A Digital Photographers Paradise, The Great Southwest..More HDR Images To Come.

We hear the weather is hot in the Southwestern United States and we are on our way. Wyoming is BIG, beautiful and a great place to ride but, for the first time in many years we’ve had some pretty bad weather. We haven’t had many good phototography oportunities so we are headed for the Southwest and some sunshine.

Heading south from Riverton Wyoming to Colorado is a fantastic ride. For almost the entire ride you are traveling on a high plateau which is 6,500 to 8,000 feet in elevation. The air is crisp and clean and the roads are great. The traffic is very light and you can really cover some ground. We rode pretty steady but, before leaving Wyoming we stopped long enough to take a quick photograph of this beautiful landscape. This jpeg image is a shot looking back to the Northeast in the morning light. I took a single image and we were on the road again. The photo is of a large government managed, wildlife, and big game area. This is the home to a very large elk population.

The jpeg image was taken with my Canon EOS 5D. Shot with a 24mm lens at f/16 for a good depth of field, you can really get a feeling for how big and breath taking this beautiful country is.

Leaving Wyoming

From here we busted right through Colorado and made it to Cortez in Southwestern Colorado and spent the night. We didn’t stop for photographs because we were just happy to have some good riding weather. We made the most of the warm weather and really covered some ground. Tomorrow we will ride into Northern Arizona. It should be a busy day and provide some great opportunities to capture some High Dynamic Range Photographs. This country has a great landscape and the lighting should be great for shooting HDR. Trust me your eyes are in for a treat. See you in a few days,  Terry

PS: Roger just called and we are heading back on the road tomorrow to ride through Eastern Oregon and Hells Canyon on the Snake River. So I guess I’ll be off line for about 5 or 6 days.

Here is quick look at shot taken near Kayenta Arizona… Shot about one o’clock and it was already over 100 degrees.

Kayenta-Az.

Digital Photos Of Sturgis Bike Week Trip Day Six.

Sturgis is about to get crazy but the weather forcast doesn’t look good for the next few days and we are about to head for better weather. We hung out on the streets of Sturgis this afternoon and watched the new arrivals ride in.

Early Arrivals

But the weather forcast is a little sour and we have decided to say goodby to the Hard Core Watch Girls and get out of here in the morning before the big cold front coming from Canada blows in.

Hard Core Watch Girls

We were a day late getting out of town and had to ride from Sturgis to Buffalo Wyoming bucking a 40 to 50 mile an hour head wind that made the ride very interesting. When you are riding 75 to 80 MPH into a 40 to 50 MPH head wind it is like riding in a hurricane. If you aren’t paying attention you can really get tossed around. Some of the cross winds can blow you from one lane to another. The good news is we made it to Buffalo without getting hit with any flying objects. From Buffalo we headed for Riverton Wyoming to spend the night.

Just out of Buffalo, heading over the pass, the storm hit us hard. We got pounded with freezing rain and wind at the top of the pass which is about 9000 feet in elevation. When we made it over the pass to the west side canyon I decided to take a shot of the canyon, just for memories sake, and here is what I came up with. This is an HDR image which I made using three bracketed exposures which I shot hand held. I wouldn’t recommend hand holding your camera when shooting bracketed exposures but this photograph wasn’t intended to be a display print and so I took the chance and it worked out OK.

Canyon Storm

From here we headed to Riverton. On the way we saw this old barn and I thought it was worth taking a photograph, so I took these two digital exposures. Here again, I bracketed one stop over and one stop under to give me the option of later creating some High Dynamic Range prints.

Here are a couple of quickies I made just for this blog post.

Riverton Barn

Riverton Barn-2

After getting our motel in Riverton, I took this shot of Roger taking care of business via phone. Roger owns a water well drilling business in Reno Nevada and is lucky enough to have a good crew working for him. He just has to keep in touch, and crack the whip, over the phone to keep everyone in line.

Taking Care of Business

Roger used my Canon EOS 5D to get a shot of me with one of my many vices, Crown Royal, relaxing outside our motel room. I thought you might like to see the guy who has been telling you this tall tale. Not what you expected, I’m sure!

Relaxing After A Hard Days Ride

HDR Images In The Badlands of South Dakota

We’ve been on the road for 3 days and we’ve decided to take a previously ridden route from Cody Wyoming over the pass to Sheridan and then on to Sturgis. It is a great scenic route and I was looking forward to getting some nice digital images and maybe a few High Dynamic Range photographs. Little did we know that the route we were about to take was closed due to a rock slide over the pass.

