growyourwings | Early HDR Attempts :: Warehouses in inner SE Portland

Last Saturday i went with a friend of mine to a lecture by a photographer titled, The Amusing Photography of DAVID ZAITZ.

I really enjoyed it. Zaitz is a professional commercial photographer. Which basically means his day job is taking product and other photographs as dictated by others. His passion however is creating photographs inspired by his imagination and sense of humor. I linked to his site up above so you can see his work. At the lecture he was interviewed by a former director of photography of Sunset magazine, which is a well known magazine here in the Pacific NW and I guess in California as well as it looks like the guy lived in CA when he worked for Sunset.

I already knew that professionals use whatever tools they have to make their photographs into what they envisioned. It was good though to hear two professionals talk about the photo manipulations they did to get their final product - including compositing multiple photos - what we in fandom would call manips. ;)

The lecture was located in an inner Portland warehouse district (near OMSI for anyone familiar with Portland.) I rarely get to walk around that part of town, so after the lecture I walked around a bit and took some shots.

I'm reading a photography book right now that talks about how to find your passion in photography - your vision. Part of that is knowing just WHAT it is you like to shoot. When I was first asked this question last year, my immediate response was "everything!" But as I shoot more and am paying attention to what sparks and grabs me when I shoot, what inspires me, I find that I am narrowing down that list just a little. (It's still way too long.)

One of the things I realized last Saturday is that I LOVE to shoot urban (especially urban decay) and architectural items. Basically I'm enthralled by geometric lines and patterns. I love graffiti. I love old bricks. I love windows and doors. I also really love trains of any kind. And shooting people in those settings really gets my juices flowing.

Here are some of the shots I took. I haven't yet fully decided how much I like these. I loved the location. I'm just not sure I'm happy with the resulting photos.

I attempted some HDR work on these. One is "pure" HDR via Photoshop. Which so far is still whipping my butt - I'm not enamored of the result. On the others, I got to an HDR-like effect in Photoshop using techniques I've been using for years. I like these much better. But I'm determined to figure out and master true HDR. I likely will have to get an HDR-specific software program. But that's okay. I love collecting software. :P

(Observation - my cold is getting worse, but I notice as I'm working on these photos that I stop thinking about it and just ignore it. I love this stuff.)

(click any to enlarge)

above :: See? Graffiti + old brick + windows (old!) + doors (old!) + art mural + train tracks. I was in heaven.

I'm not sure I really got the best possible shots here. One of the reasons I really want to take that class in a couple of weeks that will focus on architectural photography.

above :: this is the "true" HDR photo. I do not like the sky. Honestly the failure of this photo is likely more due to my inability to get the proper shots and exposures just as much as my inability to use PS's HDR capability. The more I read up on HDR, the more I'm beginning to think the folks that spend a lot of time doing HDR do NOT use PS; but use software dedicated to HDR.