[1st set]: Pittsburgh in HDR

Here are the night shots of Pittsburgh. We went up on a Sunday night and I walked the city with my tripod and camera.
Check out more of my HDR images on Flickr

Communication Arts

I've been a subscriber to Communication Arts for over 5 years. Each year they release the photography annual where they pic the best of the best to be featured in the publication. This is the year where I finally enter. For $60 you can enter 5 images. I'm entering the following:



I'm calling it the "Rejected Memories" series. All of the images are in HDR. I was going to go with some of my classic cars, but I figure cars are over done. I get a lot of positive feedback on my HDR shots. And no one can seem to reproduce my methods so I figure I may have a good shot (I hope).

comments/critiques are highly welcome.

What I use

A lot of people have been asking what kind of camera do I use. I have several, but I mostly use my Canon Rebel EOS 300D. I bought it 2 years ago for $800 and I use the lens it came with. It's 6.3mpxl with 180dpi output. Today you can get the same camera for around $200-300.



My other camera is a point-n-shoot, which is a Canon SD500. I have this one with me all the time. The quality is great for web or staying with a digital format. Print quality from the Rebel is amazing, the point-n-shoot is decent for average users. 



I also use Canon printers & scanners. I have the Canon i9900 that is large format (13" x 19") that does amazing quality. I use Aperture to organize all my images and PSD files. For those of you that don't use a Mac, this is what Aperture looks like:



Aperture preserve all the layers and adjustments that are done in Photoshop as well. I also use a tripod (a real tripod, not one of those pocket jobs) for lots of my shots. I shoot a lot of my images in HDR (that's the surreal effect most of my images have). If you plan on trying your own HDR shots, you MUST use a tripod. The HDRs are created by joining 3 exposures of the same image. One being way over exposed, one way under exposed and one that the camera says is right on. Using a program called Photomatix that will merge the exposures for me. I then take the rendered image to Photoshop where I enhance color and detail.



I by no means consider myself a professional photographer. Buying a 10K camera with all the bells and whistles doesn't mean shit if you don't know how to use it. Get to know your camera and buy the manual for it at a bookstore (the one that comes with cameras sucks). Hope this helps. Feel free to email me on any questions.

Train in HDR

I made the journey to Nelsonville again to take pictures of the abandoned trains. I shot almost everything in HDR giving the images a very surreal look. I will be posting all the shots in a few days.

Abandoned Weekend

One of my friends recently got into HDR photography so over the weekend we went to a few abandoned places throughout Cleveland including a hospital, factory & an apartment building. I've been doing HDR style of photography for years and I must be starting to get too picky with it because I only ended up taking like 40 shots during our adventure.

Inniswood Photomerges

I've been doing a lot of experimentation with photography lately. I'm still doing HDR once in a while along with my favorite B&W + color images, but I'm liking some of the abstract stuff I've been generating. The following images are done with Photomerge in Photoshop CS3. I've strayed from doing typical panoramic images that are usually rectangle. Instead, I stand in one spot and just start snapping shots, combining vertical and horizontal (kind of like QTVR). Images were shot with a Canon PowerShot SD500 (pocket point n' shoot).

Please click to view full image. Critiques are welcome.


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Here is an example of what the merged image looks like before I do some tweaking. The unusual edge is created automatically and varies depending on the angle the shots were taken. (Notice the layers pallet with all the merged images)

Greenlawn Cemetery

I went to Greenlawn Cemetery today to take some pictures. I love the architecture on old mausoleums. All shot in HDR.

Weekend photos...

Friday night we ended up parking in an awesome parking deck when we went out to dinner. When we came out of the restaurant, there were no cars in the deck so it was a perfect photo op. The first 3 images are from the deck, shot in HDR. The other car photos were shot at the Columbus Auto Show which I felt was a HUGE disappointment. Only a few concept cars were there and that was my main reason for going. The reset of the images are of around Columbus.