What the hell is going on? We have had 100 degree heat, lightning, rain, freezing rain and it’s about to get worse. About an hour out of Cody we started to hit road construction and the next thing we new we came apon a road sign saying the road was closed one mile ahead do to a rock slide. Not that I’m a complainer but it would have been nice if they would have put the sign up 3 miles back at the junction, but what the heck, we just back tracked and headed to our alternate route, Worland Wyoming.

From Worland we headed over the pass and hit 20 more miles of road construction and one hell of a rain storm. The trip is starting to get interesting and one we’ll not soon forget. After all that’s why we do this, it’s all about the adventure. To our surprise, we made it through the day with all our body parts and bikes intact. We finally landed in Buffalo Wyoming to spend the night without touching my camera or taking a single image.

The next morning we had good weather and a relaxing ride into Spearfish South Dakota where we checked into our motel and headed to our favorite watering hole, the Full Throttle Saloon in Sturgis. It is only Wednesday and things don’t start happening until around Friday or Saturday so things were a little quiet and relaxing. I took a quick shot of the bar to document the trip. This place will have over 10 thousand bikers raising hell here in a couple of days, but we’ll have to miss the party because we’ll probably be in Colorado or Utah buy then.

Full Throttle Saloon

We decided to head out and ride the Badlands of South Dakota the next morning. This place is very different. It is comprised of just dirt and mud, you will have to look hard to find any sign of a rock anywhere. I decided to take a few HDR images just to document the trip and here is what I came up with.

Badlands-1

Badlands-2

Badlands-3

Just outside the Badlands Park we stopped at a cool little Biker Bar. Roger and I stopped for a quick beer and I took this shot. Not great but, what the heck, it’s still a great memory of an adventure that both of us will remember for the rest of our lives.

Badlands Biker Bar

Sturgis Bike Rally Trip, Shooting High Dynamic Range Photographs

Sturgis Bike Rally Trip, Shooting High Dynamic Range Photographs:

Well day 2 of our our annual Sturgis Bike Trip was as expected. We blew through Idaho and made it to our second nights destination , Alpine Wyoming. Idaho was hotter than heck. The only time we stopped was for fuel and water. We were on the freeway all day and even at 75 to 85 mph the wind didn’t cool us off much with the 100 plus degree temperatures. No photographs were taken, but we did cover about 500 miles.

Alpine Wyoming is about 40 miles south of Jackson Wyoming. Alpine is a great place to eat, drink, and a great place to start day three of our trip. We stopped on our way out of Jackson and I took a couple of quick shots of the Grand Tetons. I shot these to give an example of the difference between a normally exposed file and an HDR (high dynamic range) photograph. These were taken just prior to leaving the Tetons National Park at the south entrance to Yellowstone.

Normal Exposure: This shot was taken with average meter reading using aperture priority mode at f/16 and ISO @ 100. Shutter speed at 1/60 of a second.

High Dynamic Range Photograph: The initial exposure of this HDR image was taken with the same exposure settings as the image above.  An an additional exposure was taken at plus 1 1/2 stops for increased detail in the shadow area. The third exposure was taken at a minus 1 1/2 stops to capture more details in the highlights. The three exposures were then blended together using Photomatix software. Here is the resulting image.

The weather began to take a turn for the worse as we crossed the mountains and headed towards Dubois Wyoming and the Wind River area. We did stop long enough to capture the following image before we hit the worst of the bad weather.

After I took these exposures we hit some very severe weather. You can see the clouds coming in from a massive cold front which came out of Canada. The rest of the day we rode through wind, lightning, and a lot of rain, on route to our next scheduled stop, Cody Wyoming. We had planned to ride Bear Tooth Pass but it was closed due to snow that day! Bummer!

Normal Exposure: Taken with a Canon EOS 5D. Settings were at: aperture priority, f/11 and a 60th of a second shutter speed. ISO was set @ 100

This High Dynamic Range Image was created with the same process as the proceeding HDR using Photomatix’s HDR software and the detail image enhancement setting.

As you can see, there is a strong weather front coming in from the north,  we did get our butts soaked later in the day.

Stay tuned for our next installment of,  Roger and Terry’s 15 day road trip to Sturgis, and other cool places to travel in the Great Western US.By the way if you want to learn more about how to shoot digital photographs, or if you would like to give a nice gift to an aspiring photographer, check out my course on

 “Mastering Digital Photography Made Easy”. You can pick up a free sample here.

