Surface Detail
Sydney Night HDR Revisited
About 8 months ago when I was staying out at Potts Point I found this great view of the city which I took a series of photographs of one night with bracketed exposures with the intention of turning them into a high dynamic range photo. At the time I processed them with Photoshop’s tone mapping tool but was a little disappointed in the results – there simply wasn’t the range in there that I was looking for along with some odd artifacting.
Recently I’ve been re-processing my HDR images with Photomatix which gives a much, much nicer result. After processing the 3 exposures to a tone mapped image I went back into Photoshop to clean up the sky (which was suffering from some pretty severe ghosting) and mask out some of the burnt out highlights.
I was surprised at the difference that the different forms of processing made. It’s certainly not perfect, but for what was, more or less, my first experiment at HDR photography it turned out pretty well. It is also available on flickr.
There will be a series of HDR photographs coming soon as I go through my album and re-process the images. Actually, there will be a lot of photographs in general coming over the next few weeks having finally sorted out a photo library and workflow system. I’ll save that, however, for another post.
Ben,
Nice shot. I like it and knowing the area it making it even better. Wondering though where exactly was it made from. Was it from some building? I know there is a long McElhoe stairs coming up from a Woolloomooloo, but there is just a glimpse of the city. Same is from the navy carpark rooftop park.
Cheers,
R.
Thanks, Rod. It was taken from a some stairs (Horderns stairs) between Borougham st and Victoria st.
See here.
Thanks again!
That’s the stairs on a side of a cliff? Remember them now, an interesting place, a bit creepy though at night.
I am working on a few recent night panoramas as well. Hopefully will come out good.
Well, good luck and keep the pictures coming!
R.
Yeah, they’re the ones. Agreed with them being a bit creepy – not so good when you’re flashing camera equipment about.
Would like to see the photographs you take – feel free to send me a link when and if you get them up online.
Cheers!
Thanks Ben. I will be happy to send you a link once I have them online. Will be interesting to know your opinion.
It is actually funny… I found you blog when I’ve been looking for some information on how to create a HDR panorama. I’ve read your post dated year 2008 about how you tried to combine your night shots. There were few interesting ideas, but I thought “Great. It will be nice to see if there are more recent posts on the subject”. I then clicked on your blog title page and saw that the latest post is actually the one I’ve been thinking about. That is very nice of you
But, that’s not all. Today, I was just about to write that I am thinking about the best way to create a web site for myself (“photoblog / gallery” alike) and that you might have a suggestion of a good mix of software/design/hosting solution. And then I click on blog title page again and see that you are indeed in a process of creating a new web site for yourself. Now, I need to remind myself the next time I will be starting something in future to check your blog first
So, back to the business. What I was thinking about is to create a photoblog/gallery for myself. Hopefully you might have a suggestion. I am not a pro in photography, but I would like to set up simple and impressive-looking website. It is basically for posting of my top photos. I have a gallery on picasa, but that is just to share pictures with my friends and family.
So, what I would like to see is:
- Impressive, easy to use interface with full-screen option (like the Cooliris thingy or Flickr full-screen slide-show, also this is a nice example as well based on PixelPost photoblog software: http://www.sirius2photo.com/photo/ )
- Ability to have user comments, photo information displayed (EXIF etc), tags would be nice
- Dual functionality will be great: main page is blog-like, but have a gallery option to browse through all the pictures
- Will be nice to embed the option which will allow people to easily buy prints if they like (from redbubble or whatever is the best/easiest). Not that it will be all about selling, but option should be there.
Have not been too lucky in finding a comprehensive guide on that. So, will appreciate if you have any suggestions or a direction to look.
Cheers,
R.
Ha ha – Great minds must think alike!
Well, I intend to keep things very simple for mine as I found that things start getting muddy when you try to have a be all and end all website.
But some suggestions;
This website is based on WordPress (wordpress.org) which is quite extendible through various themes and plugins, many of which are photo-centric. This would cover your blog and possibly gallery aspect.
There is also ZenPhoto (http://www.zenphoto.org/) which covers the ability to rate, comment, etc, photos in a gallery. It isn’t flashy like cool iris, though, but I believe it can integrate with WordPress…
As for full-screen and store integration, I’m afraid I can’t give you any advice there.
General advice, though, would be to see what other photographers are doing and make sure that you know what you really want in a website.
Unfortunately you’re probably not going to find one solution or even one explanation that will suit your needs exactly (if only it were that easy). Rather, you’ll have to just start researching and trying things out.
I’m afraid there is no easy answer! But I hope this was of some help.
Thanks Ben. I was also looking into the WordPress as by the looks of things it is the most popular platform for blogging. Will have a more detailed look on it probably.
Good luck with your new web site!
Cheers,
R.
Hi Ben,
After all that time passed since our discussion I managed to build a photoblog. Thanks for your advice and inspiration, it kept me going.
I can now finally share CBD HDR panorama I have been talking about.
View Large On Black: http://bighugelabs.com/onblack.php?id=3731376753&size=large
I’ve just been checking it out – it looks really good. And the HDR is amazing as well.
My own website got put on hold for a bit due to other commitments, but it will hopefully be up soon!