Some HDR and a quick apology...





It has been a busy couple of weeks. Mostly because I don't know limits or moderation. What that means is I have spent the last 2 weeks pretty solidly in the garden doing the big rose pruning so they go dormant for a few months and get a chance to rest before the spring growing starts. The limits and moderation are directly related to the roses this time. All 50 of them that needed to be pruned.

Yesterday it was out doing some shooting between breaks at a basketball game. So Cal was in the final stages of a pretty wet and windy storm yesterday. I was rewarded when I would go out between games to shoot and watch the sky. Of course dramatic skies like the old Dutch Masters is something I like to do with my photography so yesterday was a perfect match.

I am continuing my exploration of movement with HDR file generation from raw images. I like the results and as I mentioned before, they have a very abstract way of giving the impression of movement that when added to a Basketball game you get some nifty results.

Enjoy the Storm series and "Ball in play"

A Little January Stroll

Friday was the start of a warming trend here in So Cal, and for someone who grew up in the Snowbelt (or rust belt depending on your frame of mind) anything over freezing in early January is nice. To have 74 at 3PM is an outright treat.

Yesterday I went for another meander in Old Town Monrovia, some to soak in the warm day, a little checking in with some of the merchants and friends to eventually end at Paint N Play Art Studio and Gallery. The latter to help them re-merchandise the gallery after the Holidays. The ladies way of thanking me was to give me an entire wall to build a shrine to me.

The little meander about was too good to be true. The mix of late fall and outdated Holiday decorations with the warm weather was just a bit too unreal. As I walked about and shot I kept in mind I wanted to move out of the literal photo realm and more towards the over colored richly saturated surreal world of a comic book or old time postcard illustration.

To achieve that as always I used Photomatix HDR generation and Tonemapping tools. The final images were given some color correction work with CS2 with their final post processing done with Virtual Photographer. Enjoy my meander from the parking lot to the party room at PnP in that altered state realm of the postcard.

Catching up on the sorting and processing.

In early November I meandered about Duarte and hit the discount strip mall, you know the kind where the 99cent store is the anchor complemented by the resale shop, antique/junque store and if you are lucky beauty supply store. I spotted these gems in the dirty window and decided to work with them a bit.

Kind of forlorn were the odd bits with color on them surrounded by some old glass with the early morning sun blasting the window. I shot with HDR processing in mind knowing I could keep the deep shadow detail as well as the highlights in check. Added bonus is that it seems to cut through glare, not in an all inclusive "polarizing filter" way as it does leave some modeling highlights from the bright street to the side.

Enjoy these bits, done more real than surreal. For the techie in you...shot RAW, bracketed +/-2 stops, then an HDR file generated with Photomatix Pro. Then tonemapped with that program. Final image washing (gimme a better term if you have one) done with Virtual Photographer for an old time Kodachrome style of saturation and warmth.

Last chance to shoot before it rains?


I can't help it...but a little pun: "Los Angeles Rocks"?
Quick post, I actually wrote more for blogging.la HERE earlier today. No need to be duplicating efforts. Short is that it's about to storm, I hope as we are so dry around here we need it. Actually am a bit selfish about it too, I miss the river and the quiet other than ducks and water softly flowing.

Surreality Check...get back to work
The holidays are over and I'm finally getting some free time and get back to working through what I shot the last few months. In early November I walked through Duarte meandering about and just shooting. Interesting community, very old and busily going about reinventing itself. Among the oddities is they used ficus trees, sculpted to all look the same instead of the traditional LA Icon...the Palm to line the main boulevards.

I was out shooting with HDR post processing in mind. The goal...old timey postcard looks and a little of the "predictors" where humans are moving about.

The bracketed photo's were post processed to start with using Photomatix Pro to do the HDR generation from the RAW files then tonemapped. From there I did the final clean up with CS2 and Virtual Photographer.

Enjoy "Old Chevy Life Support" and "Bug Found on Road Alive".

Vote for me dang nabbit...if you like it that is

So here we are I made it through to another round of the Viewers Show Down being held at the Saatchi in London. If you like it vote for me. The link to vote HERE

The piece is titled "Monrovia Rail Road Station". Shot bracketed, post processed with Photomatix PRO for HDR generation and tonemapping, then it is given the final image clean up with Virtual Photographer.