Supermoon, Airplane and Calgary Tower in one

Calgary, Alberta, Canada I really wanted a photo of the supermoon against something that was iconically Calgary. At the same time I didn't want to photoshop the moon to make it look bigger. In order to show a large moon I had to use a telephoto lens and be somewhat far from the tower itself. This meant mapping the path of the moon ahead of time and knowing where I had to stand to get the Calgary tower visible. After a few calculations I knew that I had to be at the Jubilee auditorium, a place I've always gone to and had a fantastic time watching Alberta Ballet or other fantastic shows.

One other problem with shooting such a bright object is that the camera can't capture the comparatively dim lights of the towers and the bright moon at the same time. This required that I take two photos at different exposure levels and mash them together to get the combined details of the moon's beautiful craters and the city's vibrant textures. I had the lucky bonus of an airplane flying in front of the moon while I took the shot, creating a cool streak across the sky.

I have to stress that the the size or shape of the moon has not been manipulated, the only "photoshopping" in this photo is the combining of the two exposures, the large size of the moon is magnified just as much as the tower is by using my 400mm lens on a canon 7D.

Exposure 1 for the city: 4s f/8.0 ISO200 400mm (Brighter) Exposure 2 for the moon 1s f/8.0 ISO100 400mm (Darker)

An elephantine case for HDR

Family of ElephantsSerengeti, Tanzania, Africa

As this family of elephants walked past us we were ever aware of the impending sunset. I took many photos of the elephants but what stood out were the ones with the leading elephant giving himself a dust bath as the sunset backlit the puff of serengeti ash. It’s these moments that I get very excited, the low golden light is paramount in photographing anything from wildlife and landscapes to portraits. This is where I knew I could get a stunning environmental portrait of this family, scenery and a sunset scene all in one. The major technical problem is the wide tonal range I was trying to capture: the bright highlights of the sun, clouds and landscape to the dark shadows of the elephants and foreground. This would be too much for my camera to take in all at once. I turned on the auto bracketing and multi burst shooting mode on my camera, holding down my shutter I rapidly fired off three exposures, one over exposed by two stops, one with normal exposure and he last under exposed. The three images combined provided me with an extra wide tonal range that captured everything I was looking at, this is what’s known as HDR, or High Dynamic Range. After firing off a few shots I thought, “I just +Trey Ratcliff ed it”.

Manual HDR version, click to enlarge:

Even before this I have already accepted HDR images as a legitimate photographic technique. A lot of people currently consider it “cheating” or “fake” the irony is that the images come out with a tonal range that more accurately reflects what a person would see in real life. To me, the fact that I use this technique is personal validation that HDR is here to stay and that this technique is just as good as any other a photographer keeps in their arsenal. This scene begged to be captured in a full range and this was the only way to do it with the available light. My first impression of HDR years ago appalled me, but no more than bad photography might appall me. These days there are plenty of great examples of masterfully processed HDR photos, and these photographers and the community in general is getting better every day. People tend to dislike images that are highly processed on a computer but then don’t complain about techniques that can be employed in camera. New cameras coming out will focus more on performance and image quality including doing HDR in camera, some with specialized sensors do it all the time. What will HDR dissenters think about that? When it becomes more about how the photo is taken it becomes a game, for me photography is about capturing truth and beauty, truly expressing the emotional power of being there, I couldn’t care less if the photography did headstands while doing it, it’s the photo that matters.

HDR Technique: I initially processed this in Photomatix, the de facto HDR processing software as far as I can tell. I like what it does but I don’t love the way it treats all the textures, coming out with too much contrast in unusual places, the software not being aware of the elephants natural smoothness it treats their skin like a texture that needs to be brought out, and it was too much. Other unusual artifacts produced by photomatix cause flaring on highlight edges and the images come out a little softer than I like, losing a bit of resolution. For this reason my final image was an HDR photo that I manually combined in photoshop. I layered each exposure on top of each other and kept each portion that was properly exposed for the final result. It ended up looking just the way I saw it without unusual artifacts and a more subdued contrast change. It will be interesting to see which image appeals most to people, so comment and let me know.

Photomatix HDR version:

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230 degree Arctic vista

Svalbard, Norwegian Arctic In the hopes of pursuing a polar bear a great place to look is the very platform that bears depend upon for hunting: sea ice. Our vessel being ice strengthened we have very little to worry about when navigating around frozen areas like this. In fact given that we had some time and wanted to scan the horizon for bears, we end up ramming into the sea ice to park the ship, with no need of an anchor we can rest here and take a look at the view.

Photographic Details: I was admiring this view when I thought I would have fun with a panorama. Taking multiple photos with my wide angle lens I was able to capture over a 230 degree view, which as a photo tends to play with the mind. It looks like two ships are right beside each other when in reality it’s just the left and right side of the main deck I was standing on. Each photo was automatically stitched together by photoshop after being processes in lightroom.

1/125s f/9.0 ISO100 16mm

Click for full image

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Digital fisheye Antarctic Vista

Antarctica The views that welcome you when you first arrive along the Antarctic continent is quite the sight to behold. Being surrounded by these tall icy figures rising out of the ocean feels like the mountains are hugging you, and despite the cool the antarctic air I always feel warm and fuzzy. This is one of the images I used to promote my Polar Worlds show.

Click Image for larger version

Photographic Details: Fisheye photos are cool but to use one regularly would be somewhat disorientating. The original shot had a flat horizon but I wanted something a little more dynamic. So instead of going out to get a fisheye I thought I would make the effect myself, turns out it’s possible in photoshop in about 7 clicks of the mouse!

Photoshop:

Open the image and double click your layer to rename it, you need to rename it to anything but “background” to unlock it for editing.

[image size="medium" autoHeight="true"]http://www.kylefoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/layers.jpg[/image]

Then go to Edit>Transform>Warp

[image lightbox="true" size="medium" autoHeight="true"]http://www.kylefoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/edittransform.jpg[/image]

Click on the middle of the image and drag your mouse down to begin warping, try it in other ways to get different results.

[image lightbox="true" size="large" autoHeight="true"]http://www.kylefoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/warp1.jpg[/image]

[image lightbox="true" size="large" autoHeight="true"]http://www.kylefoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/warp2.jpg[/image]

When you are finished, press enter, and you are done!

Canon EOS 5D, 1/100s f/5.0 ISO50 35mm 16-35mm f2.8 L lens.

If you like this, please share. And if you try this technique, post it in the comments and share, let’s see what you can do!

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