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Cold, wet, dark, snow – some images

eirikso, , , , , , , , 11 Comments

Norway during winter. Some images from yesterday. All of them snapped by Eirik Solheim. Creative commons licensed. Contact me for commercial use.

Volvo
Icy old Volvo in Oslo, Norway What should I say? Cool car.
(Canon 400D with Canon EF 50mm 1.4 @ 1/250 sec at f / 3.5. ISO400. Adjusted to B&W in Adobe Lightroom.)

Wet Dog
Wet Dog. At Bygdøy, Oslo, Norway
Satisfied with the fact that the dog’s eye is pretty sharp.
(Canon 400D with Canon 70-200 F4 L IS USM @200mm 1/60 sec at f / 4.0. ISO200 RAW. Adjusted to B&W in Adobe Lightroom.)

Birds
Looking at birds. Speaking in phone.
I think this one would have been better with focus on the birds. Or maybe not?
(Canon 400D with Canon 70-200 F4 L IS USM @200mm 1/125 sec at f / 4.0 ISO400 RAW)

Cold Night
Lamp. Snow. Night. Evergreen.
Yeah, right – night. Not. This is Norway at 5 PM in January.
(Canon 400D with Canon 50mm F1.4 USM @ 1/125 sec at f / 2.2 ISO1600 RAW)

Tree with heavy snow
Snow. Night.
Camera and lens. Had to survive quite a bit of snow when snapping this image. Still works fine.
(Canon 400D with Canon 50mm F1.4 USM @1/80 sec at f / 2.0 ISO800 RAW)

Cold, wet, dark, snow – some images

An impressive yet simple photographic effect

eirikso, , , 52 Comments

This one sparked a bit of interest over at the Norwegian blog I’m contributing to for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. So, I’ll share the story here as well.

Update:
Video tutorial on how to make that cardboard cover for your lens

I recently bought the lens you see in the image. Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM. Then Mr. Erlandsen pointed me to this.

Before you know it I made this one:

Equipped it with a snow crystal and mounted it on my camera:

Update:
I used some standard paper cutters to make the patterns.

Papercutters

Before you know it the images that have a traditional round bokeh:

…started looking like this:

Some more cutting and shapes and off we go…
Continue reading “An impressive yet simple photographic effect” →

An impressive yet simple photographic effect

Entering holiday mode

eirikso, , , , 5 Comments

Actually, I’ve been running in holiday mode for two days already. Don’t expect too much here on eirikso the next couple of days.

Today we went out buying our traditional Christmas three. Cold, crispy, frosty and fantastic light in the Gustav Vigeland Sculpture Park. I live near by this park and have the privilege of seeing it in all kinds of weather, seasons and light conditions. I must admit that this one is my favourite. The statues really come to life with such light and the cold layer of frost and ice.

Click through to the gallery here. Have a merry Christmas and see you here in a couple of days!

Entering holiday mode

Romantic images sell

eirikso6 Comments

I post the image above to one of my galleries on SmugMug. Then I get this comment:

Hey, redo the picture and you’ll have a heart shaped sky! Do you see it? If you would crop out upper half of the picture and turn it 180 degrees, you would have a heart. and you know…. romantic images sell!

And seconds later I’ve done some cropping and rotation in Aperture and this one is up there as well.

Haven’t sold it yet, but I can see all kinds of embarrassing metaphors popping up. “Look up and you’ll find love”. Blah. Blah. I’ll let you know if someone buys it.

The interesting thing here is how the community steps in and gives valuable advice. Just because they can.

Romantic images sell

Some images from IFA 2007 Berlin

eirikso1 Comment

Back when I published some HDR images from Berlin i promised to put some more images from IFA online. My main mission was to do a presentation at a press conference, but I managed to give the exhibition a visit and snap some images of both the IFA and a bit of Berlin as well. Here they are.


Big screen. Beautiful lady.


And I mean really big screens.


USB jewellery. I don’t smell an instant success here.


Berlin. Hip city.


This image looks pretty boring and average. But it gets an extra edge when you know that the Berlin Wall used to run exactly where the paving stones are laid down in the tarmac…

You find my complete gallery from IFA and Berlin over on SmugMug.

Some images from IFA 2007 Berlin

This is not kitsch

eirikso3 Comments

Or, to be honest, I should be careful of defining good and bad taste regarding photography. Maybe I simply should say: “I like this image”. A lady promoting a theater in Berlin. Snapped at the right moment.

And if that HDR method tend to add slightly too much of an artificial effect this image didn’t pass through without some photoshopping either. A little cropping. Some unsharp mask. Removing some colours. Fixing the burned out white fur. Making her eye slightly more blue… Here’s the original:

Canon 400D, Canon 70-200 f4 L IS @ 200mm

And if you want to know more about kitsch. Wikipedia to the rescue.

This is not kitsch

HDR from one single image

eirikso3 Comments


The original exposure

My article about high dynamic range photography was more popular than I had expected. Here’s a quick follow up for the people that are hooked.

You can also make an HDR image from one single exposure if you have a camera that can shoot RAW images. These files have more luminosity information than a finished JPG and through HDR you can bring out some of it.


Three versions from the same RAW image

You simply make two or three versions of the image from your RAW editing software. One under exposed where you adjust for the highlights. One normal. And one over exposed where you adjust for the shadows. Then you use your HDR software to put them together and tonemap.


The final image. HDR from one RAW exposure.


And compared to a true multi exposure HDR to the left.

HDR from one single image

HDR photography

eirikso46 Comments

There are three main factors that influence the quality of a digital image. The resolution is probably the most common. How many megapixels is your camera? Then, we have the compression. If you compress an image to make a smaller file using the JPEG-system you will loose some quality.

The third factor is the so called dynamic range. Can you take care of the details in both the highlights and the shadows? Here’s an example. You have a scene where the sky is dramatic and interesting. But you also want some details on the ground. In the following image I adjusted for the sky. And as you can see the ground is only a silhouette.

So you need to let in more light. Open up the aperture or add some time to the exposure. Very nice scenery, but no dramatic sky. As the next image shows.

Seems like you can’t have it all. Or maybe you can? There are actually a couple of solutions. One of them is called HDR, or High Dynamic Range photography. To put it simple, you combine several exposures into one using some magic mathematics. And the good news is that you don’t need to understand much of the mathematics, there are several tools to make HDR images and you can use most digital cameras when shooting for HDR.

For the image in my example I actually shot three versions. One standard exposure, one with +2 stops and one with -2 stops. All the three exposures are loaded into the HDR software to make an image that will show both the dramatic sky and the forest.

What do you need?
When you’re out in the field you need a digital camera that let you manually adjust the exposure value and a tripod or something to support the camera. The three exposures need to be identical. Or at least nearly identical. Some of the HDR software out there will try to adjust if you have moved the camera slightly between exposures.

When you get back you need a computer and some HDR software. I am using Photomatix Pro. Available for both Mac and Windows. For Mac you can also try the free DRI maker. It doesn’t make true HDR images, but will help you with that difficult dynamic range by combining several images in a different way.

And if this quick introduction was interesting you can go further by having a look at the HDR group on Flickr. Lots of examples, tips and links.

Update:
Oyvind adds two good links to tutorials for HDR in Photoshop in the comments. One from luminous-landscape.com and one from backingwinds.

And you can have a look at some of the other HDR images I have made recently. These three are from the beautiful Røisheim Hotel in Bøverdalen in Norway.

HDR photography