Open top menu
Showing posts with label HDR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HDR. Show all posts
6 Nov 2013
Art Painting Your Park (Fort Canning)

  • at 10:52 pm
  • 0 comments
Weather is good this morning, and I went out searching for a inspirational topic that I could work on at Fort Canning Park which I last came here 5 years ago. Not before long after taken only a small handful of photographs, I had to end my field trip as my shoe sole has given way on me.

Fort Canning Park is one of Singapore's most historic landmarks where many ancient artefacts still remain amidst the lush greenery park. Besides the usual flowers and insects/bugs expected of a park, the Fort Canning Park has many other interesting photography subjects such as burial grounds, ancient grave stones, fort gate, battle bunkers, art sculptures and old huge trees.

Standing in the middle of Fort Canning Green, I couldn't help admiring how majestic the huge trees was looking on a green field against the blue sky. The idea of making this entire scene into an art painting struck me.

Does the picture above looks like a beautiful art/oil painting? Turning photographs into an art painting look-alike picture can be done easily by taking bracketing shots of the scene and generating the photographs taken into a single HDR (High Dynamic Range) picture using software programs.

Taking Bracketing Photographs

  • In bracketing, typically 3 identical photographs are taken with different exposure - normal, over-exposed and under-exposed. The amount of "over" or "under" exposure stops is defined in the bracketing function menu which can be accessed from the camera's function menu.
  • It is easier to take the bracketed shots in Aperture Priority (Av) Mode. Adjust the aperture that you want the shots to be taken with.
  • Before taking the 3 bracketed shots, switch the shutter drive mode to multiple shots so that you can just hold the shutter for the 3 shots to be taken. It is best to have a tripod so that the composition of the scene is the same, otherwise it may cause some problems when generating the HDR picture.

Converting to HDR

  • It is easiest to convert bracketed photographs to HDR using software programs such as Photomatix Pro which I'm using. These programs do most of the "stacking" job, and leaves the final adjustment of the picture to you.
  • To make it look more like an art painting, I made further manual adjustment to the generated HDR image by increasing the strength of the dynamic details, color saturation, luminosity and micro-contrast.
Here is another "painting" which I had took from the wall of gravestones along the stairs. I've converted the painting into black and white, and painted color over the walls and stairs.

Please visit http://jefzlim.smugmug.com/Destinations/Singapore/Fort-Canning-Park for more photos …


Read more
3 Nov 2013
Upside-Down World In A LightBulb

  • at 11:37 pm
  • 0 comments
I had a late night wedding event yesterday and was feeling a little bit lethargic to go out for photography despite good weather today. So I was thinking is there any photography ideas that I can take on at home without the need to setup any studio strobes, background, etc.

Just when I was thinking desperately, an idea struck me while watching the movie "Upside Down" with the lightbulb in front of the TV (note: I've left the lightbulb in front of the TV after my post yesterday on "Photographing Lightbulb with Reflections"). I thought why not an upside-down world in a lightbulb?

I recalled that when I was a kid, my dad used to remove the filament of lightbulbs and reared little guppy fishes to make me happy. Back then (and now as well), I was always amazed with how everything was looking upside-down from a water-filled lightbulb before he put in the fishes.

Hollowing the Lightbulb

So I took on the daunting task to stripe off the filament inside a lightbulb. I am not very good with such handy fix work, and so I googled "How to hollow out a lightbulb" … which gives me plenty of results to study how the filament can be removed. After going through a couple of videos, I buck up my courage and spent almost an hour to finally hollow out the lightbulb.
(Note: I'm not posting the instructions on how to hollow out a lightbulb as there are many videos out there in the Internet. Do take extreme care and not to cut yourself when doing it.)

With the lightbulb hollowed and cleaned-up, I filled it with water. Then, I tie a thread to the metallic base cape of the water-filled lightbulb and hang it on the windows in my living room. The prop required is completed :)

Experimenting with Different Angles

From the water-filled lightbulb, I was able to see how the multi-storey carpark and flats in front of my living room were looking upside-down in the lightbulb. I took a couple of shots and experimented with different angles.

I noticed that I had to photograph from a position slightly lower than the hanging lightbulb in order for the buildings and sky to appear dramatically in the lightbulb. However, this could be due to the reason that I'm staying at mid-floor level.

After taken the shots that I wanted at my house, I hurried to my parents' house which is on high-floor to try out. This time round, I noticed that I could photograph the lightbulb at angle almost perpendicular with the lightbulb. I was also able to get more of the sky appearing in the lightbulb as well.

To add a little more drama to the landscape inside the lightbulb, I did a HDR with +/- 2 stops bracket shots. Also note that I have actually flipped the lightbulb to show the landscape inside in a upright position, which means anything you see outside the lightbulb is actually upside-down.

In both cases, I noticed that the extreme round top as well as the curvy "waist" of the lightbulb is actually reflecting more of the interior environment of the house. Perhaps next time, I should bring the lightbulb to an open-space environment and try out if it is the same.

Other Things to Note

  • When filling water into the lightbulb, air bubbles will then to get trap inside. What I did was to gentle clean up the bubbles with a cotton bud.
  • Finger prints and fine dust will tend to appear on the lightbulb's glass surface. You need to take care of them before photographing otherwise they will just turn up in the photo. While it may be totally impossible to clean up all the fine dust, at least clean away the finger prints :)
  • Take extreme precaution when hanging lightbulbs on windows. Make sure that it is tightly secured. Otherwise if it drops off the window, you might fatally injured any passerby. (Note: In Singapore, even if the falling lightbulb did not hit anyone, you can still be charged for high-floor littering.)

Please visit http://jefzlim.smugmug.com/Studio-Works/Still-Life/ for more photos ...


Read more
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)