Ghost town Como in HDR

Como is a dying town. It's not quite a ghost town yet. There are still about a dozen or so people living in the town. Unfortunately, the train station I wanted to photograph was closed to public. I even tried to find a way to sneak around the fencing, with no luck.

Fortunately, there were a number of old buildings in various states of disrepair for me to photograph.

Brief recap about HDR - HDR is a compilation of 4-8 images in a succession of exposures, laid over one another to create an image that can be very true to life. It can also be manipulated to be hypersurreal.

This is an image of a building I shot at perfect exposure - 0.0.

Now, I also shot this building at -0.5, -1.0, -1.5 (underexposed) and +0.5, +1.0, +1.5 (overexposed). I used Photoshop's program to merge the images for me. As a side note for the user of PS3 - apparently, its HDR merging program isn't very good, and there are better ones out there. If this is a technique you want to seriously pursue, investigate alternatives.

Anyway, back on track. After I ran the hdr merge feature, this is one of the results I got. It's harsher, which works well for this sort of image. However, it's not really exciting.

So I tweaked various things and got this...
It's not quite hypersurreal, but it's a lot more interesting. I could've pushed this further and come out with even more bizarre results, but sometimes that's just over top and can be a turnoff. Additionally, if you look closely, it's obvious that by making these tweaks, I lost some details that really makes this building interesting, like the wavy, warped sideboards along the side and the plywood in the windows.

Looking this over, I prefer the first HDR results because I can see more potential in it, as far as photo manipulation, like making it look vintage and vignetted - much like what I did with my niece's photo. I will try find a happy medium between the two though, and see how it looks first though

Incidentally - I photoshopped behind this old ramshackle one out. See original to compare.

I'll have more pictures later.

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Belated Friday Apollo & Pseudo HDR tutorial

"Hi!"

As promised a couple weeks ago, here's a brief set of instructions for those of you interested in creating pseudo HDR images. To make it really easy, what I suggest is downloading an "action," - a pre-recorded set of instructions that tells your program how to manipulate an image automatically. It's a great shortcut, but also a crutch.

I found the one I use here: www.finessefx.com. This particular action made by Karl Sneath is pretty effective for drawing out details in washed-out sky. You will need to download and install this in your Adobe folder.

(Side note: there are also downloadable actions for other progams like Gimp)

After you have installed this...As always, make sure to save a copy of the original photo in a new filename and work on that instead of the original - these actions are quite destructive and can affect the image quality, and some actions - not the one I suggested downloading - will automatically save for you after it has finished making changes, making it difficult for you to get original image back if you don't like the results.

Look for the triangle icon in your menu. If it's not there, you can hit Alt+F9

(2) Then scroll down until you see the name of the action. If you downloaded the same pseudo HDR one that I did, it will be clearly labeled, "Pseudo HDR." Click on the folder to open it. (3) click on the first step to highlight it, then (4) click on the triangle (aka play button) near bottom.

Once you click the play button, you can sit back and let the action run. It will ask you occasionally to click "OK" or to make a few minor tweaks. As you play with this feature, you'll get a better idea of what works and what doesn't.

As you can see, when this action is finished, you've a number of layers to play with, to make any further tweaks to your image. For example, if I decide I don't want vignetting at all, I can just unclick the "eye" and it goes away.

I know my instructions aren't comprehensive, but really, best way to learn this stuff is to play with photoshop yourself. It should get you started, at least.

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Another photo and some news

Old photo. I took this, I believe, last spring. I didn't have photoshop at the time. The original was pretty interesting but I wanted to see how it'd look with faux HDR. It came out darker than I expected, but I like it. It's pretty soothing, which isn't an image normally associated with metro or train stations.

On personal note...Shit. In just three days, I'll be on the road, on my way to Colorado. I'm very excited, but at the same time, a bit nervous. For the first time in a long long time, my job future isn't certain. I plan to freelance - working a 9-to-5 gig isn't for me. Of course, freelancing brings several uncertainties with it. It's dependent on how well I network and being a salesperson, selling my service and myself. Which is my big weakness. But I'm determined to make it work. And if it doesn't, at least I can say I tried. I'd rather try and fail than not try at all and wonder for the rest of my life if I could've done it.

Sentimentalism aside. I must say I really...hate...packing. I'm going to try remember that so I don't fill my next home with clutter.

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