I know I keep beating this HDR drum, but it’s a good beat.
After 2 months of dealing with health crud, I recently had to shoot in wicked harsh lighting conditions. These days were not perfectly sunny blue sky days, but rather what I refer to as “White Haze”. I say that because it is almost like a white sky with a hint of cyan. Bad air, atmosphere issues, whatever you want to blame it on, the air quality has been terrible during this severe drought along the Emerald Coast of florida.
HDR to the rescue. Many times I’m fighting the over saturation that can occur when merging brackets, but in this case I didn’t pull back at all and needed those under exposed frames desperately to pull some color that did not appear in the middle/normal exposures.
The first gallery was for a client that I first shot for in 2006 and delivered some pretty over tonemapped work. Well guess what. They liked that “look”. Go figure. So I let the first set be plenty colorful and saturated and the windows will look less blown out and more like paintings than I care to deliver these days, but what the client wants (and pays for)… the client gets.
http://www.digitalcoastimage.com/resorts/2669/index.html
The second gallery was for a home that is owner occupied and the shoot could not be rescheduled. This day was probably the worst air quality I’ve seen in years. The sky was bright as can be but lacking a pure blue. A very nasty “White Haze” persisted for the 2 hour shoot. I had to work through cats, dogs and family running around preparing for the 4th of July weekend otherwise I’d have been in and out in under an hour.
Again, HDR to the rescue. And even with HDR, the one living room shot I posted at the top of this blog post with windows in frame I could just not make look like most of my other work. The sky at that point was completely WHITE to the eye. Not cloudy, just so hazy and yet bright that you’d squint fiercely as you look out the window. A circular polarizer didn’t help at all. Only HDR and the under exposed frames allowed a hint of blue/cyan to come through. And this is not some joke of a bracket like 3aeb that HDR newbies thinks can work for real estate. This was an 11 aeb +/-1EV steps.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
What program are you using to process the images. Better, what is your workflow?
Hi Michael,
Fantastic imagery and a wonderful example of exactly what I would like to produce. Thank you for taking the time to post your work along with explanations of issues and your solutions.
I live part-time in Germany and the rest of my time is spent in Southern Spain. There is a great opportunity to satisfy a need for this product (architectural / Interior HDR imagery) in both areas, though Germany is a more stable and efficient place to do business at this time.
I have plenty of experience with interior/architectural photography and my images are appreciated by my clients. I am comfortable with lighting and also with producing bracketed images in order to produce the raw materials for HDR. I have been looking around (for some time) now to locate a resource for learning the post production techniques to get my images to look and feel as yours do.
My question is this: where can I learn the post-production process required for the imagery that you produce? I know that many photographers are reluctant to “give away” their secrets, and understandably, but if there is any help that you could offer in order to point me in the right direction – I would be very grateful. Due to my location, I obviously tend to lean towards online tutorials / classes, and find them most efficient.
Thank you in advance for your reply.
Sincerely,
William Genske
Equipment and software are as follows:
Canon EOS 5 D Mark II
Canon EF-L 24-70 f2.8
Canon EF-L 70-200 f2.8
2011 Mac mini – i, 8Gb RAM
Adobe Creative Suite 5
DXO Optics Pro 5 Raw Converter
Photomatix Pro 4.1.3
Adobe Lightroom 3
Nik Color Efex Pro 4
Lighting is rented as are additional lenses (until further funding is available).
I have 6 years experience shooting interiors / architecture.