HOME | DD

Description
Wow, a DD!! haha, well that was unexpected yet truly appreciated!! Big THANKS to `Staged and to everyone who's viewed/favorited/commented on this as well as those who've added me to their watchlist.

I feel I should say a few things about this image as the current version of this is not what I originally submitted and differs in its realistic portrayal from the original submission quite a bit. The difference is in what I did to the image using Curves in PS. I purposefully went a little 'overboard' with the colors as I used this for a comparison document I created while working as a Tech Support agent at Corel. The latest version of Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 sports a new HDR Merge feature which I tested before the release. The document compared PSPPX2's HDR feature to the popular Photomatix which is what I prefer and still use for creating HDR images. The HDR feature in PSPPX2 is quite nice, its very fast and easy to use, much faster than any other HDR tool I've used. However, it lacks some adjustments I consider to be pretty essential and even lacks a histogram on the dialog for merging the photos. It has 2 adjustments, one for brightness and one for contrast. For many this is sufficient, for myself it is not. This isn't to say that I don't think the HDR feature in PSPPX2 is any good, and really the guy who wrote the code/algorithm for it is an amazing man who did an excellent job especially considering the amount of time it was done in. To me the problem lies with marketing people who ultimately make the decisions of what a feature will look like, based on 'marketing research' within their given 'target market'. Unfortunately, I don't think they fully understand who an HDR feature should be marketed towards, so it left the feature lacking what I would consider crucial elements. With that said, I also tested PSPPX2's HDR merge feature against PS CS3's HDR photomerge feature and found that PSPPX2's did a better a job. Being almost ten times faster on my home machine as well as producing less noise and chromatic aberrations than PS CS3. In the end, I still prefer Photomatix combined with PS for the best possible results.

To sum up, this image was used to basically say "With a few more adjustments added to the HDR feature in PSPX2, it would allow for much more creativity and flexibility making results such as this possible.". Unfortunately, it didn't get me anywhere in convincing the marketing team to have more adjustments added to the HDR feature, but it did get this image on the PSPPX2 box. You can read more about that in my journal here: [link]

HDR merge of 3 images, tonemapped, and curves.
Shot with Nikkor 17-35mm, B+W ND, and B+W graduated ND.
Kings River, Kings Canyon National Park, California.
Facing southwest, at 7:45am.

I know there are many people who are starting to feel like, HDR merging is overused and walking on a thin line between photography and photomanipulation. I sort of agree with this in some cases, which is why I only use HDR to get shots that are impossible to get otherwise. My intent is to capture a scene as close to the way I saw it as possible. To capture the feeling that I got when I composed the shot.

Kings Canyon is extremely difficult terrain when it comes to making landscape photographs. Especialy true in the case of this picture, climbing around on rocks to get vantage points like this. One slip into the river and that would have been the end of me. At the very least my camera gear would have been toast.

I hope you enjoy what I've gotten out of this trip, and that I can share with you the feeling that comes from visiting these places.

go here to see a non-HDR-Tonemapped version
[link]

was going through my image files and remembered I did this other version. probably still not perfected, couple things I notice right off the bat I would do different these days but unfortunately I never saved a PSD of this. Perhaps I will feel like redoing the post work on this again sometime.

Description
Wow, a DD!! haha, well that was unexpected yet truly appreciated!! Big THANKS to `Staged and to everyone who's viewed/favorited/commented on this as well as those who've added me to their watchlist.

I feel I should say a few things about this image as the current version of this is not what I originally submitted and differs in its realistic portrayal from the original submission quite a bit. The difference is in what I did to the image using Curves in PS. I purposefully went a little 'overboard' with the colors as I used this for a comparison document I created while working as a Tech Support agent at Corel. The latest version of Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 sports a new HDR Merge feature which I tested before the release. The document compared PSPPX2's HDR feature to the popular Photomatix which is what I prefer and still use for creating HDR images. The HDR feature in PSPPX2 is quite nice, its very fast and easy to use, much faster than any other HDR tool I've used. However, it lacks some adjustments I consider to be pretty essential and even lacks a histogram on the dialog for merging the photos. It has 2 adjustments, one for brightness and one for contrast. For many this is sufficient, for myself it is not. This isn't to say that I don't think the HDR feature in PSPPX2 is any good, and really the guy who wrote the code/algorithm for it is an amazing man who did an excellent job especially considering the amount of time it was done in. To me the problem lies with marketing people who ultimately make the decisions of what a feature will look like, based on 'marketing research' within their given 'target market'. Unfortunately, I don't think they fully understand who an HDR feature should be marketed towards, so it left the feature lacking what I would consider crucial elements. With that said, I also tested PSPPX2's HDR merge feature against PS CS3's HDR photomerge feature and found that PSPPX2's did a better a job. Being almost ten times faster on my home machine as well as producing less noise and chromatic aberrations than PS CS3. In the end, I still prefer Photomatix combined with PS for the best possible results.

To sum up, this image was used to basically say "With a few more adjustments added to the HDR feature in PSPX2, it would allow for much more creativity and flexibility making results such as this possible.". Unfortunately, it didn't get me anywhere in convincing the marketing team to have more adjustments added to the HDR feature, but it did get this image on the PSPPX2 box. You can read more about that in my journal here: [link]

HDR merge of 3 images, tonemapped, and curves.
Shot with Nikkor 17-35mm, B+W ND, and B+W graduated ND.
Kings River, Kings Canyon National Park, California.
Facing southwest, at 7:45am.

I know there are many people who are starting to feel like, HDR merging is overused and walking on a thin line between photography and photomanipulation. I sort of agree with this in some cases, which is why I only use HDR to get shots that are impossible to get otherwise. My intent is to capture a scene as close to the way I saw it as possible. To capture the feeling that I got when I composed the shot.

Kings Canyon is extremely difficult terrain when it comes to making landscape photographs. Especialy true in the case of this picture, climbing around on rocks to get vantage points like this. One slip into the river and that would have been the end of me. At the very least my camera gear would have been toast.

I hope you enjoy what I've gotten out of this trip, and that I can share with you the feeling that comes from visiting these places.

go here to see a non-HDR-Tonemapped version
[link]

was going through my image files and remembered I did this other version. probably still not perfected, couple things I notice right off the bat I would do different these days but unfortunately I never saved a PSD of this. Perhaps I will feel like redoing the post work on this again sometime.