Over 2-1/2 years ago my family took a trip to the Oregon coast.  The rest stop to visit Multnomah Falls is right in the middle of the Interstate, so ya just gotta plan the time into a trip to view the most photographed waterfall in the world.  You just gotta!

Anyway, I was just digging through my photography archives to see if I had a pic of the falls to try my hand at my newly developed HDR post-processing skills.  The pic I found, the one show here, was the first worthy image I happened across.  I might have a better pic in my archives, but I didn’t bother looking further once I decided to choose this image to process.

The set below shows the original exposure (SOOC) and the final HDR.  The beauty of this HDR is that it was created from a single RAW image, which was a hand-held composition!  Perhaps in another post I’ll explain how I did it.  For now, enjoy!  :-)

[Show as slideshow]

I’m walking myself through an intellectually intense HDR course from the master himself, Trey Ratcliff.  Trey would say the course is geared toward anyone that has a desire for this form of artisan photography, but I think you have to have a solid foundation in photography and a good grasp of post-processing tools to be able to to this.  Also, I say intellectually because Trey has a unique mindset in the way he visualizes and personally understands color, dimension, light, and he has a high vocabulary to convey the things he teaches.  Gaining the new perspectives and knowledge makes me feel even much more empowered as a photographer, and I suppose I can say I not only feel like a professional photographer, but now I also feel like a professional artist.

So, I wanted to share my homework assignments.  Trey has graciously provided me images that he has captured from all around the world, so I would me amiss for not giving him full attribution for the beautiful photos he’s taken.  He has allowed me to post my edited versions.  If you want to see some incredibly breath-taking photographs, you must visit Trey’s website, Stuck in Customs.  All photos on this page are copyright © Trey Ratcliff, including the images post-processed by me.

I will try to explain my approach and process, but I am not going to try to do so in layman’s terms, so I apologize in advance if anything mentioned isn’t fully understandable.

To begin with, I started with 7 bracketed images with exposure compensations of -3, -2, -1, 0, +1, +2, +3.  I really felt I only needed to blend the -1, 0, and +1 exposures, as I was sure I would have enough detail from these and that the extremely over and under exposed images wouldn’t make much more of a difference.  These are the RAQ images I chose to blend:

I merged the images for HDR processing and dialed in some settings to tone map the image to my taste.  This typically only gets the photo about 70%-80% processed.  Here’s the result:

I felt this image needed to have the shadow details brought out more.  Not only did I want to embody a sense of being in the photo, or rather evoking the brain to believe that it had a memory of being there, I wanted to encapsulate a dark-ages period look.  I learned a spectacular, undocumented method of double tone mapping, and so I processed the image one more time. Here’s how it turned out:

That looks much better to me.  But it’s not done.  I see several problems with this image that still need to be edited.  For one, there some major ghosting of people.  I don’t mind people being in the pic, but some of ‘em look a little tourist-y, and of those some are just hanging around too long in one spot.  So much so that there’s enough light reflected off of them and captured in the image.  Also, the pulpit area looks a little dark, the chandeliers almost disappear as they hover in the shadows, and the light entering through most of the stained glass windows look blown out.  I took the last HDR image and the original RAW files into Photoshop and I masked out most of this.  And I also ended up bringing in the Exp +2 RAW image to help mask out some of the ghosting.  I admin I kinda did a sloppy job, too.  Here’s the mask I initially created and the result of the masking:

Well, I went back and fixed the sloppy mask, and I also brought in Exp -3 RAW image to help mask out the blown out light entering through the windows.  Here’s the final image:

Enjoy the complete image set slideshow!

[Show as slideshow]

Jack has a 21″ skateboard, but wanted a larger deck.  We couldn’t find anything inbetween the one he has and the 31″ decks we saw at the department stores. So, we decided he’ll just have to grow into this one. 

He bought this board with the gift card that he got from his grandparents in Cd’A for his birthday (in July). He still has plenty of spending money left over!

Don’t worry. He has a helmet. He gets grounded for not wearing it when he should. He was just posing for this pic.

Jack, my 6yo son, had a cavity-free check-up at the dentist today.  So the doc rewarded him with a free prescription. 

We ran into a friend at our local farmer’s market at the city park. Li’l Heidi was so full of giggles the moment she started swinging.

Closed

Labor Day was yesterday. For most, that’s pretty much the end of Summer. After capping it off with a small backyard BBQ, I drained the swimming pool.

Betta Testing

Carl was too high-maintenance (read the previous post). So, we exchanged the frog for a fish, a a gorgeous blue male Betta. This is going to be soooo much easier. 

Name Game

Depending on who you ask, you might get a different answer when inquiring what the fish’s name ie.  Jack wanted to call the fish “Bronco Buster,” named after the Boise State University mascot “Buster Bronco.”  Too similar and too many syllables.  I wanted to call the fish “Pete,” named after the Boise State football coach.  After a little debate, Jack decided to give the fish a last name, “Luke.” As in “Bronco Buster Luke.” I suggested we just make “Luke” its only name. Jack is still getting used to it, but I think it’ll stick.

Update:

After spending quality time with our new pet, we realized a couple things: 1) he’s a Siamese fighting fish, and 2) he is a royal blue veil tail male betta.  Fighter?  Royal?  What do those two things have in common?

The fish is now affectionately and appropriately named… “Duke.”

Birthday Present

Some very close friends of our’s gave Jack a pretty cool birthday present.  It was a terrerium and a pet store gift card so that he could shop for a li’l critter of his choice to put into the terrarium.

Firebelly Toad

Jack picked a frog.  It’s a Firebelly Toad.  He named it Carl.

On the way home from the pet store Laurie and I were teasing Jack about what we wanted to name the li’l critter.  We told him we were going to call it Jack Jr.  Jack wanted to name it Fido (he really wanted a dog… but… couldn’t find one that fit in the terrarium.  ;-)

Our Lunch Came Up

Before we went to the pet store we actually stopped off for lunch at Carl’s Jr.  So Jack thought he’d be clever and tell us that he was gonna call it Carl Jr.  Next thing you know, it was just Carl.  :-)

Update

We like Carl. He’s a cool li’l frog. Toad. What ever. Anyway… we discovered that we are terrible frog feeders. Toad feeders. What ever. We were only able to successfully transfer 3 live crickets into the terrarium. Two disappeared underneath the base of the terrarium, the other just disappeared and I’m hoping Carl ate it. There was a fourth cricket. It got loose in Jack’s room. Saw it once. Then lost it in the shadows when I went to catch it. It got away. Ruh-roh!  Two other dead crickets got into Carl’s terrarium.  One was gon this morn.  It either came back to life and found it’s two buddies underneath or Carl was desperately hungry.

In hindsight, owning a frog means owning more than just one li’l pet.  It means owning a bunch of live crickets, too!  We decided (with Jack) that we’ll take Carl back to the pet store and trade ‘im in for a goldfish or a beta or some other low-maintenance, non-carnivorous creature. I’d even be happy with a hamster.

There’s a 14-day return policy.  That’s good.  I hope they offer grief counseling, too, ’cause I think I’m gonna need it.

We’ve been telling Jack for several months that he wasn’t ready for a pet, though I think it really comes down to Laurie and I are unprepared parents <heh>.  Should’a got a fish in the first place. What were we thinkin’???

A rancher bellies up to the café counter at Matteeo’s Firehouse Café with his grandson. The li’l man is getting the sense of the big life and bigger responsibilities to be a young ranch-hand.

This is a hot logo on the tables at a café in my town. The building used to be a firehouse, and the café has a throw-back motif with great service and patrons. It’s where you want to be!