Some old barns near where I work that will be town down in a few weeks so I decided I'd better get some pics before it is too late. Old barns always look best as B&W photos (in my opinion)

 

Nice. I love old barns.

 

Barns look great in B&W, but also look great in HDR.


LOL this one took me a minute to figure out.

 

HDR's converted to black and white give you the best of both worlds



To keep on topic, here's a recent picture of my daughter that I took.

 

Cute!

And that's a great barn shot. I'd like to see a non-HDR version of it though. For some reason, I've never really been a big fan of the HDR "look." Nothing against those who do enjoy it, though. To each his (or her) own.

 

A few more random shots.

 

Great looking shots everyone.

 

Here's the main exposure, without any adjustments except for a small curves adjustment. I normally don't overdue HDR's. That was one of my first ones, and it just worked. Usually the average eye can't even tell my newer photos are HDRs. I just do it enough to bring out subtle details. If you look at the difference between the original and non-HDR, though, you'd see the difference. I'll try to show you tomorrow.

 

Not a big deal, but thanks for obliging.

 

Oh, it's no problem. Here's an example of my normal HDR process. You can see, the images are quite similiar, however, the slight tone-mapping process brought out subtle details in the grill, wheels, tires, and background. It also enhances reflections. You could do this with dodging and burning to an extent, but even with a RAW file, you can only retrieve so many details. With HDR, you don't have to worry about that. A lot of times I'll shoot bracketed and not end up needing to tone-map, but if I notice missing details, I'll bring them in through tone-mapping bracketed exposures.

 

I like that!

it's enough to see the small details, but not so that I think I need 3d glasses...

 

I don't mind HDR at all and your example with the photo of your car is perfect. Problem is, I can't find anything decent to use. I have a mac and have tried Hydra (aperture plug-in) with mixed results. It could be the way I am taking my pics though. I just do -2,0,+2 and have the camera set to AV.

 

Yeah, I don't know what programs are out there for Mac. My favorite is called Dynamic-Photo HDR. Many people use Photomatix, but I have trouble getting realistic results with it.

 

For the most part, a little tweaking to the shadows/highlights sliders is all I really worry about.

Also, I'm lazy.

 

LOL I hear ya. Only thing I hate about going that route is you lose contrast. The image above probably could've been done that way, but I don't think it would have had as much contrast.

 

Some snow we had a couple weeks ago. We usually get ice more than snow.

 

Nephews got out the guitars for our xmas party yesterday.







however nobody wanted to play the poor ol' piano

 

I DID not take these but after seeing what this park ranger does I had to share them :

 

and more ! Thank-You to Spencer TMS = COMOX for sending them to me !

 

What`s the story ?