HDR

HDR, High Dynamic Range, is a fairly fun and hard thing to do in my opinion. To do a HDR photo you will want to a picture where you light meter inside is in the middle and take the image. then you want to take another pic that is one f-stop above and one f-stop below. Once you are done taking those picture you can merge them in photo shop by going to the file tab and go to automate and then hit merge HDR. then you just go through the steps in the window that pops up. Sometimes it tells you the RAW will give you more details. In my experience so far it is fine if you do JPEG, PSD, or RAW files.

Here are some examples of my HDR.

Someone else that I know of that does really cool HDR photos is Darryl Jones.

SOPA and PIPA

For people who are confused about whats going with the Web this video made by Khan Academy breaks it down for you.

Panorama

Panoramas can be tricky at first but they eventually get really easy to do. You can hand stitch them in Photoshop or you can have it automatically stitch together through the automat option in Photoshop depending on the version of photoshop you are using. There are other programs out there will stitch for you but i have used Photoshop more than any other programs like Photomatrix.

Still Life

Still life has to be my favorite thing to photograph. With Still Life you really never know what you will truly get in the end after editing. I have used both strobes and spot lights for still life. I prefer using spot lights instead of strobes. The reason is that i can already see how the light is going to play while with strobes you do not know the light outcome until you the picture.

This set of images below are done with single spot light:

These are done with Strobes:

Snow

I was looking outside and saw that there was snow on the ground and I got to thinking on some winter snow shots I want to do for this year. I love doing pictures that incorporate animals because to me it adds more life to it.

Working with animals can be tricky, especially if they are dogs. They can be hyper and not wanting to pay attention, or you can have them paying too much attention on you.

I find it that is very helpful is you have someone with you to help you with any animals that you are working with, especially dogs, to get them to pay attention to them or to make sure they are not really hyper.

I had my sister help me with this shot:

This shot was taken outside of Madison, Indiana. I had my older sister  start throwing snowballs in the air for our labrador retriever, name Jade, to catch.  With her help, she was able to get Jade, the lab, to pay attention to her and get the snowballs.

One thing about dogs and snow that can be challengeing is the color of the coat or fur. White, in my opinion, is the hardest. Dirt shows up very easily and when you try to photograph a white coat color dog with snow you have to be careful with the setting of aprature and shutter speed. I try not to do black and white with white color dogs because they can seem to look like they are the snow and not a dog.

Example:

If i did not darken the color of her coat using the adjusment layers in Photoshop she would have looked like this:

There are instances when you work with the lighting and coloration of a dog's coat that black and white and also color brings out different detailing in the fur and surroundings.

Case in point with these next two images:

The black and white you get more detailing in the water where as in the color you get more detailing in the coloration of my our labrador retriever.

In these next photos are natural. Nothing is thrown to them to catch at all.  These pictures are just me snapping away with my camera at the dogs just being them selves.  Those are some of the best kind of pictures because it show's the dog's personality the best. I do more of these whenever I take pictures of any animals. I  literally follow them around with my camera lens and take pictures of them just being themselves.

This last picture is of our lab that just pasted away last year.

~ RIP Clover ~