November 15, 2007

9

Gavin Seim, HDR Photography, Lighting, PPS Photography Tips, ProPhotoShow

How To Make An HDR Portrait. Behind The Scenes:

~ Check out Gavin’s 3 day HDR workshop coming Fall 2009. More details here.

So you’ve probably heard about HDR photography, and you may be wondering what you can do with it and why it’s so cool.
By Gavin Seim: This is not a short article but it will explain a lot about HDR photography and why its so amazing. Today we’re going to talk about the editing techniques I used to create “Look To The Wind” the bride on the beach image that you probably have heard mentioned on Pro Photo Show, and maybe seen on the net. Also below are some additional links for things relevant to HDR.

Link Resources>>

HDR is a method of taking multiple images and combining them in a high dynamic range file. Lets say you take three images of the exact same scene, at various exposure levels. Standard images are only around 8 bits each, basically meaning that their ability to correctly expose dark scenes while keeping bright scenes from getting overexposed is limited.

So to make an HDR you might take one image that’s underexposed, one image over, and one with correct exposure. Then using software you can combine the shadow and highlight details from all the images into a single image is called an HDR, It’s the combined bits of these images, and is usually a 32 bit image when converted. What does 32bit mean to you? It means it can contain far more light. Even though the actual resolution of the image is not increased the details inside it are much higher. The HDR Photography technique is most often done with nature or still life images, but I have been doing extensive experimenting with this technique in portraits as well with good results, as we’ll see today.

hdr example

So lets look at an example. In this image I took three shots of the bride on the beach using continuous shooting mode with auto exposure bracketing. This along with a model holding as still as possible, and a fairly wide angle scene made “Look To The Wind” Possible possible (click for a larger version) You can read more about HDR portrait techniques in my HDR portrait article.

There a a few ways to take the three images and make an HDR from them. First take your images in unedited raw form. You could do it with jpegs, but raw will give you the best results. Don’t correct the raw files before converting to HDR. There is a very basic tool in Photoshop for converting the images called Merge To HDR (File/Automate/Merge To HDR) This allows you to select you images, and it will combine them into and 32 bit image. You then can use tools to adjust the levels, and curves of the image mix to try and get a good result.

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July 21, 2007

8

Gavin Seim, HDR Photography, PPS Photography Tips, ProPhotoShow

HDR Portrait, Fashion, and Wedding Photography

See The Updated Version June 08 – Read HDR portrait techniques version 2

Don’t start using HDR. I want to be the only one… This phrase is often pretty close to what goes thru my mind when I think about the potential of properly implemented HDR photography in today’s market. So much so that I have thought of refraining from the subject and keeping the ideas to myself. My thought is this… “If nobody else is using HDR, that will make my work that much more unique” But alas that’s not what PPS is all about, and we’re here both to learn, and to help others learn, so here I go again.

In recent months I have been working to become a sort of guru of HDR. Whether I have succeeded or not will be left up to you, however I do feel that I have a strong enough knowledge of HDR techniques, and its possibilities in the portrait & wedding world to ask other photographers, and organizations What are you waiting for?

Now don’t get me wrong! HDR will boom before long, and when it does you can bet that organizations that are supposed to be leading the industry like WPPI, and PPA will be all over it. Since it’s my job to talk about the latest ideas in the photo world however I will speak on about this topic right here and now. In fact you’ll see that PPS has a special link in the nav bar just for special HDR posts, articles, and news.

What is HDR all about anyways!

You mean you don’t know yet? Well at least after today you’ll have no excuse to avoid trying it out. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. It’s better seen that talked about, so other than the images I’ve included in this article you can see some of my latest HDR portrait implementation in my HDR portraits set on Flickr, as well as on my website of course . Essentially however it’s the combining of multiple images taken at varied exposure levels, and then blended using…

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