Continue reading »]]> I was recently invited to a new photography social media site called Floggia by Miguel Kudry.  It is an interesting photography social network that is extremely easy to navigate and upload to.  Both of these aspects are instrumental to someone like me.  Someone who has Adult A.D.D when it comes to the whole social network on the web.  There are so many places to share your work and everyone of them are so entirely different.  So what does Floggia add to the social media world for Photographers?

1. The most important aspect of Floggia, all of the rights to your images remain with you.  It is stated several times, not only in the guidelines but the reminder is their with every upload.
2. Floggia is EXTREMELY simple to upload to, and  incredibly fast!  I selected 9 images to upload, they were in my personal profile within 20 seconds.  I had them tagged in another 20 seconds and I started following 3 topics in less than a minute.  As one who does not have much time for social media sites, Floggia does not leave much room for excuses!
3. Floggia not only allows you to follow individual photographers, it allows you to follow topics as well.  As you tag your photos they go into a pool of others with the same tag.  This may not seem very new at all, but Floggia does an awesome job of visually displaying the photos coming through the stream for each topic.  There is a list view and a grid view.  I prefer the grid view with smaller thumbnails.  I am currently following Hdr, Landscape, and Macro, my 3 favorite aspects of photography!
4. It is simple and clean.  It is not convoluted with image vomit.  Floggia adds enough space between the images to allow your eyes a break from one image to the next.
5. It is the little things in life, I love the attention to detail Floggia adds by throwing the EXIF data next to the shot being viewed.
6. Floggia allows you to not only favorite images, but like them as well.  For those who like to differentiate between their likes and loves!  An awesome feature for those who like something, but don’t necessarily like it enough to call it a favorite!  Of course, like many social media sites, you can directly like images and topics to Facebook as well.
7. The most impressive aspect of Floggia, it was created by a 19 year old student, web entrepreneur.  Awesome job Miguel.

Continue reading »]]> I spent all last week back at Arizona near Fort Huachuca.  This time I brought more flashlights for the cave exploring in the Coronado National Memorial!  In case you missed the last post about Arizona, take a little detour.  While there was not as much down time this trip, we did manage to head to the Cave Trail again.  Last time, my co worker and I only had little LED key chain flash lights and our cell phones, we figured using the battery to explore a 600 foot cave would probably be a bad idea!

This trip I was prepared with 2 high powered Sure Fire flashlights, they worked awesome for light painting the inside of the cave.  I handed one to a co-worker and had him do the interior painting, panning back and forth along the walls while I spent more time on the stalagmites and stalactites.  He did an awesome job for being a first time light painter!  After shooting the cave, we ran a test and both turned out the flashlights, there was not a spec of light to be seen, it is weird being in extreme darkness.  You do not normally find yourself in the complete absence of light.  I expected to be more frightened by the complete lack of light, however, after several seconds of hearing and seeing nothing i was quite comforted.

On our way back to our hotel we spotted a huge cross from the highway that appeared to be some sort of church.  We had to take some side roads on the mountain side to get there, but man was it worth it!  Panoramic views from behind this 75 foot cross.  It was pretty uplifting and well worth the detour, if you are ever in Sierra Vista Arizona, check out Our Lady of the Sierras Shrine!

We took off to Tombstone the following day and took a tour of the old Court House which is now a museum.  It was pretty interesting reading about Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and the gangs of the Wild West.

Tip For The Week:

When you are in the complete absence of light and want to do some light painting there are a few camera settings that will help you achieve a swell product:

• Position the camera about 20 feet or more from the subject you want to shoot, on a very sturdy tripod of course!
• Set the ISO as low as you can go to help prevent noise in the dark areas.
• Set the focus to Manual on your camera and set it to infinity on the lens (looks like this ∞).
• Place the camera in Manual Mode and open the shutter to f/11.0 or higher, to avoid a narrow depth of field.  I modified the Exposure value on the image below to speed up the shutter a bit after some test shots.
• Place the Shutter Speed on Bulb “B” setting with a shutter release attached to the camera body.
• Once you are all setup flip the shutter release cable to the locked position, your camera shutter should open to take a picture.
• Begin to paint with your flashlight, but make sure you have a stop watch handy (cell phone works, if it counts seconds).  Try not to focus the beam on one spot for too long as it will “burn” some nasty highlights into your image.
• After painting for a minute or so, flick the shutter release to close and wait for the image to record.
• Use the first exposure as a test.  Once you have the image recorded on your camera, modify your exposure time (stop watch time) to get a good exposure.  If your first shot was too bright, use less time to paint, if it is too dark, spend more time painting before you stop the shutter.
• So how do you crank out an HDR with one light painted exposure like this?  I will show you on Friday!

