Canon 400D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 lens - 5exp (1.6-20sec), f/8, ISO 100

As promised, here is my pick from yesterday's early morning shoot. There seems to be something about HDR that can turn an ordinary picture into somthing magical without too much effort.

If you look beyond the pier you will see a smear of lights which was the boat that appears in other pictures. I left it in to illustrate how long this one took as the boat was travelling very slowly.

You may also have noticed I've borrowed a naming convention from Thomas Hawk, that is "Plate 1", "Plate 2" etc because I take a lot of photos of the same thing and need some way to differentiate them.

Best viewed large on black.

Canon 400D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 lens - 10 seconds, f/8, ISO 100

Since Claire got up way before dawn to catch a plane this morning I decided that since I was awake I would go and grab some dawn pictures.

I was at the beach about half an hour before dawn so I took some test shots of which this is one. The orange light is from a sodium street lamp just out of shot which, I think contrasts nicely with the blue sky.

I almost called this one "Oh my god, it's early" but the face in the life guard hut made me change my mind.

In the end I didn't get a nice sunrise because of the overcast sky. I saved the best for last though and will upload those shots tomorrow.

I ran across an interesting Facebook feature just now. When clicking on a link in one of the group forums I was presented with this:

Nice catch! I suppose they could have just removed the post from the forum though...

Canon 400D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM lens - 8exp (1/4 to 120 second), f/16, ISO 100

It took a while but I finally finished processing the remaining honeymoon pictures. This was our suite at the hotel. It was taken from the window in order to get as much "room" as possible in the frame.

Like lots of my recent stuff, it is HDR. I'm starting to get the hang of it - like most post production the trick seems to be don't overdo it....

I've been bitten by several variants of this now and can see from the web that many others have too. This thread on Adobe Forums is a good source of information. There are a couple of bugs in Lightroom 2.0 so these steps may help.

Check that you have the latest Photoshop CS3 update installed. Sometimes it doesn't get applied correctly so use Help > System Info from within Photoshop and check that the following are true:

• Adobe Photoshop Version >= 10.0.1
• Camera Raw >= 4.5
• ScriptingSupport >= 10.0.1

Check that you don't have any apostrophes in your folder path anywhere. In my case changing from E:\Photos\James' Camera to E:\Photos\James Camera fixed the problem.

This last one only really applies when you can get the image into Photoshop but not back to Lightroom.

Check that the images isn't appearing in a different volume under the folder browser. Currently there is a bug that differentiates the casing of drive letters so you may find you have two volumes that differ only by case, e.g. E:\ and e:\. This one is a real pain and I hope they fix it soon.

If these don't sort your issue then I suggest you get on the thread linked above and let Adobe know...

It has been a while since I posted, mainly because I've spent every free minute processing wedding photos. Now I've moved onto the honeymoon set and have been using this technique a lot on the underwater images.

Taking photographs underwater is great fun but due to the way light travels through water you get two very common problems: low contrast and a blue-green colour cast. These problems get progressively worse as you go deeper because longer wavelengths of light (red end of the spectrum) can't penetrate as deeply. The image below was taken in the Seychelles and illustrates the issue well. It was only a couple of meters down but already you can see the colour cast and the image looks really flat.

You can fix this by taking your own light source, e.g. a flash or a torch but that only really works to light small areas. A wide angle like this has to be post-processed. So what can we do about it? The usual Photoshop way is to bring up levels and move the sliders until this hit the edges of the histogram as so:

This gives an image with a bit more contrast but you can see it still has a strong blue cast.

Remember that the water effects different wavelengths of light by different amounts so should use the levels command to manipulate each channel independently.

This gives a far better result. Lots of contract and a full spectrum of colour.

Just remember, you can't put back what wasn't there so as you go deeper you will lose red colour completely (red objects look black at 25m or so). If you use this technique then you can end up with desaturated, almost black and white photographs as shown below.

Canon 400D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM lens - 7exp (1/250 to 0.8 second), f/16, ISO 100

I'm currently sorting through thousands of wedding and honeymoon pictures so this is just a taster. It's an HDR of the resort beach on Desroches Island. More to follow soon...

Canon 400D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L lens - 9 exp (1/80 to 1.6 second), f/16, ISO 100

This is another HDR photo but I'm much more pleased with the way it turned out compared to the last one. I think the sunset photo was plagued by in-camera noise from the low light. The other main difference between this and the last is a small amount of Photoshop tweaking after the HDR process - the tyres are darker, alloys lighter and a monotone tint. Only the car itself is HDR as I cut it out and placed it on one of the original exposures.

I love the way the HDR aspect makes the car look almost silver. I probably should have given it a clean though.

Canon 400D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L lens - 7 exp (1/5 to 3.2 second), f/16, ISO 100

This was the sky outside of my study last night in HDR form. I used Photomatix to blend 7 exposures taken at different durations. I've tried HDR photography before with Photoshop but this is the first time with Photomatix.

I'm happy with the result but my tripod was at full stretch and it slipped slightly during the sequence which Photomatix then had to correct for so the image loses a bit of definition.

Canon Digital IXUS 860 IS - 1/200 to 1/640 second, f/5.8, ISO 80

Since I haven't posted for a week or so... This one is from the Zorbing on my stag day. Zorbing is... "a sport in which a participant is secured inside an inner capsule in a large, transparent ball which is then rolled along the ground or down hills". Basically a giant hamster ball rolled down a hill. Great fun though the harness Zorb (when the riders are strapped in) can be a little bumpy.

I created this composite in Photoshop.

Canon 400D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L lens - 1/100 second, f/4, ISO 100

We see this fox quite often around the neighbourhood and this is the second time it has come into the garden in broad daylight.

It's quick though so I had to jump for the camera and use the lens that was fitted. I wish I'd had more time to use a smaller aperture though as it's a little soft. It's heavily cropped and a vignette added to try and focus attention on the fox.

I didn't want to risk opening the patio door so the shot is taken through glass which doesn't help.