Quick Tips for Shooting HDR Nighttime Images

HDR image by Rick Sammon

Title: Cool Dude

Location: Miami’s South Beach (taken on my Florida Photo Caravan last week)

Exposures: 0,+2, -2 EV

Processing: Nik HDR Efex Pro and Topaz Adjust

Tips: 

• Making HDR images at night is cool, just like this cool dude. 

• Be sure to capture the entire dynamic range of the scene. Keep underexposing until you see not blinkies on your camera's LCD monitor, and keep overexposing until you see can see into the shadows.

• Use slow shutter speeds to blur moving lights, but make sure the main subject holds as still as possible.

• Use ghost-reducing features in HDR programs and plug-ins to avoid or reduce unwanted subject movement. 

• Shoot at the lowest ISO possible. 

• Keep in mind that the best time to take nighttime pictures is not at night, but rather at dusk, when there is still a bit of light in sky. A black sky equals a noise-filled sky.
• If the background is too busy or distracting, get down low and use the sky as your background.
• In a situation like this, use auto white balance.
• Remember what you mother told you, "Wear white at night." Be careful please.
• If the reds are over-saturated, reduce the saturation in the red channel. That way, your other colors will not be affected.
• Bring a flashlight so you can see what the heck you are doing! :-)

Hey! If you have a nighttime HDR photo tip, please post a comment here. Thank you.

For info on HDR Efex Pro and Topaz Adjust, click here. 

Hey... this image will be in my iPad app. Soon come! Stay tuned for info. Lots of new photos, new tips, videos and audio recordings!

Explore the light,

Rick

P.S. For more info on HDR, see my book:

Rick Sammon's HDR Secrets for Digital Photographers 

Be My Guest Monday 1/31/11: David Page

It's "Be My Guest Monday," the day of the week that's turned over to a talented guest blogger for a quick tip.

Today's guest: David Page

It is amazing how you can increase the speed of a race car and improve the composition by just tilting the image. The images above are the same except that the top one was tilted before the cropping step. I prefer to to start with a lot of resolution on an image that is "normal" with plenty of room to crop. I then rotate the image in Photoshop several times till I get my favorite angle. Then I go back to the original image and rotate it only once to that best angle again. The reason for the re-do is that every time you rotate an image there is slight small detail loss and to repeat it many times could take the fuzz right off of a peach.

The same result could be accomplished by just rotating the camera on the original shot. But at over 100 miles per hour you only get one attempt at the best angle for the best composition. Be careful in choosing the background as leaning trees etc. can ruin the effect.

• • •

David Page is the co-author, along with Dr. Richard Zakia, of Photographic Composition - A Visual Guide. These two dudes are also two of my favorite people.

Key West Sunset

Photograph by Rick Sammon

Here's a quick grab shot from tonight's sunset in Key West, Florida.

To create the painterly effect, I used Nik Software's Color Efex Pro/Pastel filter.

For info on Nik and other cool plug ins, click here.

My gear:

Canon EOS 7D 18 MP CMOS Digital SLR Camera with 3-inch LCD (Body Only)

and

Canon EF 100-400mm f4.5-5.6L IS USM Telephoto Zoom Lens for Canon SLR Cameras

Explore the light,

Rick

Florida Photo Caravan: South Beach – Final Shoot

Photograph by Rick Sammon

We just finished the final shoot on my Florida Photo Caravan. We had some fantastic models and talked about controlling the light and making pictures.

For the opening image for this post, we bounced the light from our on-camera flashes (set on TTL) into a Westcott reflector – after setting our cameras to Manual and setting the exposure for the light coming through the window behind our model.

For the two pictures below, we bounced the sunlight, which was coming from above and behind the lifeguard stand on which the model was standing, onto her face and body – again using a Westcott reflector.

Photograph by Rick Sammon

Photograph Rick Sammon

Reflectors rock.

Reflector info: Westcott 1032 6-in-1 Reflector Kit 42in.

I took all of these pictures with my Canon 5D Mark II and Canon 25-105mm IS lens.

We are setting the dates for our 2012 Florida Photo Caravan  - and Delray Goes Digital project. Interested? Shoot me an email at ricksammon@mac.com.

Explore the light,

Rick

Florida Photo Caravan: South Beach Shoot #2

Photograph by Rick Sammon

We're in South Beach. Cools colors for sure! 

We're just back from our second shoot - dusk on Ocean Drive.

Here are two shots - both enhanced with Nik Software's Color Efex Pro/Pastel filter.

For info on Color Efex Pro and other plug-ins, click here.

Photograph by Rick Sammon

Explore the light,

Rick

Florida Photo Caravan: South Beach Shoot #1

Photograph by Rick Sammon

We're on the last stop of my Florida Photo Caravan: South Beach.

We set out this morning to something a bit different from the past week: simply go out and shoot and have fun. We looked for cool colors, patters, reflection and of course subjects. We found 'em all.

I encouraged the students to work with reflections. Here's one of my favorites – enhanced with Topaz Adjust/Spicify.

Photograph by Rick Sammon

I also encouraged the students to use their cameras like a spaceship – tilting them up and down and left and right. Here's my example. Yes, another Topaz/Spicify effect.

More pix to come from our talented and dedicated team.

