Can't Help Myself.....

You give me a day with pretty clouds, I will want to take pictures of the Temple.

Learning By Making Mistakes.....

Have you ever learned something then because you are lazy, you forget to keep doing it? I learned it the semi hard way, by making a correctable mistake that cost me only time.

Early on, cannot remember when, I read an article about HDR processing that encouraged converting and sharpening your RAW files before running them through Photomatix. I did that for awhile, but found the process tedious. On a recent evening I ran over to my local LDS Temple to get some shots with the rising full moon in the background. After returning home and being chronically busy I had Photomatix do the RAW conversion. I processed everything and was liking the colors etc... but when closely examining the photos I realized that they were not as sharp as is my usual work.

Curious as to whether I could do better with converting to TIFF using ACR and sharpening prior to running the files through Photomatix, I took the time to do the conversions, improving the White Balance and doing the Lens Corrections/Sharpening I usually do.

Below is a comparison of the results. The top photo was using the RAW converter in Photomatix and the bottom using ACR first. The bottom is quite a bit sharper and will print MUCH better in larger formats, also note that I was able to get the WB better. (Just trust me, I see this temple a lot) I also feel that I was able to pull more detail out of the brighter areas as well. Overall just a nicer image.

So here now are the photos processed the right way, and without the vignette I used on the first ones. They are just a bit better, especially on a calibrated monitor.

This was shot the same night just a little later, my main problem was that I had rubber ends on my tripod not my spikes and at 300mm I got just a bit of tripod movement when I had it sitting on the grass. Now I know though...

Three nights later I did some more work as part of a date with my wife. Dinner and Temple Photography is always better than Dinner and a Movie. I wanted to experiment with changing perspective and focal length. Of note, all of these were multiple bracketed exposures, converted in ACR with lens correction Profiles, WB correction & Sharpening. The HDR settings were kept essentially unchanged for all of them. My final post processing consisted of straightening (leveling) and perspective correction and cropping. One trick of perspective correction is to not over correct, I tend to leave it just short of perfectly corrected which seems more natural to me.

This at 17mm.

This at 15mm, portrait orientation.

This at 10mm and in Landscape orientation.

10mm as above but closer. I like this one the least as the perspective makes the sides away from the entry too large and makes the building look out of proportion.

Finally at 8mm with my Fisheye from essentially the same spot at the 10mm. (This was straightened but not perspective corrected.)

A Few Recent Temple Photos

Whenever I think I have gotten as many photos as I need of the temple, I find I need more. Why? Because I do. Just because. These first three are HDR and maybe a trifle over the top. Doesn't matter to me, I like them. Neiner neiner!

In this series I was trying to duplicate a prior success and in part I did, I have wanted to toy with backlighting on the temple for a long time. Looking for drama I suppose. It definitely challenges a lens to shoot directly into the sun though.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, LET IT SNOW!!!!

Taking pictures during or shortly after snowfall can be very, very, very cold. Also VERY rewarding. I have had a LOT of positive comments on these shots especially #3 & #4. 

The difficulty lies, as most photographic problems do, with exposure. I tend to solve this with HDR, which also brings a whole host of other issues, not the least of which is getting the correct white balance. The other is reflecting light off crystals still in the sky. I like a nice dark sky, but you don't get that in this type of situation...

This shot made me crazy because there was a UPS truck parked, lights flashing FOREVER, had to go back the next morning (see that shot later) and re-shoot.

This took some pretty "Out There" settings in Photomatix, but it looks good on screen and even better on paper!

I consider this in need of Re-Do, but lack the time to really get after it, And I'm not sure if it is worth it. Especially in light of the next photo that I did the next morning. Still may try it and see what I can do... in my copious spare time!

This was a bugger but I like it. I had to do two different versions of this in Photomatix, with two different white balance settings then blend them together. Big pain in the butt. But it worked beautifully!

Lucky Thanksgiving Morning!!!!

I have the honor of having a job that is actually necessary, and even vital enough to have to perform on holidays and days when I would rather be home with my family. Thanksgiving it gave me reason/opportunity to be up at the right time of day with camera in hand to take some photos I am VERY pleased with. The clouds were just perfect and the light was too.