Continue reading »]]> I noticed that my tutorials were very difficult to find as you navigate Everyday HDR.  I have been working toward making a one stop shop page for all of my tutorials.  Check back often as this page will be evolving as the tutorials are created.  I just started working on it so stop on by and check it out.  You may have missed some of the tutorials already populated if you are new to Everyday HDR.

Continue reading »]]> When I renewed my NAPP Membership I was offered the The Photoshop CS 5 Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby at no additional cost, of course I took them up on it!  You may be thinking, “Blake, why would you need an intro to Photoshop book, don’t you throw out some awesome Photoshop tutorials every Friday?”  Well thank you for thinking that… I am flattered, but the truth is you can always learn more, especially through Scott Kelby’s incredible teaching style.

Mr. Kelby lays out his books with incredible attention to detail.  The pages are not convoluted with images and chaotic figures.  The screen shots are accurate and to the point making the transition from one step to another almost symphonic.

As a beginner reading “The Photoshop CS 5 Book for Digital Photographers”, you do not have to trouble yourself with fumbling over the crazy Photoshop jargon.  Mr. Kelby helps you tame the Photoshop beast  from cover to cover with his “everyday language” style of teaching.  The Chapter introductions are a blast to read as he mingles movie titles, band names, and song titles into the Chapter title.

No matter your level of Photoshop knowledge, I can guarantee that you will learn something when you read The Photoshop CS 5 Book For Digital Photographers.  I have been an avid Photoshopper (not one who shops for photos, but one who uses Photoshop) since 1999 and was delighted to have learned so much more through the content of Scott Kelby’s Photoshop book specifically designed for digital photographers.

Bottom Line:

If you have Photoshop CS 5 and do not have this book there is something wrong!  You are doing yourself a serious injustice by not owning The Photoshop CS 5 Book For Digital Photographers.  Unless you have some kind of adversity to bettering your Photography, you should probably add it to your collection!

Continue reading »]]> Okay, so the title was a little off color!  My apologies, but I couldn’t help myself… the title, not playing with my package…err this is getting bad!

I have been running through my items for purchase in the blog store, and I have to say I am loving them!  Not only because I made them (that was a narcissistic joke, lol), but because they add some interesting elements to my HDR photos.  I always dreamed of seeing my HDR work in a museum now I can with my dreamscape effect in the Tidbits of Awesomeness Actions Package.  I ran the action on this photo and immediately had a dream like effect on it.  All I had to do was re-size some of my HDR images and, BAM, my dream came true in a HDR nerd sort of way…

Don’t forget to check out the Texture Package either.  It played an integral role in making this image look hot, no pun intended!

Continue reading »]]> There is nothing I hate more with HDR photography than Shadow Noise and Highlight blowouts.  These areas are especially common when tone mapping with Photomatix Pro.  While they are very annoying, they are not worth throwing Photomatix out of my HDRsenal by any means.  After taste testing many, if not all, of the HDR tone mapping software on the market, I find Photomatix to be the best.  You cannot beat that look that is created with Photomatix, many other tone mapping products make the HDR images look milky and high contrast.  Not Photomatix!

So how do you deal with the Shadow Noise and the Highlight Blowouts in Post?  The short answer, for shadow noise, use the Dust and Scratches Filter in Photoshop.  For highlight blowouts, use the Patch Tool.  If you need more description or would like to see how I handle them, check out this quick tutorial.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9_G9BIvy_s

Continue reading »]]> I recently added a new product to the Everyday HDR Store, it is a very simple texture package.  Applying textures to a photo is pretty simple and there are several websites on the internet to buy stock textures.   My texture package differs in many ways!  These textures are already set up and ready to go, download the .zip file, open the .psd of the file you want and immediately you have 2 texture options at your disposal.  Drag, drop, and  you are done, that easy.

Also included in the Texture Package is a how to guide, with examples of each texture being applied as well as an exclusive advanced texture video that can only be accessed with your purchase of the package.  I have also included a how to guide on capturing your own textures.

