HDR at Clay Pit Ponds State Park Preserve

With the upcoming photography teaching event and photo walk I will be teaching at Clay Pit Ponds State Park Preserve I decided to shoot a little before going over some of the presentation. I am without my wildlife lenses unfortunately as they are being serviced, so to landscapes it is! The skies were cloudy and a fresh painting of snow had touched the landscape. Before I even took the camera out of the car I knew I was going to shoot for HDR (High Dynamic Range.)

One thing I love about HDR is what it does to the clouds. It adds an incredible amount of drama. If you ever underexpose a shot heavily with stormy skies you will see what I mean. I am working on a tripod 90% of the time when working with HDR. You need to make sure all the images will easily overlay and line up to reduce any artifacts. The one problem too is wind. Zoomed in you can see a few branches that look like they are ghosting due to the wind. I could have not shot the image, but I felt it didn’t suffer because of it. Once I had my tripod I stopped down for a large depth of field and I usually start with no exposure compensation. In typical scenes like these a 5-stop range of light will cover my needs. I go into my cameras bracketing function and set it for a total of 5 images. A normal meter reading, -1 underexposed, -2 underexposed , +1 overexposed, +2 over exposed. Then from those images I will compile them all later in Photo Matrix Pro to get the image I desire. There are a ton of sliders in photomatrix and I push and pull them until the image feels just right. A tip I use to know when I shot a 5-image sequence when reviewing my images from the day is to go back to a single exposure shot and photograph my hand. It’s a signal to me that before that shot is my sequence. I took a total of 8 HDR sequences and trying to keep up amongst all the other photos can be a blur. I got the tip from Matt Kloskowski at DTownTV for shooting panoramas. I would take a lot of images and not knowing where one starts and one begins can drive you nuts!

Notice something in this image that wasn’t in the last? Same location, but there are no foot prints! I actually walked back in my own foot prints to keep this look going. The HDR technique really brought out the detail in the depth of the snow.

I was captivated by this one walkway. It is just across Sharrotts road near the park and I was the first one to step foot there. Well besides the wildlife at least. I ran this through Silver Efex Pro and choose the Dark Sepia filter. No adjustments beyond that. This is the same image as the first one posted.

I wanted to shoot some images that weren’t HDR. Although I enjoy HDR photographs I don’t like to fill a location with them. The advantage is I keep all 5 shots so I could pluck out an exposure I like. These non HDR images however were shot for the sole purpose of not using HDR. I used the Pro Contrast filter in Color eFex pro that made my whites bright and crisped up the edges.

I also ran it in B&W. Although I realize most of these images are  the same location/position there are subtle differences. We all too often walk by a scene as something we have seen before. Something that has been photographed and we have grown tired off. Don’t get me wrong I have done it too. I try and correct myself when I do so however. I try and remember that every moment in time is unique. Why was this last photo (color and B&W version) so unique? Well if you notice the shadows came out. The day being overcast left no shadows. I had MAYBE 15seconds to take this image. I panicked and shot it at f/8. Not the f/16 I had wanted, but we take what we can get.

The reason I was shooting at f/8 was I wanted to be ready for anything. Remember I alluded to wildlife before? Well if something walked in the frame he/she wasn’t going to stand still for an f/16 exposure. I have left my settings in bracketing or stopped down real hard before and payed for it with missed opportunities. So this is the flip side of trying to avoid that. Can’t win them all they say

My goal was to get to Sharrotts Pond. As you can see everything was untouched and just a beautiful sight. I kept the cooler tone that the HDR had created as I felt it told a batter story as to how the temperature felt.

The pond was perfect. Frozen just enough for a fantastic winter landscape. I wanted to bring you along for this one

I wanted to finish out the day with a portrait of the pond. Sometimes an image speaks to you and when it does don’t let it get away! Whether it is HDR or a quick snap the hesitation of holding off that photograph is not worth it. Just Click! (sorry Nike :-p)