Post a photo a day!

[soccplayer07]

That Starship photo was Sweet!!

Thanks

[00 mod]

You are correct!  Take a look at the link I posted to his website, and you will see why he is my favorite photographer!

Jeff

[00 mod]

Cozumel again!

[NateFollmer]

At a wedding at a farm in Wrightsville Pa (as I post this) this pic doesn't do it justice but look at this view of the Susky (you'll have to click the link, I used the panorama feature on my phone and it's to wide):

http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg288/nfollmer/216223856_photobucket_15862_.jpg

Here I was messing with the phones photo editing tools:

http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg288/nfollmer/216223856_photobucket_15863_.jpg

fixed, thanks bassclary

[BASSclary]

Nate, second link is not working.

[NateFollmer]

Another phone shot from the wedding. I have about 200 photos to go through on the camera, I love shooting RAW

[00 mod]

awesome shots Nate!

Beach in Barbados!  Can you tell my fav time to shoot is on Vacation! LOL

[NateFollmer]

Nice one mod! I love beach pics. I didn't realize my photo was so huge, I'll fix it once I get to a pc

[00 mod]

One day when we had a freeze earlier this year!

[NateFollmer]

Winter is my favorite time to shoot. Nice shot!

[J Francho]

Tuesday is Lighthouse Day.

[NateFollmer]

Awesome J, is that black and white or an infrared shot?

[00 mod]

Im gonna guess infrared!

[NateFollmer]

I know some people hate this technique, but I just love the look of this photo. HDR Image from my buddies wedding over the weekend:

TractorHDRI by nate.follmer, on Flickr

[fourbizz]

My buddy took this of me last week. @ 8,500 ft.

[Hook Set]

I love HDR photos. I want to do one of my car and blow it up as a poster.

Some really talented photo bugs around here!

[Jimzee]

I believe I have been to that light house before if that is the one on Lake Ontario close to where the Salmon River runs in. If not, it looks pretty similar.

Great photos guys! The HDR image really caught my eye.

Jay, nice to see you enjoying fishing again.

[nick76]

Love the HDR Image.  We ought to add what software the image was done with and how it was done.  Kind of a mini tutorial of sorts.  There are some good photos here and some excellent editing.

[nick76]

From the Garden on sunday.  Waiting for some early morning rain to see if I can get the web to glisten.

[J Francho]

I know some people hate this technique

Actually, more than one picture I posted was a tone mapped HDRI. Some pictures are not possible without the technology.

For Wednesday, an 11 image (1/3 stop brackets) LDRI tone mapped in Photomatix from a 96 bit HDRI.  You have to see this picture printed on White House's metallic paper to truly appreciate it.

Chimney Bluffs State Park.

[J Francho]

Waiting for some early morning rain to see if I can get the web to glisten.

Just spritz the little guy with some glycerin water.

[NateFollmer]

Sounds like a plan. Love all the shots that were posted since I posted last!

Well, to do an HDR image, I take at least 3 shots. The more you do, the better it will turn out. I take 1 'normal' shot, then I take 1 very dark shot and then 1 very light shot. You want a complete tonal range. You can also just shoot in RAW and create the different exposures from that, but they don't turn out as good.

I then take the shots into Photoshop and reduce the noise. Save these images and put them into a program called "Photomatix Pro". This is where I do all the HDRI combining and Tonal Mapping. Tonal mapping is what makes these images look 'surreal'. I really like to over do the tonal mapping so it looks like a painting. Some people create 'natural' looking HDR images, but thats boring

Once I get the tonal mapping done, I save this image and take it back into Photoshop. There I usually will reduce the noise again (depends on what ISO I shot at, anything over 800 usually needs a few noise passes). Then I run an unsharp mask filter to sharpen the edges of the image (depending on the size of the image, I usually set the radius to 1.5 to 3, the strength to 120% and the threshold to 1 or 2). After that, I will boost the contrast to my liking, add any photo filters to give the shot some mood (like sepia, a little desaturation, etc), and bam! I'm done

Here is another HDR from the wedding. I don't like how the sky turned out on this one, but I love the look of the mansion:

Lauxmont Mansion by nate.follmer, on Flickr

[J Francho]

If you really want to learn, check out my friend Jay's site: http://www.jhpvideotutorials.com/.  He and I were doing this stuff back in '03, way before many even heard of this stuff.  But he took it to a different level.  The dude is LEGIT.

[NateFollmer]

Awesome stuff Jay! I just started shooting HDR a few months ago. I also use HDRI images to light my 3d scenes. It's pretty freaking neat, I just take the photo, create the image, and it takes the light details and lights my entire scene without me adding a single light...

That site is great! Thanks for posting it.

[nick76]

Thanks for all the input here.  This is some great info, and thanks J.  That site is sweet.  That mansion picture is fabulous as is the Bluffs picture. 

If I had some glycerin water available I would have done it.  I almost went and got my wife's squirt bottle to make it happen, but it was getting late and we had company over.  It is supposed to rain this afternoon and tomorrow so I will see if it can still happen.

Love this thread!!!