/2 is the same; that for filters 4-5 is double.

The Sledding Event of the Season!

We had a really great time at Nate’s 3rd birthday party! We planned a sledding party with a bunch of Nate's cousins.  We had a lot of snow the day before so there was plenty to go around.  Nate really enjoyed spending time, laughing, and goofing around with his cousins.  Nate loved all the attention and loves all his toys.  Thanks for coming and making Nate’s birthday an awesome one!  See the rest of the pictures here.  Nate is growing up so fast.  We are very proud of him and love him so much!

Foto Friday - Star of Bethlehem

It's been a couple of months (sad!) since I've taken any "artsy" photos. Obviously, since it's Christmas, I wanted to photograph something that pertains to this beautiful season, but something a little more abstract than the usual holiday pictures.

Last week Rob showed me a picture from a photography blog that he follows. I thought it was cool and decided I should try something like that. I knew just the place. Layton Park has a huge setup of Christmas lights, which is perfect! It satisfies my theme plus works perfectly with the technique I was curious to try.

I bundled up and after showing me how to adjust the shutter speed, Rob wished me luck (secretly, I don't think he thought I'd have any!). I walked around the park, pinkie fingers frozen, excitedly getting what I thought would turn out to be fun shots.

For the technical junkies out there, the shutter speed that worked the best for me was 1 second and then I oh-so-slightly moved the camera in different patterns. These shots are actually very cropped in order to get such detail. I'm amazed that they are so crisp. I guess that wasn't so technical after all.

So, without further adieu, I present "Lightwebs" (Slideshow and Gallery).

Sweet Christmas Moment

This morning Nate crawled into bed with us before we all headed downstairs to open gifts.
Rob and I told him "Merry Christmas!" He leaned over me, kissed Rob on the cheek, and said, "Dwerry Drissdwass, Da-yee."

SO CUTE!

Southern Utah Ghost Towns

While visiting the St. George area we visited the Silver Reef and Grafton ghost towns (Gallery and Slideshow).  The photo above was taken at the Grafton ghost town (the Zion National Park area is in the distance).  They were both kind of cool but maybe not worth the drive to Grafton.  We only spent about an hour at each place (our visit to Silver Reef was cut short due to injury, and their just wasn’t much to see at Grafton).  I had a fun time hiking around in the ruins of Silver Reef and we were very fortunate to arrive at Grafton during “magic hour“ so we had awesome light!  Hope you enjoy the photos.

Thanksgiving Reunion

The day after Thanksgiving my mom’s side of the family got together for a reunion.  The family lives and works in a lot of distant places around the country/world so we took advantage of a lot of people being in town!  My parents put an insane amount of work into this reunion and we are all very grateful for their efforts.  It turned out really well!  My dad asked me to take some pictures and a large family portrait.  Not having enough power with my little SB-600 speedlight, I rented some really nice studio lights from Pictureline (if you ever need a camera go here, they are awesome).  These are the pictures we took and our first attempt with studio lights.  I hope you enjoy them.

Foto Friday – Discovery

Taken with the Nikon D40 near the Sand Dunes in Snow Canyon State Park, Utah on October 11, 2008. Manual Exposure Mode, 18mm, 1/25 sec f/7.1, ISO 800, Nikon Raw Format converted to Adobe DNG format. Edited in Lightroom 2.2.

We visited Snow Canyon on the weekend that tons of snow fell in Salt Lake (very strange) so it was still pretty cold in the St. George area.  We were playing on the sand dunes and not having much fun because of some strong and frigid wind (the girls and babies stayed in the car)!  Nate, Jake, and I decided to explore some rocks where the wind wouldn’t be so strong.  We came across this wonderful place and got some great photos. 

Some have expressed that this photo gives a feeling of entrapment; however, I feel much more excitement and sense of discovery from the light emerging from above to wrap around the rock and define the boundaries of the dark shadows below.  Perhaps some trove of knowledge, treasure, or even you are hiding in the shadow waiting to be discovered.  The pathway to discovery is often made with lots of texture, nooks, bumps, intriguing surfaces, angles that are perplexing yet fascinating at the same time, and filled with the great contrast that life has to offer.  Enjoy the ride and I hope you enjoy this image.

I took this photo back in October and I didn’t get a chance to work on it until this week.  What a treat it was to edit the Snow Canyon photos.  I really enjoy that place and feel that I have many more pictures to make of that park.  I hope that the Lightroom users out there will benefit from my processing description this week.  I have a cool tip for you.

My edits to this image in Lightroom 2 were not really extensive, although they were very deliberate.  I spent a long time working to get the boundaries of shadow and light just how I wanted them.  Too bad that none of you have calibrated screens to really see it right, sigh.  I worked mostly in the Treatment panel by converting the color image (by the way, it is always better to shoot in color and do the conversion to black and white in post – I’ll explain this sometime soon) and working with the exposure, blacks, contrast, and clarity sliders.  I increased the exposure by 3/4 of a stop to get the a really bright light from above.  Toggling on and off the alt key (command on mac) while increasing the black point (using the blacks slider) gives a very cool view of the how much of the photo is going completely black (this means all detail or texture in that area is no longer visible).  I used that approach to find the sweet-spot for the shadows.  I adjusted the contrast slider to give a little more separation to the lights and darks, then adjusted to the clarity slider (mid-tone sharpening) to bring out a little more texture in the gray areas of the image.  I almost forgot to mention that I used the adjustment brush (this allows me to make changes to specific parts of the image as part of the raw workflow – very cool) to darken the rock mass on the upper left part of the frame.  If you have a specific question about the editing please leave me a question in the comments.

A couple people have asked us for a few tips on how to improve their pictures of people.  Julie and I plan to put together a few tips that really helped us and guide a lot of the pictures we take.  Hopefully that will be beneficial for you all.  That’s all for this week.  Hope you enjoyed this image.  Have a great week and have fun behind the lens.

Snow Canyon

Here are our landscape pictures from Snow Canyon. It was really cold and windy that day, which was a bummer for Rob because he had two freezing girls with him. Otherwise, he would have been there for hours taking pictures!

Snow Canyon is such a treat! It's so fun to play in the sand, climb the petrified dunes, and view the amazing landscape. I don't think the place gets enough credit. Such a fun place for families to hike and explore! Here is a post we did about a different visit there. We'll probably return every time we find ourselves in the St. George area.

Oh, and you're in for a real treat tomorrow. Rob has an excellent Foto Friday that he took while there.