Oh yeah, after our fun shoot, we spent an hour on a flash class. More good fun.

For street shots like this, I use my Canon 17-40mm lens on my Canon 5D Mark II.

Camera info:

Canon EOS 5D Mark II 21.1MP Full Frame CMOS Digital SLR Camera (Body Only)

Lens info:

Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM Ultra Wide Angle Zoom Lens for Canon SLR Cameras

Explore the light,

Rick

P.S. For info on Topaz and the other plug-ins I use, click here.

Florida Photo Caravan: Delary Beach – 7th Shoot. HDR Rocks!

Photograph by  Rick Sammon

Our Florida Photo Caravan workshop arrived at the Colony Hotel in Delary Beach today. We hit the ground running, making HDR images, and  then having a three-hour lighting class . . . before our model shows up tomorrow.

Middle exposure of HDR sequence. Yuch!

I created the opening image for this post in Nik Software's HDR Efex Pro. For a free one-hour webinar on how to use the plug-in, click here.

Tip: Notice how I corrected the perspective distortion in the original image. In Photoshop, I used Edit > Transform > Perspective and pulled out the top handles. 

I took the series of images with my Canon 14mm lens on my Canon 5D Mark II.

Scroll down to see what our group has been doing on my Florida Photo Caravan workshop. Good fun.

In Febuary 2012, we are launching Delray Digital - four weekend-long photo workshops – Friday night to Saturday night. Interested? Shoot me an email at ricksammon@mac.com.

For all my workshops, click here.

My HDR iPad app is in the works. It should be available in late February!

Explore the light,

Rick

P.S. Here is another image from this afternoon's shoot. Some gear, same digital darkroom stuff.

Photograph Rick Sammon. Finished HDR image.

Middle exposure of HDR sequence.

Florida Photo Caravan: Merritt Island – 6th Shoot

Photograph  by Rick Sammon

Photograph by Rick Sammon

Our photo caravan will be heading out to Delary Beach in an hour or so. More photo fun awaits the workshop students.

Here are two shots from yesterday. For the top photo, I used a shutter speed of 1/800th of a second to free the action. For the bottom photo, I used a shutter speed of 1/40th second to blur the background while panning.

Stay tuned for more pix, from me and from our talented student.

Explore the light,

Rick

P.S. Speaking of staying tuned, in my downtime, I am working on my HDR app with Dr. Dave Wilson. So . . . stay tuned :-)

Florida Photo Caravan: Merritt Island – 5th Shoot

Photograph Rick Sammon

Today, only the second full day of my Florida Photo Caravan workshop, brought our dynamic workshop group to Merritt Island. No rest for the weary. We hit the ground running, heading off to take scenic and bird pictures. As you can see from this post, reflections were the name of the game.

Photographs by Rick Sammon

Photographs by Rick Sammon

Special thanks to Reinier Manguia for guiding the workshop participants (and me) on our photo quest . . .  and for giving us a knockout presentation after a fantastic seafood dinner. 

Tip: When shooting into the sun, remove all filters to avoid ghost images of the sun in the shot. In Photoshop, Lightroom or Aperture, use Vibrance to saturate the colors in an image that are not already saturated.

For the wide-angle shots you see here, I used my Canon 17-40mm lens on my Canon 5D Mark II. For the telephoto shots, I used my Canon 100-400mm IS lens on my Canon 7D.

Stay tuned for more images from the photo caravan. Delray Beach and South Beach to come.

See below. These images just in!

Photograph by Glenn Taylor

Photograph by Glenn Taylor

Photograph by Tom Baker

Photograph by Glenn Taylor

Photograph by Tom Baker

Photograph by Tom Baker

 

Photograph by John Davis

Photograph by Donnette Largay

Photograph by Claudia Cohen

Photograph by Rona Zevinsiding

Photography by Byron West

Photograph by Byron West

Joe Barranco

John Davis

John Trottnow

Photograph by Donnette Largay

Photograph by John Trottnow

Photograph by Byron West

Photograph Diane Darnielle

Byron West

Explore the light,

Rick

P.S. Seeing the light - and properly exposing for the light - is one of the keys to a good image. For more on light, see my book:

Be My Guest Monday 1/24/11: Lee Varis

It's "Be My Guest Monday," the day of the week that's turned over to a talented guest blogger for a quick tip - or (as in this week's post) a series of tips, tricks and techniques.

Today's guest: Lee Varis


In this post, Lee talks about Lighten Skin with Channel Blending.

Thank you Lee!

Explore the light,
Rick

Florida Photo Caravan: St. Augustine, 4th Shoot

We're just back from  our sunrise shoot. That's it for beautiful St. Augustine. 

Our next stop is Merritt Island. We are dashing off, but here a few shots from this morning.

Tip: You snooze you lose! Get up early and and catch the light.

And yes! I enhanced the last two images in this post with Topaz Adjust/Spicify.

I hope you can join me on one of my workshops someday. Great fun . . . and great photo opportunities.

Explore the light,

Rick

P.S. These images just in from some of the workshop participants.

Photograph by Chip Bunnell

Photograph by John Davis

Photograph by Glenn Taylor

Photograph by Glenn Taylor

Photograph by Glenn Taylor