Rubinary Blog » HDR

Yosemite Falls

Daniel — Mon, 24 May 2010 01:00:13 +0000

This photo of Yosemite Falls is taken from the middle of the famous swinging bridge. It was a very cloudy morning with a lot of contrast created by super bright clouds.

Luckily I had my trusty tripod with me to capture several different exposed frames to later compose as HDR.
Yosemite National Park. April 2010.

Shooting Weekend

Daniel — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 18:52:04 +0000

We had a good shooting weekend. Finally had a chance to take D700 into the wild and ended up with a good number of pretty decent shots. We started our Saturday with a short trip to Fort Wadsworth — a small National Park on the the Staten Island’s side of Verrazzano Bridge. Besides the multitude of bridge shots I got several and what seems to be interesting perspectives.

In the evening of the same day, Misha, Sasha, Alena and I drove to Hoboken for good perspective on Manhattan. We had to break a couple of minor laws to get into a good shooting location, but I ended up with some great shots from there.

Out of all the shots that I took I still ended up liking the HDR processed ones much more. A little tip for this kind of photography is to set the camera to small aperture and slower shutter speeds. This makes the lights turn into stars.

And somewhere on Sunday Alena and I did some lighting experiments and ended up with this nice spontaneous celebrity wave kind of portrait. I wish it was taken somewhere out on the street having a non uniform background.

New York

Daniel — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 19:54:14 +0000

HDR image composed from 5 long exposure captions. New York — city full of energy and color.
March 2010.

Sunset

Daniel — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 03:00:00 +0000

One of the many magnificent sunsets that we have a pleasure of enjoying through the windows of our apartment.
Brooklyn. August 2009.

Harbor

Daniel — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:55:39 +0000

Sunset over the harbor in Bar Harbor. Tour ships parked for the night. Very tranquil view. HDR shot.
Bar Harbor, ME. May, 2009.

Old Beach

Daniel — Wed, 13 May 2009 20:16:32 +0000

And HDR photo of a portion of a beach on Rockaway with a bit of post-processing. I like the nostalgic look of the final photo. Be sure to view it in full size by clicking zoom button on top.
Far Rockaway. May 10, 2009.

Times Square

Daniel — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:43:47 +0000

This is an HDR image produced from a single shot. I used Camera RAW to adjust the exposure. The most obvious drawback to this method is noise which is hard to combat. Otherwise it’s a pretty good end result.
New York, NY. November, 2007.

Statue of Liberty

Daniel — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 20:43:27 +0000

This was my first successful attempt at an HDR.
New York. September, 2007.

Rain

Daniel — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 23:18:25 +0000

One of my favorite locations — view from our windows. Rain has painted a beautiful image of reflections.

This is an HDR shot composed of a single capture taken in RAW format.
Brooklyn, NY. October, 2007.

Tunnel

Daniel — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 18:59:39 +0000

Went out for a shoot of random night views. This is an accidental gem of the set. A 3-piece HDR shot.

This is a pedestrian walkway over West Side Highway near WTC.
Manhattan. February, 2009.

Carlsbad Caverns

Daniel — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 22:37:04 +0000

Our second day started out very early. After eating the breakfast at our hotel and driving through the downtown we left El Paso and set out to the east, towards the Carlsbad Caverns National Park through Guadalupe Mountains National Parks. These were our two main objectives for the day.

As soon as we left the city we were greeted by an always familiar yet different southwestern landscape that I’ve come to love so much over the past years. Huge flats, tall distant mountains, what might seem to be scarce vegetation of unusual to us composition — cacti and yuccas, and the never ending road. Road that I might say is always great no matter how distant of a place it runs through.

Our first find was a big white field that was absolutely flat. Finally, the salt flats that I’ve heard so much about. I guess the water evaporated not so long ago, or it was raining recently. The salt was not rock hard, but soft and slightly soggy. I imagine during the summer it feels more like concrete.

In Gaudalupe Mountains NP we got a whole bunch of new stamps for our passports (4 official and one bonus). The park consists completely of hiking trails. We took a rather short one going through different plants with plaques attached to most of them. But we didn’t spend much time here as we didn’t want to be late to our next park.

