Back to where it began.

I was recently back up at the training school I went through near Wolverhampton, teaching on a short course. Whilst there I had the opportunity to go back to some of the places I was taken on my course. I didn't have the time I would have liked but I did managed to photograph some of the people that I had done before. The first place was Ironbridge just outside Telford and then on to the living museum at Blist Hill.

The biggest change for me this time was cameras. The last time I was there I was using a Nikon F5 and a Metz 60 with battery pack, this time I had a Nikon D3 and didn't need to use the flash. One of the people I went back to was the Leathersmith, he works in a lovely small workshop with two windows making him nicely side lit and back lit.

High Dynamic Range (HDR)

High Dynamic Range (HDR) is something I have got back into again. The basic principal is to take 3 or more different exporsures of the same image and blend them together using in post production with special software. There are a few ways of doing this, first is to manually take different exposures with the camera on a tripod, also if your camera has the ability to bracket it will set the under and over exposure settings for you. The other method is to take 1 shot in RAW and then using a RAW convertor to produce the under and over exposed images.

I prefer to use the RAW method because you don't have to worry about the camera moving between shots. Once you have your shots you can use a few different programs to blend them together, Photoshop CS3 (or later) or Photomatix.

Above is a image of the new font that has been installed in Salisbury Catehdral in Wiltshire UK.

Above is a shot from Exmouth beach in Devon UK, it is at the far end I jogged by it  on a regular basis, it took me a while to go back and photograph it. Photomatix made the sky look a little grey, but rather than re blending in the original sky, so I used a different sky that I have from within my archive.

The fox glove is from just outside Capel Curig in Wales, I was actually there rock climbing, but as always I had my camera with me. It took a bit of a trek through the bracken to find a good one. It does look like there is a bit of haloing around the fox gloves but the end of the flowers are actually white.

The house was taken down in Cornwall UK just outside Penhale Camp. Photomatix did produce a lot of noise in the sky and forwardground, so both where re-blended in photoshop with layer masks using two of the different images that were used in the original blending

The above picture is from Snowdonia in Wales. After not getting the train to the top, this shot was taken on the way back down about a mile from where the car was parked. The real shame was there was real low cloud that day so after getting to the top, you couldn't actually see more than a few meters.

The rock is also from just outside Capel Curig in Wales whilst rock climbing, taken really low using a 14-24mm.

Whilts working France a few years ago I took this shot, it one that I went back to, to try Photomatix on it and am pretty pleased with the results.

I will be putting together a tutorial on how the use Photomatix to make HDR shots.