So let me break it down for you, I am giving you 6 high resolution textures, a guide on how to shoot your own, and an advanced tutorial on how to make your own textures like the ones seen here.  Oh, how could I forget, I also threw in 2 borders for grins, all for $15.00 USD!

Check out the before and after as well as a quick how to video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiY3nxVlhMk

Continue reading »]]> After processing my pictures from the Nelson Atkins Museum a couple of weeks ago I could see that I really needed to use my tripod there to really make great HDR’s.  In order to take my exposures in the museum I had to increase my ISO to 640 just to get a decent shot at f/2.8.  I am sure you have heard me gripe about the ISO on my E-30 multiple times, there is a reason it goes down to ISO 100, because anything higher means a nightmare of noise!  My HDR products weren’t that bad, but I knew I could get better with a lower ISO and a tripod.

I contacted the Museum and was granted 1 hour of visitor free access to the Museum.  I was in hog HDR heaven!  I only wish that it could be 8 hours!  I was able to use my tripod and set my ISO to 100 and take my time with each room, well as much time as I could afford with 1 hour.

Along with my Actions Package, I modified a few steps in my post processing this week and love the outcome.  I will show you a couple of new techniques I acquired this Friday for the Free Tutorial.  Last weeks Dual Processing of HDR Images went over very well, but I think this week will be as useful if not more!  Also check out the new Texture Package up for grabs in the HDR Store, I will be showing a quick review and ease of use guide on Wednesday.

Tip For The Week:

When shooting panoramic shots of interiors, ensure that your tripod head is level as you pan.  I had a horrible time correcting the Pano’s I took of the rooms in the Atkins Museum partially because I shot them with a Wide Angle Lens at its lowest focal length, another problem with interior panoramas.  Since Wide Angle Lenses tend to distort the image you are composing in order to fit it all in one shot, as you pan the distortion changes, as the distortion changes so does the perspective.  When I ran the Automated image stitching in Photoshop I had to choose the Spherical option to ensure the perspectives changed as the images were stitched together.  What resulted were horizontal and vertical lines that would not correct with any means I know of (Lens Correction, Perspective Transform, Skew, Warp, I even tried the bulge filter).

Bottom Line: Unless you are really going for warped perspectives, change the focal length of your wide angle lens to ensure it is not warping the perspective too much, or avoid it all together and shoot with a fixed lens.  Also ensure the tripod head is level as you change positions during panning.

Continue reading »]]> We have all fallen victim to the lazy HDRtist.  You know, when you are processing an image in Photomatix and there are distracting highlight blow outs so you do everything in your power to fix them and in turn end up sacrificing the rest of the image.  So you tell yourself, eh, I can fix the rest in Photoshop in post, no big deal….

Instead, how about processing the image twice.  Process it once for the great image with highlight blowouts and then process it again without the blowouts.  Then in post combine the best of both worlds!  If you think that is advanced you may want to check out this tutorial, it is much easier than you may be thinking!  I use this technique all the time, I cannot tell you how many times it has pulled me out of a tight spot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30ZWNwOjYZU

Continue reading »]]> The folks at Topaz Labs are at it again, continually making great post processing products for the creative photographer.  Their newest release is Topaz Star Effects.  Star Effects mimics that star like pattern that lights emit at narrow shutter speeds.  Shoot a lamp post at f/22 and you will get a pretty interesting star pattern, but when shot at say f/2.8 the lamp post just emits a warm glow.  There have been several nights where I have been out shooting and have either forgot or the circumstances didn’t allow me to set my shutter so narrow.  That is where Topaz Star Effects comes in, and at only 29.99 it is quite a steal ($19.99 through February 15th 2012 with coupon code TopazStars).

The Interface:

The Good:

• The algorithm picks up on the highlights very well and places the star effects in the precise spot it would normally be desired.
• They threw in a brush for subtracting and adding the star effects.  Since the stars go where your highlights go this is pretty necessary as you can get stars in some undesirable places!
• The interface is simple and matches all other Topaz products.  I picked it up and within 2 minutes made my first successful image.
• There are several star effects and types to choose from.

The Bad

• I found the Topaz preview to be slightly different than the actual outcome.  The interface made the star effects appear brighter than their application.  Not a major flaw, just an observation.

The Bottom Line:

Star Effects does exactly what it implies and it does it well.  It is perfect for any photographer who wants to add a bit of bling to their final product.