An artistic look at the Field Museum – HDR image consisting of 15 frames at 1/3 stop intervals.

Back Story

This image was one of the few I captured during the 4th Annual Scott Kelby Worldwide Photo Walk.

The image itself is an HDR composite of 15 individual exposures, spanning 5 EV stops. By far, it’s the most number of frames I’ve shot for a single HDR scene (not counting panoramas) and I was very happy with the amount of detail that resulted.

My own personal taste for HDR images is staying photo-realistic and not going overboard, but I’ll be the first to admit this one is pushing that boundary pretty hard. I may end up creating another version, but given the age of these buildings in downtown Chicago and the history behind them, I felt a little grundgy, edgy feel was rather fitting here.

What do you think, too much?

About the Walk

It was my first year attending this event, and despite being a little unprepared for the harsh wind off the lake (we were warned, though) I think it was a nice first start. Looking forward to shooting this route again – even if that may mean waiting until spring.

You can see a few other photos from this walk in the Kelby Worldwide Photo Walk – 2011 gallery page.

– Kris

Photo: The Hawaiian flower lei I gave my special wahine for Valentine’s Day.

Ever since we first caught the Aloha Spirit in 2006, we try to keep it around us as much as possible. Few things can bring that magical island feeling back like a fresh Hawaiian flower lei.

We’ll order them from time to time, usually from hawaiian-leis.com, and while they usually only last a few days, the memories they bring back are well worth it.

Wait ‘Til Next Time…

This particular lei was a surprise V-day gift for my lovely wife, and I only had about 30 minutes from when it was delivered to when we came home – talk about cutting it close!

That didn’t leave a lot of time for me to set everything up for more thorough photo session. I almost wish I had a macro lens or had switched to my 50mm f/1.8 instead, so the next time we order these little floral gifts of Aloha, I may be better prepared.

I did take a few smaller bracketed exposures to play around with the Super Resolution technique I’m reading about in Photographic Multishot Techniques from my book list earlier this year. I honestly never knew it existed and haven’t tried the software yet, but at least I snapped the necessary shots to experiment with.

If it works out, you’ll probably be seeing this image again in the near future.

– Kris

Photo: The view from our balcony after about 30 hours of snow. Isn’t it pretty?

Whenever we get one of those marathon snow systems here in Chicago where it snows non-stop for at least 18 hours, you can almost be guaranteed of three things when it finally stops:

1. There’s a ton of snow on the ground,
2. It’s going to be very frigid because all the moisture is out of the air,
3. and the clouds will be all but gone and it will be super sunny.

That was the case earlier this week, and I took the opportunity to setup on our balcony and catch this shot in the morning before it got too bright out.

It’s an HDR image of 3 exposures, which was necessary since I wanted to capture the blue sky in the background and the snow down below.  One of my HDR shots that doesn’t look like HDR, which is actually a big goal of mine.

- Kris

Photo: Looking out at a frozen winter wonderland of snow and icy water.

I shot this during the same early morning session as the image from yesterday. After freezing my tail off – and forgetting my gloves in the car – I headed inside to call it a morning. While in the stairway back up to our room, I saw this view out of the window and played around with how to give it an interesting look.

Photo: One of the waterfront facing buildings of the Stone Harbor Resort, overlooking the frozen waters of Sturgeon Bay.

This was shot from the first early morning session I did over the weekend up in Wisconsin. I shot it as an HDR image, and at the time, I was a little unsure how it would turn out because of the overcast skies that early in the day left me no shadows to play with.

Photomatix took it close to halfway of what you see here, but Topaz Adjust brought out even more detail, and gave the building a nice two tone look from the brick and the other paneling.

Hockey Alert!

For those that were following along on my new Facebook page late last week, might have caught that I picked up on a hockey game one of my former players was playing in down in Green Bay. It’s been a longer delay than I had anticipated, but I’m going through all the shots now and getting ready to post them.

So, if you liked the recent hockey shots from a few weeks ago, time for another skate.

– Kris

Photo: A pickup truck parked out on a frozen Europe Lake in Northern Door County, WI.

I captured this image while standing in the middle of a frozen lake up in Door County over the weekend. There were a few vehicles out there with adventurous ice fisherman braving the elements and enjoying a popular winter pastime in this part of the country.

Even though there were entire pickup trucks and minivans driving around on this ice, we were still a little leery about trekking out ourselves. Seeing as I grew up playing hockey my whole life, you’d think being out on a frozen lake would come natural, but playing it safe seemed to be the order of the day. Looking back, I almost wish I had brought my skates like I did the previous winter trip up north.

Photo: An HDR image of the scoreboard at the Allstate Arena, in Rosemont, IL

Not exactly another hockey image from last week, but something I felt like sharing today. I captured the source images for this at a game in November in between periods. Seeing that there’s not a lot of opportunities to shoot HDR at a sporting event while the action is going on, I looked elsewhere.

Now, some HDR images can be taken handheld, but wasn’t taking any chances with the indoor lighting I was in. Since tripods are frowned upon in sports arenas, I was lucky enough to have seats right between the railing separating our section from the one in front of us. That, and my friend the 2-second delay timer, and I had an instant tripod.

I shot this with my Canon 20D, which its tiny LCD viewer (when compared to my Rebel XSi) didn’t give me too good of an indication whether the frames I took would work. In the end, I think it came out okay.

What do you think?

An HDR shot I attempted because I wanted to capture something decent with this view, but the lighting of just a single exposure wasn’t right. The grassy area and trees in the foreground, which I ended up cropping out anyway, where just too dark and the clouds above me (also cropped) weren’t helping the overall balance.

Still, I was really stunned with the level of detail that I still managed to capture in the valley at the base of the mountains, and even the ridges in the slopes as well. I did more work than usual in post and with TopazAdjust to bring out some detail and take out some noise, and was very pleased.

Of course, it’s hard to get a feel for the image with this currently resolution, so click on it for a link over to Flickr and select the option to see it full size.

An HDR look at the same building in Ephraim, Door County that I shot a close-up of earlier in the year. A rustic and colorful structure that’s begging to be photographed in high dynamic range if there ever was one.

Photo: Looking down from the 20th floor at the Hyatt Maui Regency early in the morning.