“World's Most Complete Neighborpedia”
Sponsor a Community — What is Localism? | Register or Sign In
Explore:   What's happening in your neck of the woods?
HomeColoradoDouglas CountySedalia

Sedalia, CO

Blog_tag

Fiery Dawn on Snowy Pines

12-01-10
Mike Hendren, GRI, CDPE
Mike Hendren, GRI, CDPE: Real Estate Agent in Sedalia, CO
  • view my blog
  • Office: (303) 858-8100
  • Mobile: (303) 503-1101
  • Secondary: (303) 335-0468

Fiery Dawn

A few days ago, I was treated to a spectacular, fiery sunrise the morning after a few inches of fresh snow softly coated the pines near home.

Hear was a golden opportunity to try out some HDR (High Dynamic Range), using my new camera, the Nikon D7000. So far I've been thrilled with the results from this camera, finding it to produce very clean images with low noise at reasonable ISO's.

One of the things I'm really liking is the ability to save settings to two of the positions on the mode dial: U1 and U2. I haven't tried everything but I'm happy to report that you can save your AEB (bracketing) settings and even other positions on the mode dial. For instance, when I select U1 now, the camera is set to the Aperture Mode and is ready to shoot 3 bracketed images with 2 EV spacing - quick and easy!

Once the images were downloaded, I used Nik's new HDR Efex Pro to create this image. In this case, I was only able to use two of my bracketed images and was surprised and pleased with the result. HDR Efex Pro is a great addition to the software possibilities available for HDR work and gives you a good number of presets to choose from, plus it has Nik's proprietary U-Point technology as one of it's tools.

This image is available in a variety of printed formats at my Fine Art America website.

24 Comments
Blog_tag

The Brain - behind the Eye - behind the Viewfinder

01-11-10
Mike Hendren, GRI, CDPE
Mike Hendren, GRI, CDPE: Real Estate Agent in Sedalia, CO
  • view my blog
  • Office: (303) 858-8100
  • Mobile: (303) 503-1101
  • Secondary: (303) 335-0468

PBG Yellow RibbonWe all talk about which camera is the best or which lens is the fastest or sharpest, always looking for that perfect combination that might help us take awesome photos. However, the absolute most important part of any photography shoot is the brain.

A great photographer can capture excellent images with almost any camera. That's because they not only have a very high level of knowledge of photographic technique and highly tuned technical skills, but they think . . . they think about what they want that final image to show. Then they consider what they must do to accomplish that goal. Just a few things that must be considered (and mastered) are:

  • lighting,
  • focus point and DOF (depth of field),
  • shutter speed (stop the action - or is blur desirable),
  • composition,
  • and much more.
So, the next time you're getting ready to raise that viewfinder to your eye to take a photo - STOP - for just a second - and think about exactly what you're wanting that next image to reveal, and what is needed to accomplish that goal.

For instance, for this shot I obviously had to be set up ahead of time, using a tripod and shutter priority at 1/30th of a second. I also set the camera to continuous and started shooting as soon as it entered the frame so I would have some choices regarding the position of the train relative to the intersection.

Speeding Locomotive

Happy Shooting!

Visit my Photo Blog at: www.ThruMikesViewfinder.com

11 Comments
Blog_tag

Sunrise Reflected - HDR

12-06-09
Mike Hendren, GRI, CDPE
Mike Hendren, GRI, CDPE: Real Estate Agent in Sedalia, CO
  • view my blog
  • Office: (303) 858-8100
  • Mobile: (303) 503-1101
  • Secondary: (303) 335-0468

PBG Award of MeritPhotogler Featured Photo

Photo © Mike Hendren, 2009

One morning in November, I looked out the window to see what promised to be a gorgeous sunrise. Fortunately, my Nikkor 14-24mm lens was already on my camera, a Nikon D700, so all I had to do was grab the tripod and run out the door. I set up just behind the house and saw the bright clouds reflected in the windows of the house and giving a warm golden glow to the stone work.

One of the primary requirements for good HDR (High Dynamic Range) images is a tripod. Even if the normal exposure could be hand held, you still need to be sure that every image in the bracketed series will line up perfectly. Photomatix Pro, the software I use to process HDR images, can do a decent job of lining up images, but the result is often less than desirable if a tripod was not used - resulting in what appear to be out of focus images.

