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, 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, 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, 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.
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…
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.
Grand Prix du Canada Stand 21, originally uploaded by jezza323.
The Grandstand
As I mentioned in my previous post, I recently spent the weekend in Montreal to attend the Grand Prix du Canada (Formula 1 Grand Prix). You must view this panorama in large size!
The View
I had seats in Grandstand #21, which luckily happened to be right next to the entrance to the track, as well as having a great view of the hairpin. This is the view from the edge of the stand, my seats were a bit off to the left of the photo, but the view was almost as good!
Shooting the Panorama
This panorama was shot using my Pentax K200D and Tamron 17-50mm. I took about 10 shots in portrait orientation at 17mm, with lots of overlap to give me the best chance of a successful panorama. It worked out very well considering the challenges of the image, and only the railing of the grandstand and some minor problems from moving people were encountered.
Harsh Lighting
It was a very bright sunny day which meant the shadows were quite harsh, so, once Autopano had stitched the image together for me, I loaded the single TIFF file into Photomatix and generated a low key HDR. This is the result, good view isn’t it?
Carn Webber!
To make the panorama extra special, that is my favourite driver Mark Webber in his Red Bull Racing car approaching on the right side of the image. Webber finished the race weekend 3rd, after being hit and spun in the 1st corner of the race, a good comeback! It was also a very spectacular race, Jenson Button won the race after a come from behind victory. During the race he had a drive through penalty, a flat tyre and was run into by his own team mate! What a performance.
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.
I received a suggestion that perhaps a cropping of my previously posted photograph “Newspaper?” would improve the result. If you would like to know how I produced this photograph, please read the original article.
What Do They Know?
Initially I thought “No way, are you kidding? It’s perfect!” as someone often does when considering their own work. After a short amount of consideration, I opened Lightroom and made this crop. Though I remained unconvinced I thought I would publish the recrop anyway.
Maybe They Were Right
Now that it comes down to a comparison, I do believe I prefer this crop to the original. I think it highlights the point of focus and the out of focus effect of the image more than the original. I think this crop also shows more clearly what the subject of the photograph is.
What About You?
So which do you prefer? This one? Or the original? And why?
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.
Saturday Morning Photography
So here is another Tair-11a brenizer method shot from my Saturday morning pre-rain wander down University Av. I spotted this little sign and phone off a side street and decided it was interesting. I wanted to get this in 1 shot, but some objects in the foreground meant I had to get closer, which turned it into yet another Brenizer method photograph.
Failure
It actually took me 3 goes to get this shot right. It really has been a while since I have been out shooting. This image is made up of 12 photographs, all taken at f2.8 with my Tair-11a 135mm lens on my Pentax K200D body. I made sure the body was in manual mode, this is to ensure an even exposure across the panorama image. I set the manual aperture on the lens to f2.8, for minimum depth of field, then set the exposure to suit the part of the scene which I was most interested in (the phone in this case). Finally I started shooting the panorama images required. For some strange reason on my first attempt I forgot to focus the image properly, it must have looked ok through the viewfinder, but as I was walking away I did a quick check on the camera screen, and promptly returned for a 2nd attempt.
Fail Again
The 2nd attempt failed because I was rushing, and the shutter speed was too slow, meaning I had a bit of blur from my shaky hands messing up the images. Again I noticed this as I went to walk away whilst checking the image on the camera.
Success
Finally on the 3rd attempt, I adjusted the ISO up from 100 to 200, giving me a faster shutter speed. I slowly and carefully shot the panorama, keeping my hands steady and relaxed. This time I checked the shots before I started walking away, and was finally happy with the results.
Processing
For processing I used Lightroom to export the original RAW files to TIFF format, which I then stitched using Autopano Giga, and then made a few minor levels adjusts and cropped the image after re-importing into the Lightroom library. Enjoy!