Now a few technical notes. I tend to use HDR to even out exposures with brightly lit skies and darker foregrounds, with my newer camera, a Pentax K5 I am able to do more with one exposure than I could with my older body. So I decided to take one photo that was a single exposure and push it as far as I could to make it look as best I could. I was surprised at what I was able to do. This first image is the single frame, the second is the HDR. They were taken from slightly different spots and the single exposure first so the clouds shifted a little, but they are similar enough for my purposes. I had to throw some vignette on and a little blur to hide noise I created while pulling and twisting the exposure like taffy but as I said I was VERY pleased, though I like both of them a lot.

Wanting a little more sky portrait orientation was my choice, I should have thought to shoot extra images to stitch and make a HUGE sky! Oh well..... DRAT!

At the behest of my lovely wife after viewing this first attempt which she found too dark, I re-processed it to look less heavy and dark.

This was my final cut and I like it too. In fact I just ordered a print of it, curious to see how it turns out!

More Temple Photos... I NEVER get tired of this place!

These shots are from two different shoots, the first five are from a morning earlier this week when the clouds were simply too awesome to miss despite the pain and akwardness from my recent shoulder separation. The last shots were from a "Look at the light!!! Grab the camera and go!" moment. No tripod so I had to boost the ISO a bit and they are not quite up to my usual snuff for large prints, but still nice images.

A few notes on these shots. The first one is a HDR (5 shot bracketm 0.7 EV steps if I remember correctly) I was having a little trouble holding detail on the temple and the sky, the building was washing out a smidge so I coverted the RAW files to 16 bit TIFF and combined them in Photomatix on the default settings, straightening and perspective correction in Photoshop with a few other tweaks and... I LIKE it!

I had to work this just a little, I could not get an image where both Moroni and the Moon were in focus, there is a bit of a distance difference ;-) so I shot two shots, and combined them to have a sharp statue and moon. Looking at it I may need to go back and pull back the highlights on Moroni, but I am not entirely sure...

This was taken just a little closer to the temple than the first one, but demonstrates the difficulty holding detail on the temple in the light I had. I like it, I just wish I had shot a bracketed series.

Both this shot and the next were taken using my ND filter, 45-60 second exposures ish... too lazy to look it up on a Sunday morning. Both at 10mm I like what it did to the clouds, but I had a heckuva time getting the WB on. There is a slight cast to the images that I needed to correct. I don't know that I got it perfect but I like them.

These were my quick grab shots, I really like the subtle colors in the sky.

Shooting Temples, My Favorite Pastime!

Greetings! Been awhile, hasn't it? Sorry for those of you who come regularly, I will be trying to catch up on the last two months. It has been a busy summer. Trip to Oregon, and a trip to Texas, a BIG engagement photo shoot, and wedding invitation design session. Lots of good things going on.

So... June... I spent a few evenings checking out new vantage points I have not tried yet. I think I am getting somewhere. I need to wait for the right sky for this angle, but it just may be worth the trips and wait.

This is a HDR, the sky was just too bright. I ended up emphasizing the different colors of lights due to the increase in saturation that comes from HDR. Nee to re-visit this at some point and try for something a little more unique.

The weekend of the super moon was a busy one, I again went to shoot the temple for yet another new angle. I wish the moon had been higher.

The overall appearance of this shot appealed to me for several reasons. One, it demonstrates the capabilities of a newer lens (K200mm f2.5), and it is just simply gorgeous! Yeah, I'm biased.

There is a type of temple photo that is quite popular, the sepia toned, fake aged/scratched negative plug-in that takes a mediocre shot and makes everybody buy it. If you haven't seen it don't bother looking, they are really not all that good to my mind. This is as close as I will come to that. A lot of processing went into this shot, at least for me. Desaturation, and low opacity layer with a cloud rendering, vignetting. I like the result, a lot actually, it is soft and contemplative. Just not quite like my usual shots.

Slightly shifted vantage point,  more of my usual HDR processing. Really love the colors on the mountains behind and the delicate sky. On canvas it would be perfect!!!

Shot long enough for airplanes to go by and the clouds to move. I like this one the least, which means that I would probably sell more of it than any other!!!

Temple Panoramas R Me!!!!!

In my never ending quest to get my next seriously cool Temple photo I went panorama. These were both shot at 300mm, Tripod etc... stitched with PtGui. I like the second more for the color and the total framing, want to print it but a 20x60 gallery wrap is full gonzo expensive!!!!!

Which do you like?