The picture for today is coming in a little late, so my apologies… I just returned from Hocking Hills, Ohio, where I took over 300 pictures of the amazing surroundings, and did a Zipline canopy tour. Yes, it was sweet. Hopefully, my pics turn out half as good as the places looked, but I got a lot of work yet to do before I can start unveiling those. Until then, here’s a shot from my hometown Dayton, Ohio.
It’s about 6:30-7:00am; I’m driving around looking for cool things to shoot where it looks like I stand a good chance of not getting mugged. Where do I find myself? The bus stop… of all places. I was drawn by the lighting in the terminal, the pastel colors, and the interesting arches. The curb also provides a nice wandering line that pulls your eyes through the photo; which is good because there are lots of things to see.
There are technical mistakes in this photo however. I put this picture up intentionally to show some common mistakes. When the software combines the series of images it makes a best guess on light levels, which you can then tweak. However, some light levels get mottled, and if you have movement, it usually just makes it even worse. For example, the grass in the bottom left corner is ghosted due to the movement. In this case, I like the effect, because it conveys the breeze and movement, and since it’s a busy area it all kinda works. However, those orb pendant lights suspended from the bus stop roof, have also moved, and the lighting appears dirty. This is one of those situations where the resultant HDR photo would need to be imported into Photoshop along with at least one of the original pictures (from the under/normal/overexposed shot series). Then you would layer mask these lights to bring out a nice sharp even light from the other picture. This is probably more technical than I needed to be on the blog, but in case anyone notes this, cough… mistake… now you know why it’s there.
Click on the picture for full resolution.
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