After a rousing and exciting meeting with my fellow AIGA NHVT boards members, three of us stayed behind and decided to get a bit of springtime sun, and exchange some shooting tips and techniques. We were all jazzed to be able to walk around Vermont Surplus, which is really an architectural surplus shop, and take some shots. I was concentrating on practicing my setup and shooting for HDR (high dynamic range) shooting, and another one of us (Michael) was working on his single (wired) strobe shooting.

For me, being a professional photographer is about shooting, experimentation, and more shooting. Taking risks on your own time, and experiencing the excitement of catching something just right. It’s great to be able to share these moments with other photographers that can lend an eye, hold a flash, tilt a reflector, you name it. I always walk away from shoots like this wishing I had more time.  The completely immersive surroundings of the old doors, statues, vases, doorknobs, dressers, stained glass… man.. there was just too much.  And that was only the first floor (at least it looked like there were two floors.)

Here are some quick roughs of ideas I had for HDR conversion on these shots… now to do them in high resolution.  I generally prefer to work with smaller resolution versions of the images to quickly tweak, process, and reprocess the HDR effects to create a baseline.  Then I go back in and do the full resolution version… I usually save the profile when I’ve worked it through to save time.  Anyway, enough of that jive… check these out and tell me what you think.  Want to see more?  Let me know.  Want to buy a big ol’ print?  Contact me, and we’ll get you rolling.

Keep shooting.

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Eaton, New Hampshire is a favorite place of mine.  It’s just a few minutes down the road from me, and there’s a lot to do and see there.  From swimming and fishing in Crystal Lake, to having a hearty breakfast at the Eaton Village store (Phil’s breakfasts are quite possibly the best deal for many miles, and fantastic), you’re bound to have an eyeful of New Hampshire beauty and a good bit of fun.

These shots are from a recent outing in the freezing cold with Duane Dale… we decided to take a ride out to the Little White Church, and lose feeling in out fingers shooting a few different angles.  My main goal was to do what you see here, which is some HDR (High Dynamic Range) tests in snowy, low light conditions. I’ll be explaining HDR at some point here and at the AIGA NHVT blog.

The Little White Church was a great place to shoot, as it has a bunch of hard lines, some really nice imperfect, flowing glass windows, and the light seemed to be just right.  Check them out, and feel free to weigh in on what you liked, and didn’t like. You can learn more about the Little White Church at http://www.littlewhitechurch.com. (Feel free to tell them that they need Rovettidesign to do an overhaul of their website.)

More Eaton shots are coming when the snow melts.

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I ended up getting a great opportunity to get this HDR shot on the farm a few weeks ago.  I’ll let you in on the idea… first, here’s the shot.

It was a beautiful day… and the clouds looked HUGE. Generally it tends to be difficult to get the depth of the blue skies and the bright puffy whites of the clouds without blowing out the image a bit, and losing a lot in the process.  Even though there wasn’t a gigantic amount of contrast that day, I though that I could push it.  I had my Manfrotto Digi tripod, which is lightweight, and pretty bombproof… so I chucked it down, and snapped 6 shots rapidly… all with differing exposures (I stayed on aperture priority with a wireless remote and let the shutter fly). After a bit of time in the studio, I ended up tweaking the HDR settings, and, well… here it is. HDR is a kind of quirky beast, but I felt like I nailed it towards the end of the post-shoot session.  I especially like the way the tonemapping altered the coloring and saturation of the soil and plants in the foreground.

Feel free to fire off any questions… and of course, prints are always for sale….

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