Upcoming events and boredom....

I haven’t been up to much in terms of photography.  I guess it’s that in between season where we switch between fall and winter. It’s been warm here in Toronto and I’ve been waiting for the first real snowfall.  I enjoy winter photography the most, but at the same time I rarely get a chance to get that perfect photo.  This winter I plan on making more of an effort to just get out there. In the mean time I’ve been going through some old photos and doing some random processing on them. 

The next few are some HDR panorama’s I’ve worked on. They’re a very contrasty compared to my usual work, however trying to get an image that I was happy with is something I wanted to really work on.  I used a few exposures of the same image to create these HDR images and tweaked it with some masking and layers in Photoshop.  Not perfect by any means but I’m still working on my skills.

In the near future I’ll be doing another AWHL event.  Their 25^th anniversary party is coming up and I’ve been asked to take a few snaps.  I was lucky enough to take photos at their last event (“celebrate the women in your life”) with hostess Melissa Grelo.  It’ll be a lot of fun I’m sure! And it’s in a great venue! More details and photos to come!!!

When bored...HDR....

It was another rainy and blustery day in Toronto today, the second in so many days.  Often I find myself very listless and just bored on these stay-in-door days, these feelings were further enhanced by the fact I have to go into work later tonight for my least favorite corporate conglomerate.  This little bit of extra time did allow me to experiment some more with HDR and do a comparison between that work and just normal adjustment layers work in photoshop, which is most typically what I use.  I still prefer the adjustment layers method but the HDR method does produce some interesting eye catching results.  I’m generally a moderate HDR person, that is, someone who doesn’t try to make it too painterly.  Occasionally I will produce the odd image that is very ‘painted” but that is pretty rare and usually only when I’m trying to make a point.  I tried to blend the painted look with the normal enhanced look that I try to achieve with HDR image processing, so with respect to that it really doesn’t look as “HDR” as it could be. 

The HDR image on the right was made using 4 variably exposed images brought together and tone mapped in the photomatix standalone software. . The regular photoshop’d image was made with a single flat image with “perfect” exposure and various adjustment layers to help achieve the desired results. 

On a personal level, I like the results of the regular photoshop method more, but that’s just my preference and I’m sure others will have different viewpoints.  I thought I’d just blog about it and show the differences in styles that I often invoke.

And yes i know...they are not the same image sequence. i moved just a tiny bit when composing the HDR sequence.

2010 Canadian Autoshow....

A huge delay in posting has occurred due to the recent Olympics in Vancouver. As much as I would’ve loved to be there I just couldn’t work it into my schedule.  However, that did not stop me from keeping my eyes glued to the TV.  Now that they are over, I suppose it’s back to the normal grind and to post some images and blogs regarding past adventures.

A few weeks ago I was able to take in the annual Canadian Authoshow held in toronto.  It’s always been a challenge at venues to take photos, as there generally are so many sources of light to take into account.  More so when you are viewing exquisitely polished show cars which provide a wonderful canvas of reflection.  I was able to get rid of several reflective lights by using a polarizer but of course that’s not perfect as it just removes a certain set of lights above.   I’ll be continuing to try to test out different methods but I’m not quite sure if there is anything out there that is perfect. 

Although I’m not a big advocate of HDR to be used to make things look a bit more “cartoony” in my eyes for landscapes and other more natural coloured images, the autoshow seems to have provided a perfect venue to test out some of these HDR techniques.  I’m particularly proud of a few cars, one being a new infinity that had a “tattoo”/paintjob that I instantly thought would be enhanced by HDR.  And of course there is this Mustang (or cobra? i don't know my cars...sorry)  that explodes off the screen.  I’ve posted them below, as well as linked them to my flickr where other images from the show may be seen.