How did I do that? (Part 1 of many to come)

In an effort to bring more visitors to my blog, I will from time to time dispense hints and tips that I use in my photography in a "behind the scenes" manner.

This time I'm showing how I made this HDR.

As you may have read earlier, I took a holiday this year in the Italian region of Switzerland. From time to time I came across really beautiful, photogenic places of worship. When I see really old churches with frescoes, I know that I have to record them using HDR. This was no exception.

It was a really warm day and to get to the church, I had to climb LOTS of steps. For this reason and because of the winding alleys and streets, I decided against taking a tripod with me. I did however, take a mini G-Clamp table top tripod. This little beast which I bought many years ago can be clamped to a ledge, table or shelf or if there are none available, can be stood of a surface thanks to two small support legs. On this occasion, I lay on the floor (to get the perspective I wanted) and mounted the camera using the G-Clamp in its "tripod" mode.

 Discussing perspective with Nikita

The clamp itself is a bit flimsy so I used the camera in self-timer mode in order not to shake it too much. Ten seconds later, I had three shots of varying brightness which I fed to my HDR programme, the results of which you can see here.

The finished result after treatment from Photomatix

The image can now be seen in Google earth or on Panoramio at full size here.

To my left was an alcove which I also found interesting. For this image, I clamped the G-Clamp to a pew.

HDR has captured the highlights and shadows

The church is "Sta. Maria del Sasso"located in Morcote, Switzerland.

Thanks for reading. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

Grossmünster Church Zürich

Had an interesting job last week.

My friend, the Swiss lighting designer Renato M de Toffol has made a new installation in the Grossmünster church in Zürich.

It is programmable according to whatever event is happening in the church and the lighting changes accordingly.

I spent from one thirty in the afternoon until about seven in the evening documenting the different moods available.

The crypt

I photographed everywhere from the crypt to the outside where it is also illuminated.

The pictures will shortly be appearing on his website but in the meantime, I experimented with HDR which was necessary to provide details from the highlights to the shadows.

Here's some of the results.

Stained glass window by Giacometti

The choir seats

 

Loved this old door with the massive lock

 

 

Dusk is starting outside the church

On my way back to my car, I stopped to take a picture 

across the Limmatt river.

That's it for now. Thanks for reading

The Hermitage. Verenaschlucht Einsiedelei

North of the city of Solothurn, in the silence of Verena gorge, is a hermitage. There is still today, a recluse who carries out his religious duties

 I've been in Switzerland for 15 years and only heard about this place about two weeks ago. The weather today was lovely with bright sunshine and deep blue skies so we decided to venture out for some fresh air. naturally I took some photo gear with me. namely my EOS 5d, a 17 - 40 zoom and my Benbo tripod.

I actually didn't hold out much hope for good photos because it was in a gorge (shadows) and the sky was bright. I therefore decided to take only HDR images direct from RAW files.

I wasn't too inspired with the scenery on the way to the hermitage as it was typical February weather. No leaves on the trees and a bit muddy.

 The first exposure I made.

Memorial candles

 

Plenty of small waterfalls

Then I caught my first glimpse of the religious buildings.

 In the distance

A hollowed out cave and the church loom into view

 This was looking promising. I was in photo heaven. I didn't actually see the hermit but after all that is the nature of being a hermit isn't it?

I spent about forty-five minutes or so recording images. It would have been quicker but there were lots of hikers and I was using the self timer feature on my camera to reduce as much as possible, my touching the camera. This meant that I'd compose the shot and then look around to see if anyone might walk into my field of view in the next ten seconds (which was the self timer setting.)

Most of the images were converted to HDR from my normal three exposures but when I thought that there was too much "clipping" (i.e. no details at all in the highlights), I took six images.

 This was the first one using six images

 Another HDR using six images

 This one as well, use six images

 Inside the chapel which is carved into the rock.

The last image of the day

also using six images.

All in all, we had a great walk through some lovely countryside and discovered a hidden (from me anyway) gem.

The HDR process certainly saved these pictures and I'll definitely go back in summer or autumn when the colours will be fantastic.

Thanks for reading. Your comments are as always, welcomed.

Further details about the hermitage (Einsiedeln in German) can be found (in German) on the Solothurn tourist site

Walzwerk, Münchenstein.

I documented a business seminar held by the company for which I work, last Wednesday. During the breaks I ventured outside and recorded some of the surrounding area. Very interesting for me and I'm definitely going back to do some serious HDR stuff at a later date.

Saving the shadows and rescuing the highlights.

A couple of months ago, I was driving along a road, when I saw a castle through some bushes. I didn't have time to stop so I made a "way-point" reminder on my car's GPS device and carried on home.

Later, I bought my GPS upstairs and looked through the way-point reminders I'd made and saw that the castle was situated in a town called Zwingen (  47°26'15.48"N  7°31'37.16"E  ). Some 48 kilometers from where I live.

As it was a beautiful day, I decided to take a ride there to make some images for Google Earth. I enjoy doing the Google Earth stuff as it gives me an incentive to get out the house, explore the area and take some pics.

I got there shortly after midday which was a mistake as the sun was behind everything that I wanted to capture.

Normally (if doing this job commercially), I'd have come back later when the sun was in a better place. However, as this was just for fun, I decided to go ahead and document it anyway.

When I got home after the shoot, I was pleased with about 80% of the images but lots of them were suffering due to the high contrast range from the strong sunlight. This meant that there were either very strong shadows or burnt out highlights. Burnt out highlights are usually not saveable. For this reason, I tended to underexpose the images where I saw this happening on the monitor histogram of my 5d.

I ran the images where there were shadow details, through my HDR programme, HDR or High Dynamic Range photography lets you combine three successive images together so that the details in one of the images which you have purposely overexposed, is sandwiched over one which is underexposed. This means that the details in the highlights from the underexposed pic are visible as are the details in the shadows from the overexposed pic. All pictures should ideally be taken in quick succession and preferably on a tripod (to prevent ghosting).

Although I only took one image of each subject, I was able to use a special feature of my particular programme (Dynamic Photo-HDR.) whereby one image is processed as a "fake HDR". it's best to use RAW for this as there is plenty of detail for the programme to use. Perhaps the best example of its use can be seen on this image of a crucifix. Standing in the shade, it is hard to see any details in the shadows but the HDR process has done a magnificent job of bringing them out.

Untreated image from the camera compared with the HDR version

In the second two images, look how the process has bought out the details in the sky and especially in the leaves of the trees in front of the building.

There are plenty of HDR programmes available including freeware versions. I'm using Dynamic Photo-HDR  download a trial copy and see which works best for you.



See you later.