flight, flow, fusion

Finally after 19 days of fog, a little sun. I will be in a Nikon workshop all day tomorrow so today was my only chance to complete my assignment for week two of my HDR class. This stuff is stretching my brain and challenging me to seek creative opportunities. The Richmond Oval is the 2010 Winter Olympic venue for Speed Skating. Construction began in April 2005 and was completed in late 2008. The architecture’s poetic interpretation of flight, flow and fusion is a nod to the Fraser River Estuary and to the heron – a long time aviary resident and symbol of the City of Richmond where I live. Now let me explain the process for the images you see above.

The first image was taken at a shutter speed of 1/1000 of second to capture all the highlights including the sun. The second image was taken at 1/15s to capture all the details in the shadows. In total I took 7 images one stop apart i.e. 1/1000; 1/500; 1/250; 1/125; 1/60; 1/30 and 1/15s. I then selected the darkest image and the lightest image and two inbetween so that each image was 2 stops apart. Photomatix was used to blend the exposures together to obtain the third image above. This image is not required for HDR but it is useful in understanding the process. The fourth image is the final HDR image which has been highly processed in Photomatix. This processing includes saturating the colours, tone mapping, sharpening among other tools. It is my very first HDR image! The final image is another part of the oval complex. This image was generated from 8 shots each one stop apart. Once the image has been processed in Photomatix, I open it up in Photoshop and make some tweaks there as well.

To check out some more images using this technique, visit the link to Chromasia to the right. It will take you to the website of my instructor David Nightingale. You can also drop by Robert La Follette’s website as he has some great images of Tampa using this same technique. I am hoping to be lucky enough to make some of my own when we are down there in two weeks!