Things have been pretty crazy around here lately with the end of the semester creeping up and more and more things to photograph. This is the bridge in Winona MN from the Wisconsin side. There are some wonderful little houseboats at the base and it has always interested me greatly. Again this is a 7 shot HDR that I blended with photoshop. I have tried a few other programs for creating HDR files and I am just not impressed. I am sure that the learning curve is just a little too steep yet and I need to play with it a little bit more. I have seen so many HDR Images that are over the top and just downright ugly. I don’t believe that HDR should be used to make shadows and highlights compressed into a similar range. But HDR is to extend the range and recover the shadows and highlights that would have been lost. Let me know what you think.

After an outpouring of requests for more information about the process of creating DuoTone Images I put together this photoshop action for people to download and use. You can see the effect by clicking on the image above. The general process is by creating tonal selections and changing the hue individually. For those that want to know more about the process here is an abridged version to you can play with other color combinations. To change the colors that are being used in the Toning you can freely change the saturation and the hue to your liking while making new Adjustment Layers.

1. Make any adjustments to exposure or sharpness you feel are needed to the image. You should apply any Toning to you images at the end of the postprocessing to maintain image quality in your prints.
2. Add a new Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer to the image you wish to tone with the settings:
1. Check the Colorize Box
2. Set the Hue to 34.
3. Set the Saturation to 18.
4. Set the Lightness to 0.
3. Merge all Visible Layers.
4. Go to Select Color Range and from the drop down menu choose: Shadows.
5. After you made the selection Press Ctrl+J to make a new layer Via Copy
6. Hide the Sepiatoned Background and Create a new Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer like before with the settings:
1. Check the Colorize Box
2. Set the Hue to 220.
3. Set the Saturation to 25.
4. Set the Lightness to 0.
7. Merge Visible Layers
8. Show Background (Sepia)
9. Select the Blue Layer and Set the Transparency to your liking. (Usually between 40%-100%)

I hope that this short tutorial helps those that wanted to know more. If you have any more questions for me just leave me a message and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

I have been slowly adding more Wedding Photos to my webspace as I get slideshows and things together. I am really pushing to get everything up to try and purge the masses of files I have on my hard drive. I decided that the best way to do this was to start at the beginning. This is the first wedding I ever got to shoot. I am very thankful to My old hall director Megan and her husband Eric for trusting in me to photograph their special day. I wont ever forget how much this day changed my life.

About a week ago I decided to get up bright and early and try and catch some of the waterfowl in the morning hours on Lake Winona. The day before I purchased a inexpensive camo blind that I used to hide from the wildlife as much as possible. Unfortunately they were not fooled by the particular one I had purchased because it only covered my front and not my back so they soon wised up to my plot to shoot them from the safety and warmth of my shelter. As the fog lifted from the water I found a lot of interesting subjects to photograph around the lake including the melting ice and reeds around the waters edge. Hopefully in the next few weeks I will be able to get ahold of a 500mm Lens so that I will be able to photograph wildlife from a distance instead of intruding on their space. I hope you all enjoy the pictures!

HDR Photography is a newer technique that allows the blending of images to achieve a large range of shadows and highlights. HDR photography is a great way of overcoming one of the common shortcomings of digital and film photography alike. Now with powerful digital tools like photoshop we can achieve more in this sense. General technique includes using a stable tripod and taking bracketed exposures to “blend” together all of the images into one that includes all of the light data. Generally it is best to use a constant aperture and mirror lockup if your camera allows. Generally you want to use at least three images taken one stop apart to make sure that there is no haloing or artifacts from the process. There is a lot of ways that you can achieve this effect but in this case I used a tool from Photoshop CS2 called Merge to HDR and extracted three versions from that 32 bit file it created. I then used masks in Photoshop to blend the sky together with the foreground. There was a lot of touchup involved with the sticks and twigs left over from the winter months.

I have a bunch more pictures to throw up on this website from softball games and dances and the like. Hopefully I can find some time off in the next few weeks and really work on my photography. I have a bunch of ideas that I need to get out. Wish me luck!