We got to Carlsbad Caverns NP at about 1:30pm. The natural entrance to the caverns closes at 2pm and the elevator down closes at 3:30. After talking to the park rangers we decided that we’ll take the elevator right away, since the natural entrance adds an hour to the hike and you don’t really get to the interesting part until you reach the point where elevator would put us anyhow.

The elevator took us 750 feet down (that’s more than half of Empire State Building). I’ve never been in any cave or cavern before so for me this was a new experience. First of all the whole thing is HUGE. The farther we went the more space opened up. There were bleak lights installed behind some rocks, but you had to watch carefully where you were going because it was still pretty dark.

The formations of different stalactites, stalagmites, columns and other things I do not know the names for were magnificent. Underground lakes and springs, the constant sound of water drops. My dad was the “luckiest” of us all with respect to water drops landing on his head. At one point he started worrying about growing a stalagmite.

I managed to take a good number of pictures and most of them came out well thanks to my micro-tripod and a remote control combo. The only thing that is hard to capture is the size of the whole thing. On some photos you will notice the trail itself with guardrails around it. Those were from 1 to 1.5 meters in height and should give you some sense of scale.

After that we drove through a tiny town of Carlsbad itself to our final destination of the day — another tiny town in New Mexico — Artesia. We ended up having our 2nd anniversary dinner right in the hotel Chinese Buffet. But it’s not the food that matters, but the company, and the day itself was great.

300C Photos

Daniel — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:18:23 +0000

Yesterday we went hiking somewhere right off Palisades Parkway and took a couple of evening pictures of the car in the process. Photo above is HDR of our Chrysler with HID and fog lights on. The one below is just a shot of the side lines.

Summer Sunshower

Daniel — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 00:25:38 +0000

It was a nice, cool and sunny day. Than it decided to rain. Hard. However the sun didn’t disappear.

There is a term in Russian for it — “слепой дождик” which literally means “blind rain”. Turns out there is a term for it in English too — “sunshower”. I never heard it before. Also turns out there is a whole article on Wikipedia about it.

Rainy Day

Daniel — Fri, 09 May 2008 21:53:33 +0000

Here’s another photograph from my favorite series it seems.

It’s been a rainy day, but unlike usually rainy days this one doesn’t seem too depressing. I guess it’s because all the trees are finally turning green and there is spring in the air after a long gray winter.

The photo is an HDR composed of 3 images. The bright white circles that are visible in some portions of the picture are drops of rain.

Walking by the Bridge

Alena — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 05:34:30 +0000

Уже конец марта, а на улице до сих пор холодно! Непорядок!

Сегодня уехала т. Лиля — она приезжала на месяц погостить у Даниных родителей. Время прогарцевало мимо лёгкой иноходью, оставив за собой лишь лёгкое чувство недоумения — неужели ТАК быстро мы постарели на месяц?

Вчера ночью приехал Лёнчик, который будет в Бруклине пару деньков — какой-то там у них отпуск случился. Он немного рассказал нам о своих буднях. Вот что меня поражает, так это то, какими лёгкими в его устах звучат испытания и тренировки — ну прям летний пионерский лагерь ~~усиленного режима~~. А ведь на деле надо справиться не только с физическими нагрузками, но и с психологическим давлением (а это, пожалуй, еще сложнее).

Еще мы с Данькой сегодня выбрались в Downtown Brooklyn, где мой любимый фотограф сделал пару довольно удачных (на мой взгляд) фотографий Бруклинского моста. Я тож попозировала, зарывшись носом в воротник пальто в попытках укрыться от ~~пронизывающего~~ бодрящего ветерочка.

А потом мы съели лёгкий ужин в Pete’s Downtown ресторанчике — было довольно вкусно и относительно недорого. В следующий раз надо будет зайти в пиццерию, расположенную по соседству — мы слышали о ней много хорошего, но ни разу там не были. Вообще я люблю посещать новые места — они вызывают ощущение того, что ты не просто выбрался ПОЕСТЬ, а ВЫБРАЛСЯ поесть.