I'm posting this purely because it amuses the hell out of me... not because its particularly a brilliant shot. I wanted at least ONE wide shot of the beautiful interior of the church during Alicia & Brian's wedding. However, as noted in the thread, there was an INTENSE pool of direct sunlight beaming on only part of the ceremony. We're talking a 4-stop differential between bride and the groomsmen.
So here is my HDR solution. I found other alternatives as well, but this is just plain fun.
wow.. perfect example of when HDR should be used. I like. I'm surprised you were able to get it without anyone moving. I think the area around the bride is just a tad too bright in the WA one. It sort of immediately diverts my eyes to her, and takes away from the rest of the interior of the pic. Maybe a darkening that area around her just a tad bit will work better? My .02 anyway.
WOW! HOw much do you charge an hour for post processing?? Heehee. Wonderful job on these, Evan. Unfortunately your bride wont' be nearly as impressed as we are. But man, that is simply amazing.
HDR? there's no blue sky-you must have mixed up your terms-besdies, you're only supposed to do HDR for the sake of it-it's not supposed to be functional
alright, enough of that-this is cool-i'm thoroughly impressed-this is the kind of stuff i wish people knew when they were picking a wedding photog-can their photog think through very difficult situations and deliver? if clients had a clue, they would choose very differently...well, many would
Yes, 5 shot bracketing was used on my 1D3 at 10 frames per second. 4 frames were used in the final shot.
The HDR was hand-painted in PS, not actually using any HDR software per-se. I just aligned the layers and started with the brightest exposure, masking down. This gave me more control over ghosting when the people moved, and also resulted in a more (IMO) natural look.
Number 17 in the wedding set was a natural exposure: towards the end of the ceremony the pool of light moved to the right and decreased in intensity as the sun set: in that shot I chose to hide the extreme falloff by shooting from a lower angle and using the pews to hide the unlit areas.
just genius. I did something similar with a family portrait just this month only to get the right expression on everyone's face and I too was very proud of myself for figuring out how to get the final image I wanted.
HDR is a great technique and it can be used to save impossible lighting situations like this one.
From my experience the easiest/fastest and best method of creating HDR blends is to use the software Photomatix. Much better than the blend mode in Photoshop CS.
Rick Rosen wrote:
HDR is a great technique and it can be used to save impossible lighting situations like this one.
From my experience the easiest/fastest and best method of creating HDR blends is to use the software Photomatix. Much better than the blend mode in Photoshop CS.
If you decide to purchase the program please feel free to use my coupon code Rick Rosen on checkout. That will get you a 15% discount.
Have fun.
Rick
"easiest/fastest", yes... "Much better", no.... While manual blending is obviously the most time consuming method, it is superior for getting the "natural look" out of an image.