Till next time, Stay focused, Terry

HDR Digital Images, Sturgis Bike Trip 2009, First Day On The Road

Hey, I’m back from one heck of a ride. My riding buddy, Roger, and I were on the road for 15 days and it was quite an adventure this year. We experienced every kind of weather imaginal, including freezing rain, lightning storms, 50 to 60 mile an hour head and cross winds, a snow storm that closed Bear Tooth Pass,and a forest fire near Hat Creek in Northern California.

Our first day out was as we expected, fast and hard in 100 degree weather. We covered about 500 miles and didn’t stop much to take photographs. I did however spot an interesting old home near Ontario Oregon and took the time to take a quick photo. Here is what I came up with. I titled this one, “Priorities”. A guy has to do what a guy has to do. Ride like a bandit and to hell with the house maintainance!

Priorities

The Image above was taken in aperture priority mode at f/11 at 250th of a second. After taking this exposure I decided to do a High Dynamic Range Image and took three exposures. The first exposure was my standard or normal exposure. I then took 2 other exposures, one at 2 stops over exposed to captue detail in the shadows and another at 2 stops underexposed to capture detail in the highlights. The contrast range was too extreme to get good detail throughout the entire image and I felt is was a good opportunity have some fun with HDR do to the unusual subject matter.

Using “Photomatix” which is one of the HDR softwares that I use, I combined the 3 exposures using Photomatix’s, exposure blending mode and created a file with good detail in all three ranges, highlight, shadow, and mid tone. The example below has not had any additional color, tone, or density corrections made but, I now have a very well exposed file to work with in my final image creation process using Photoshop.

Priorities

Now for the fun part! Next I took the same 3 images that were used in Photomatix’s exposure blending mode and used the image detail enhancer to create the following image. Like it or love it, I think you will admit, It is interesting, and does get your attention. The interesting part of using the image detail enhancer is, you have a larger amount of creative control. You can create images with beautiful detail in both the highlight and shadows, or you can opt to create a funky effect like the image below using a variety of slider options.

Priorities-HDR

After all, photography is suppose to be fun! HDR is just another way of having a good time as well as a means to getting some nice digital photographs that you might otherwise not take. HDR enables you to shoot in extreme or crappy lighting and still produce a high quality image. Oh, and by the way, you don’t need to shoot HDR in raw because HDR software is going to convert your files to jpegs or tiffs anyway.

Now if you don’t already have HDR software and would like to give it a try, there is a Free High Dynamic Range software which you can download and save yourself about $100. It isn’t quite as user friendly as Photomatix but what the heck, it is free. You can give it a try by downloading it here.

Stay tuned for more images, and a day by day account, of our 2009 Sturgis trip in the weeks to come.

Till next time, stay focused, Terry

How To Shoot HDR Images With Your Digital Camera

Hey Everyone, I’ve been receiving a lot off questions on HDR lately. I’ll give you a quick idea on how I shoot HDR on an overcast day or in very dimly lit situations. First of all HDR is the process of shooting multiple bracketed exposures of a subject. I usually shoot three exposures. The first exposure I take is at my normal light meter reading. I then take a second exposure at anywhere from  one to two stops underexposed and a third exposure at one to two stops overexposed. This is totally dependent on how contrasty the lighting is at the time. With lower contrasting light I bracket one stop over and one stop under.  You can get by with just 2 exposures under flat lighting.

Under higher contrast lighting I go two stops over and two stops under. I then combine the images in photoshop and use layers adjustments and layer masks to pull the best detail from each exposure. I also use a software called Photomatix on occasion if I am looking for a funkier look. If your camera is equipped with a feature called AEB (auto exposure bracketing) this is quite easy to do.  I recommend using a tripod. However, if you are shooting a brightly lit subject and have a steady hand you can shoot hand held using AEB if your shutter speed is at 250th of a second or higher.

Here are a couple of examples of some shots I took at the Oregon Coast recently. The exposure times were quit lengthy and I did use a tripod.

Below are the 3 original exposures I used to create the example above.

Bandon Beach has some very interesting rock cave that can be accessed during low tides. The lighting is quite extreme from inside the caves to the outside surf and it would be impossible to capture the full dynamic range of the lighting without shooting several bracketed exposures. I made this HDR image using three exposures with exposure times as long as 2 minutes for the overexpose image and 30 seconds for the underexpose exposure.

Below are the 3 images I combined to create the image above.

I hope this clears up some of your questions on taking HDR images with your digital camera. I realize this a brief and simple explanation to a style of shooting that can only be perfected with a lot of practice and some basic knowledge on how to use PhotoShop..  

