HDR Photography
Stark winter nights, the kind with a handful of clouds and a lot of bright stars, seem to be when I spend the most time shoveling my driveway. Might as well do a long exposure or two while I work, right? I particularly like the tree in the center of the image that has been completely lit by the adjacent streetlight: it seems otherworldly and special when compared to the other silhouetted trees.
Snow was falling last night. The small houses with highly peaked roofs and additions out back are a characteristic of this part of town, where the mill workers once lived. The wood sheds are another notable characteristic of an area where many people use only wood stoves to heat their homes in the winter.
When the weather outside is frightful (pardon the cliché), an indoor ring is good for two very important duties: (1) keeping the hay dry to feed the horses and (2) riding. This photograph has symmetry highlighted by the very bright windows; when a very bright light source shines through a lens (and it’s particularly noticeable with this prime lens), it creates an image of itself on the inverse side of the center of the image. In this particular case, that inverted image appears over the pony, indicating that the pony is across the inversion point from the window.
Homes designed to weather the fierce winters of northern New England and the North Country have a particular structure: Something vaguely Scandinavian and reminiscent of a Viking longhouse. When the sun sets and the clouds gather for our (current) proper winter, I’m glad for the equivalence.
The New Year is here, and real winter has arrived along with it! Snow flies through the air and ice clings to the branches and sticks of the North Country.
The year has nearly come to an end, and winter has finally arrived in the North Country, but before I look to the future, I wanted to take another look back at my summer travels to the West Coast, and particularly to Seattle.
An early morning stroll brought almost-empty streets and golden hues.
The standard trappings of city life are a little surprising after a year spent in rural New York. Even this mild-mannered cab (particularly a Crown Victoria) looked like it had been placed by the crew of an about-to-begin film set.
The cheek-to-cheek connection of port and industry with everyday life surprised me the most. Ferris wheels and giant cranes share the water.
This winter that won’t begin has brought strange landscapes to New England. Along Little River through Stowe, VT, the environment is in a strange flux/limbo. Add the snow with imagination?
A lot of the houses in North Berkeley look like they would make great dollhouses, or part of a great ersatz miniature town, if only you could shrink them down. We can always pretend, eh?
Across the cityscape of Portland, rays of morning light slash down from the clouds. The reflective surfaces make a compliment for the texture of the skyscape.
A quick Sunday bonus shot: an alternate view from my window in Columbus, where I also took this shot.
The Appalachians aren’t my favorite mountain range but they’re in the top 5. The vistas from the AT are pretty spectacular.
Northern Vermont is a magnificent place in the winter: skiing, hot cocoa, quaint inns, etc. This warm winter has left those skiers waiting for the actual snow to arrive, however.
Continuing my exploration of the capabilities of Aurora HDR from Wednesday, I processed this image from high above central Pennsylvania after sunset using that software and the Noiseless CK package to unbelievable results—that is, I literally could not have achieved this image with an acceptable level of noise using my earlier workflow. Though it’s still not perfect, I can’t stop examining the path of that river, lit by the last few photons of the day.
The views from the Roan highlands are really something else.
This is more than a vibrant, glowing, living moment of late-night city life from the Pearl District of Portland, Oregon; this picture is the first I’ve ever processed with a new piece of software, Aurora HDR. It was processed only with Aurora, with no other fiddling in other programs. (As you may know, I’m typically a die-hard Photomatix+Photoshop workflow guy.) I’m not sure what place Aurora will have in my workflow long-term, but I have to at least say this: its noise reduction algorithms are by far the best I’ve ever seen. (Noise is the main enemy of good HDR shots.) I’ll bring you a longer report when I’ve had more seat time with it.
Decaseconds 