Foto Friday - Massachusetts State House

Foto Friday - Massachusetts State House Floor

Hell everyone.

Today's photo is one of a Boston Architectural Series that I did a short time back. A small group of us were given special permission to set up in the State House with our tripods to capture its beauty. A bit of technology needed to be used to create what I was looking at, as opposed to what the camera was able to capture in a single shot. All in all 10 shots were combined into a HDR Vertical Panorama of the State House Floor from the upper balcony.

For the Technology Geeks, 5 HDR shots were captured of the lower half , and the upper half (examples below) of the final result. The base shot for the HDR Series was 5.0s, F11, ISO 100 at 16mm. All 10 shots were selected in Lightroom, right clicked -> Photo Merge -> HDR Panorama. Lightroom was then set off to do its thing, and after minor tweaking, this was the final result.

Hope you enjoy!

Dennis 

www.drfineart.com

www.instagram.com/drfineart

Foto Friday - Roundheaded Leeks

Foto Friday - Roundheaded Leek

Hello everyone.

Today's photo was compiled (focus stacked) from four separate shots in order to maintain the viewer's eye on the subject, and keeping the background out of focus. This is an artistic choice when shooting flowers, and one that I believe brings the viewer's eye to your main subject(s).

For the Technology Geeks, the shots were captured at F4, 1/125s, ISO 250, on a 90mm Macro lens. If you look at the screenshot of the DoF (Depth of Field Calculator) that I was using, the D0F (area that is most in focus) is 3/8 of an inch. For each of the shots I put the focus point on each flower head to capture them. I then took the four shots into Photoshop (after processing in Lightroom) as separate layers, did an Auto-Align Layers and then an Auto-Blend Layers which gave me the resulting photo.

Hope you enjoy!

Dennis

Foto Friday - Tin City

Hello everyone. 

Today's shot is one that I captured recently in a section of Naples Florida called Tin City. It was a grey and overcast day, rendering a dull and boring shot. So I decided to have a little fun with it. I darkened it down and re-lit it in post, giving me the shot you see here.

For the Technology Geeks, all of the work was done in Lightroom. First I darkened the shot by pulling the exposure down by 2 stops, pulled down the blacks, and added a post crop vignette to give a darkened look. I then started with the process of adding "Radial Filters" to re-light the picture. In each of the Radial Filters I pulled the Exposure and White Balance sliders all the way to the right (increased). I would then pull them back to make the adjustment that was needed for that particular section of the shot. All in all, I lost track around ~95 Radial Filters that were added.

Hope you enjoy!

Dennis

Original Image

Foto Friday - Lillies of the Valley

Foto Friday - Lilies of the Valley 
Hello everyone.
Today's shot is a beautiful string of flowers called Lilies of the Valley. Each flower is only about a 1/4" to 1/2" in size, and very low to the ground. I actually had to lay on the ground with my camera and tripod to get the shot(s).
For the Technology Geeks the primary techniques used to capture theses flowers is focus stacking. Each individual flower had to be be spot focussed and captured separately in its own shot. In this case seven separate shots. After touch up, the seven shots are opened as layers in Photoshop, Auto Aligned, and then Auto Blended under the edit menu.
Hope you enjoy!
Dennis 
www.drfineart.com
www.instagram.com/drfineart

Foto Friday - Louisburg Square

Foto Friday - Louisburg Square 
Hello everyone.
Today's photo was taken on Beacon Hill in Boston in a smaller section called Louisburg Square. It is a beautiful quaint New England looking area of Boston and has a lot of History.
For the Technology Geeks, the shot is relatively straight forward. It was shot at F8, 1/30s, ISO 200, at 16mm. The shot was a then cropped to a 16:9 aspect ratio to give it a more cinematic look.
Hope you enjoy!
Dennis