Category Archives: HDR

Montmorency Falls

Montmorency Falls, originally uploaded by jezza323.

This shot was taken from a bridge over the Montmorency Falls near Quebec City in Canada.

In the distance you can see the bridge to the Ile d’Orleans. There is a neat little cable car to get up the cliff, rather than making the walk up the stairs you can see in the photo.

These shots are both 3 shot HDR’s taken at +/- 2.0EV and blended using Photomatix tone mapping

Montmorency Falls, originally uploaded by jezza323.

Basilica Sainte Anne de Beaupre

Basilica Sainte Anne de Beaupre, originally uploaded by jezza323.

During our trip to Quebec city we also hopped on a great bus tour which took outside the city, to the Ile d’Orleans, Montmorency waterfall and the Basilica Sainte Anne de Beaupre. Here are a few shots from the Basilica.

The first is a 3 shot HDR, you can see some of the great fall colours off to the left of the Basilica

The 2nd is a look inside, also a 3 shot HDR. As you can see its quite a stunning building.

Basilica Sainte Anne de Beaupre, originally uploaded by jezza323.

City Hall, Toronto

City Hall, Toronto, originally uploaded by jezza323.

This was taken on one of my first walks home after work in September after we moved from High Park into downtown. It was a great evening, the clouds were amazing so I stopped and took a few shots. This is Toronto City hall with Nathan Phillips in front.

There was a group laying on the ground covered in bread trying to get the birds to eat it off them (they seemed quite worried about the birds though!). I’m not sure what the point of it all was though.

City Hall, Toronto, originally uploaded by jezza323.

Both shots are 3 exposure HDR’s taken at +/- 2.0 EV with my Pentax K200D and Sigma 10-20mm f4.0-5.6 lens. Blended using Photomatix with final editing in Lightroom.

Caribana Parade

Caribana Parade, originally uploaded by jezza323.

Here is the annual Toronto Caribana Parade, which this year ran along Lakeshore (not sure if it has always run along here?). It was relatively small in number of paraders, but there were plenty of people out for a look on what was a very warm summer day.

Most seemed to be having a great time. This was 1 of the larger groups dancing their way down the street. I just held the camera up high and took a quick snap or 2. I processed this in Photomatix as a single exposure HDR, it really made the bright, loud Caribana colours pop.

An Evening Walk in Koreatown


Bathurst Street Theatre, originally uploaded by jezza323.

Golden Evening

Last week I was lucky enough to have some time to go for a lovely walk through Koreatown in Toronto in the late evening with the camera and take a few pictures. I haven’t been out shooting as much as I would like the last few weeks, but I am hoping to get out more soon. I haven’t even had a chance to use my newly acquired tripod yet! What about that photowalk you say? Well I may or may not have missed that due to some Jagerbomb caused, self inflicted illness…


An Evening at Bloor & Christie, originally uploaded by jezza323.

HDR

Both of these shots are HDR’s as I thought they would show off the lovely soft golden evening light the best. Both shots were taken handheld with my usual Pentax K200D, and I used a lens I haven’t used for a while, the Tamron 17-50mm f2.8. I took the 3 shots for the HDR using bracketing at +/- 2.0 EV. To process them I imported into Lightroom 3, then used the Photomatix Lightroom plugin to export the 3 base images to Photomatix for blending. I used the standard Tone Mapping method to generate the final HDR’s which the plugin automatically re-imports back into the Lightroom library for you. I made a final crop and adjustment before exporting to JPG and uploading to Flickr.

An Evening in Old Montreal

An Evening in Old Montreal, originally uploaded by jezza323.

Grand Prix Time

I was lucky enough to be able to spend last weekend in Montreal for the Formula 1 Grand Prix du Canada. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see much of Montreal itself, but I saw lots of the Grand Prix!

Old Montreal

This shot was taken on our first evening, we caught the Metro into Old Montreal to have a look around, as everyone had recommended we go there. Old Montreal had a very European feel about it; it has cobblestone streets lined with old buildings full of restaurants, pubs and gift shops. Well worth a visit if have the chance.

Photo & Processing

This is a single exposure taken with my Pentax K200D and Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 lens. I made sure to set the zoom to around about 35mm so there was minimal distortion in this shot.

Due to it being late evening the shadows were quite dark, and to help bring up the detail a little I decided to have a go at doing a single exposure HDR. I did a quick Tone Map in Photomatix, imported back to Lightroom (the Photomatix Lightroom plugin is really handy for this btw) and finished off with a slight crop and conversion to black and white.

Result

I quite like this photo, its a shame the shutter speed was a little slow, as it means some of the people’s features are a little blurred. How do you think it turned out? It is always good to have something to work on for next time.

Sunrise at Lake Moogerah

Sunrise at Lake Moogerah, originally uploaded by jezza323.

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Here is a very old shot. I took this on my Lake Moogerah camping trip, early morning, mist rising off the lake, a few clouds about…

What more could you ask for?

This is quite harsh HDR processing, it has brought out a bit of noise, and makes the clouds seem a bit dark and threatening. Normally I don’t go for this more extreme processing, but it just seemed to work best for this image.

The shot was blended from 3 exposures taken at +/- 2.0 EV using my Pentax K200D and the old kit lens Pentax DA 18-55mm AL II (I sold this lens a while back now). The blending was done using Photomatix, tone mapping was done using the Details Enhancer method and final editing was done in Lightroom.

American Falls

American Falls, originally uploaded by jezza323.

This is the American Falls at Niagara Falls, viewed from the Canadian side of the border. I took this one quite late in the evening, on an after dinner walk. I was so stuffed full of food I had to walk some of it off.

This is a 3 shot HDR, taken at +/- 2.0 EV with the Pentax K200D and Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 lens.

I blended the shots with Photomatix and made some final adjusts in Lightroom.

And The Sun Also Rises

 

And The Sun Also Rises, originally uploaded by jezza323.

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This is a shot back from my Fog chasing morning in Brisbane. I only just realised I hadn’t posted it up here!

This was my favourite photo of the day, I hope you enjoy it too.

This was taken with my Pentax K200D body, Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 lens. I took the shot with the exposure bias set to +2.0 EV, then took 3 exposures at +/- 2.0 EV, which meant I ended up with 0, +2 and +4 EV shots based on the camera’s inbuilt metering.

The reason for increasing the bias for this shot was because the shot was taken towards the sun, meaning the camera’s metering system would severely underexpose the foreground of the image, in an attempt to prevent the sun from blowing out too much. By altering the bias, I was able to get the detail in the foreground that I required.

I then used the LR/Enfuse plugin to Lightroom to blend the 3 exposures into the image you see here, along with a few final tweaks to the levels and cropping.

Great Library Memorial

 

Great Library Memorial, originally uploaded by jezza323.

This is another shot of Osgoode Hall. This one is a Memorial in the Great Library of the building.

This is a bit of an unusual shot for me, because it is a black and white HDR. Not something I usually would do, but I have been craving some black and white, so here some is!

Again this is 3 shots taken at +/- 2.0 EV, with the Pentax K200D and Sigma 10-20mm f4.0-5.6. I blended the exposures using Photomatix (in colour) then made the final edits and black & white conversion in Lightroom.