Other important considerations are:
  • aperture priority (to have a consistent depth of field),
  • auto-ISO off (set the lowest ISO possible to reduce noise in the images),
  • and manual focus (to make sure the focal point doesn't change from one image to the next).
  • Some also recommend setting the white balance to something other than Auto. I always shoot in RAW, and this has not been an issue. If it were, the white balance of RAW images can always be changed with software.
So, I shot 7 bracketed images with 1EV spacing between each one, at an aperture of f/5.6 and the lens at 14mm.

After importing the images into Adobe Lightroom, I immediately exported them to Photomatix Pro. Photomatix default settings usually provide a very good starting point but optimum results will normally require tweaking some of the settings. In this case, I left the strength at 100%, but reduced the Luminosity slightly because the default setting was too bright.

Next, I increased the Smoothing setting slightly to get rid of the halo around the house - this is sometimes introduced by HDR processing and can add impact to some images but often results in an unnatural looking effect.

Finally, I reduced the Micro-smoothing to zero to retain texture in the clouds and stone work on the house and then saved the image back in to Lightroom for some minor tweaks.

The highlights were still a little too bright so I used Lightroom's Highlight Recovery slider to reduce those slightly. I almost always add some Contrast and Clarity - it seems to add a bit of a sharpening effect. Then I normally increase the Vibrance, especially if there is some blue sky, to deepen and darken that sky. Finally, I'll sharpen slightly and and do some noise reduction to make sure the image is as smooth and noise free as possible.

Producing HDR images is a lot of fun and can give some added dimension to your portfolio - so give it a try!

15 Comments
Blog_tag

Windmill and Double Rainbow in HDR

12-04-09
Mike Hendren, GRI, CDPE
Mike Hendren, GRI, CDPE: Real Estate Agent in Sedalia, CO
  • view my blog
  • Office: (303) 858-8100
  • Mobile: (303) 503-1101
  • Secondary: (303) 335-0468




Photo © Mike Hendren, 2009

This summer, after a thunderstorm had passed overhead, I noticed a double rainbow out my window. After taking a few shots, my wife got home and said, "You've got to see the rainbow at our neighbor's house." So I grabbed my camera and drove down.

It was such a nice setup with the bright double rainbow, seemingly coming down right at their house. The sun was shining in the foreground and there was a dark sky behind to highlight the entire scene.

I only got a single exposure of this so a true HDR image was not possible. So I made a virtual copy in Lightroom, exported the two images to Photomatix Pro, and separated them with 4 ev (that's a function of Photomatix). After the Photomatix processing, I imported the results back in to Lightroom. There I cooled the color temp. a little to get the sky a little bluer, and with a few more tweaks of color and sharpening, ended up with this.

You can see a part of the result of the HDR processing in the halo around the windmill. This can happen when an image is sort of "overprocessed" in Photomatix and is not always desirable. However, in this case, I did it on purpose just because I liked the extra contrast around the windmill blades.

Prints of this image are available at My Zenfolio:
mikehendren.zenfolio.com/

You can see my Photo Blog at:
http://thrumikesviewfinder.com/

12 Comments
Blog_tag

Morning Buck in Fresh Snow

10-30-09
Mike Hendren, GRI, CDPE
Mike Hendren, GRI, CDPE: Real Estate Agent in Sedalia, CO
  • view my blog
  • Office: (303) 858-8100
  • Mobile: (303) 503-1101
  • Secondary: (303) 335-0468

Buck in Morning Snow

Photo © Mike Hendren, 2009

We had a few inches of fresh snow just a few days ago. The morning brought us clear skies and sunshine, and as I walked around the end of my garage, I was treated to this beautiful sight!

This mule deer buck was just meandering along, looking for food (or maybe love - it is the season), and of course my sudden arrival definitely got his attention. But he didn't run - he just stood there like a majestic statue studying my every move.

I quickly went back in the house, got my camera, and was fortunate enough to get off a few shots before he finally walked away.

I did discover a little trick with Adobe Lightroom on this image - I desaturated the blue channel to get rid of the blue colored snow back in the shadows without affecting any of the other colors!

20 Comments