Durban ICC HDR

Hi All

Another entry for the HDR theme this month (where are all the others?). Same technique as the previous, this time shot this month though. I was covering the Power Indaba for the organising company on Tuesday and when I left I quickly took the opportunity to grab some frames of the ICC itself.

Any c and c are always welcome.

Cheers
E

New tutorial on basic HDR blending

Hi

I've posted an image that I've used to illustrate a recent tutorial. The new tutorial can be seen by clicking the link.

Cheers
E

New tutorial on sharpening

For anybody interested I have just posted part 1 of a 2 part series on sharpening on my website. You can click the link to go there directly. Any comments or suggestions on improving the tutorial will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers
E

February theme - blended images

We got some really great weather images last month. Thanks for those who posted. Keep posting and if you know someone who might be interested in taking part send them the details to the blog.

February's theme - Blended Images.
blending images is rapidly becoming a recognized and valid post-processing technique to obtain images that are simply impossible to capture with standard current equipment e.g. panoramics (with lots of resolved detail), Huge depth of field and of course HDR. BBC wildlife doesn't accept them yet (I think) except for their 'digital vision' category, but every other major international salon does. So it's obviously a technique to learn and practise. For those wanting to learn a more advanced blending method for HDR take a look at the latest NPN article on blended images. For a more basic approach read my quick and dirty layers tutorial. The posted image was a blend of three images using my approach in the tutorial.

E

Weather entry Nick

Dear all,

I was struggling with this months theme as I didn't get any great chances to shoot amazing thunderstorms or strong contrasts between wet & dry and stuff. Found an old image though of a line of dark clouds coming in and looking very threatening which was a stitched panorama. But after looking at it I realized it was actually a very poor image from a photographic point of view.

Then last week, whilst surfing and taking photos of the guys, I noticed that the wind had changed and was blowing from the east towards the shore. And when that happens, hundreds of blue-bottles usually get washed ashore. I reckoned that would could as a weather shot, took my macro lens and started to play around with my newly made soft-box (Emil's design). Indeed, plenty of blue-bottles stranded in the next half an hour, but then the difficulty only started... How on earth do you take an interesting photograph of a blue-bottle?!? I tried dozens of options, but couldn't get a 'interesting' shot, a shot that would capture the viewer. Eventually I was even digging a man sized hole in the sand with one hand (the other hand was holding the camera) where I could lie in in a skew yoga position, to get to eye level with the incoming sea in the background, and risking having that stranded blue-bottle being washed right into my face with the next incoming wave. Not even to mention the risk for my camera...

Yet, still I don't think I managed to take extra-ordinary photos and hence would like to ask for your advice. What would you have done to make the images more interesting? Below are three shots that are somehow okay.

Nikon D8-, Nikkor Micro 55 mm, f22, 1/200 sec, ISO 100

Here I wanted to portray a 'battle field of victims left behind'.

Here I like the front one, leaning to one side as a stranded ship would do. Shame on me for cutting of a edge...

This one looks somewhat vulnerable, lost even. Leaning on one side, helpless, with a 'tail/line' reaching for the ocean. Wish I could have had the ocean in this pic too.

Let me know your thoughts please.

Cheers Nick