I’ll be leaving on my annual 2 week bike tip to Sturgis in a day or two and I’ll be covering 10 states with camera in hand. I be posting a lot of new images with all the information on how they were done, so stop back by or subscribe to my RSS feed for all my newest and coolest updates.

Till next time, Peace and Happiness, Terry

How To Avoid Autofocus Problems:

Autofocus can be a lifesaver at times, especially when things are happening very quickly. But sometimes autofocus can be very annoying. For some shots it will focus on the right part of your subject, but then the very next shot it may choose to focus on everything but what you would like it to. It may focus on something far and away into the background or a subject very close to you like a persons shoulder who is standing in a profile pose, causing their head to be out of focus. This often happens at weddings, when a bride is holding her bouquet in front of her, and you end up with her facial features blurry and out of focus but the bouquet looks great.

Sure, you could avoid this problem by always using manual focus, and you should use manual focus whenever possible but, there are other simple solutions to the problem.

Now there are two ways to lock your focus and prevent your camera from autofocusing on the wrong part of your subject:

1. Set your autofocus point to the center spot, then point this spot at your subject or at a specific spot in your scene if you are taking a pictorial photograph. Then press your shutter button half-way down. Do not press it completely down yet. Then, while still holding your shutter button half-way, recompose your shot and press the button completely down, and take your photograph.

2. A second method which is good for pictorial photographs is to autofocus as you normally do, but once your camera focuses on the right spot, just switch off autofocus on your lens, changing to manual focus. Your lens will keep the current focus when you do this. Now you can take your photograph and your focusing point will stay fixed.

Having your autofocus chase, or move back and forth, can be very annoying and cause you to be frustrated and miss some potentially great shots. But if your eyesight is less than perfect like mine, and manual focusing is difficult, these tricks will improve your success rate once you work with them a little.

New HDR Images From Graffiti Weekend

HDR-Graffitti Weekend

Hey Everyone, I thought you might enjoy seeing a couple of quick HDR images I shot last weekend at “Graffiti Night” in Roseburg. I have a bunch of shots of some great looking cars and will be posting them as time allows.

I’m just a few days away from our annual “Sturgis Run”.  I will be taking some shots of the Crazy’s out there….So get ready for some interesting shots in a few weeks. We’ll cover about 10 states and 5500 t0 6000 miles in 12 to 14 days. I plan on doing some HDR images and will share them with you when I get back.

Luck and happiness to everyone and take care, Terry

Making Money Just Got Easier…New Affiliate Sales Aids

Affiliates, Making money just got easier with our new affiliate tools. You now have a large selection of New Banners and a NEW Brandable  Sample PDF of “Mastering Digital Photography Made Easy“. These sales aids along with the use of our large library of prewritten articles and emails should make your jobs a whole lot easier. The sample shown here is just one of the many Banners you have at your disposal.  You can view the complete selection by clicking Banners.

We have also added a Brandable ebook Sample of “Mastering Digital Photography Made Easy” for you to freely distribute. Embedded with your affiliate link this will insure you get paid your commissions on every sale. I encourage you to start giving as many copies away as you possibly can. You can request your branded copy directly from the affiliate sign up page.

Thanks a lot …To your success, Terry

PS: This product is totally new so the market is wide open. I’ll be adding some prewritten PPC ads for google adwors right away. I’m lso in the process of writting an extensive email campaign for you to use in your autoresponder. For now I suggest you opt in at the bottom of the affiliate page and start receiving the campaign I am currently using. Feel free to use these messages  for now. Simply edit the links and insert your affiliate links in the appropriate spots.

Learn Photoshop In Just 2 Hours…

Learn Photoshop In Just 2 Hours…

If you’re new to Photoshop and looking for the easiest way to really get to grips with this exciting software (which can often be very frustrating and overwhelming for newbies)… then I strongly recommend you take a look at Photoshop expert David Peter’s fantastic video tutorials.

There’s just 2 hours worth of instantly accessible online video tutorials, which are designed to get the newbie user as competent as possible as fast as possible.

David claims anyone can master the basics of Adobe Photoshop in just a couple of hours if they follow his video tutorials. And I agree (and when you check out the website you’ll see feedback from a LOT of people who have tried them are are delighted with the results).

What I like most about his video learning system is the fact that you never need to look at a boring manual again. It’s the next best thing to having a personal coach!

If you want all the lowdown on David’s Video tutorials just go to Learn Photoshop Here.