Meet Spencer and Michelle

Engagement sessions are always fun, but I love it when I get to tell a story with my pictures.  It takes a bit more work in the planning stages (more than say, "show up at this location and we'll take pretty pictures").  We need to plan out the story line, what to bring to the photo session, what the sequence of events will be and so on.

The session with Spencer and Michelle was intended to be like "going on a date".  We decided on the outdoor ice skating rink at The Gallivan Center (downtown Salt Lake City).  And indeed, it was Spencer's first time ice skating (he does roller blading, so he wasn't a complete newby to the concept).  So we set up where we would meet, discussed going into the rink, coming out for hot chocolate after wards, and so on.

And here are a few pictures from the story line:



























I had told them that part of my vision for the ice skating rink was to make it seem as if they were in their own little world together. One way to accomplish that photographically is to separate the subject from the foreground and background by blurring those parts of the photo. Depth of field is the tool used most often, but I wanted something different. So I brought my tripod and planned to set up a long exposure which would blur the people moving around Spencer and Michelle while they remained still in the middle of the scene. Here is an example of what I came up with:



In hindsight, I wish I had taken a Neutral Density (ND) filter with me. I have several, but forgot about them until after I had arrived. The above image was shot at 1/4 of a second, but in order to get the shutter speed that slow I had to shoot at f/32 which mean the background was in focus even while the surrounding skaters were in focus. A ND filter would have allowed me to further isolate them from the background by shooting at a larger aperture for shallower depth of field.

Later on we left the rink and the couple brought out the hot chocolate they had brought with them to warm them up.

































All in all, it was a fun experience. Sure, the pictures were less posed and less perfect. But the genuine emotions are there and the couple enjoyed the picture making process much more than if I just had them pose for pictures.

For another example in the story telling process, check out The Proposal where I actually took pictures and video of a couple as the guy proposes to her.

Temple Square at Christmas

A tradition amongst many who live in Utah (and some who come from far away), visiting Temple Square at Christmas Time is always a delight.  The beautiful Christmas lights and decorations, the Nativity scenery, and the warm fellowship of those who share your appreciation for Christ's birth all play a big part in celebrating Christmas for me and my family.

On this page are a few of my favorite Christmas on Temple Square pictures. 

High Dynamic Range (HDR) Processing

Because of limits in what the camera can capture, details in highlights and shadows are often invisible because the highlights are too white or the shadows are too black.  High Dynamic Range (HDR) Processing has been around for years as a means to take several images (under exposed, normal and over exposed) and merge them together into a single image while preserving the details in the highlights (from the under exposed image) as well as the details in the shadows (obtained from the over exposed image).

I don't consider myself an expert at HDR Processing, but I have long been a fan of HDR Soft's Photomatix Pro and have used it from time to time as I felt appropriate for specific kinds of images.  

Recently Nik Software, a well respected author of many image manipulation tools, released their own HDR software called HDR Efex Pro and I've been anxious to try it out.  I finally had time to do a short comparision between Photomatix 4.0 and the new HDR Efex Pro 1.0.

Let me briefly summarize my findings first and then let you examine the photos:

• I don't believe there is any "one true way" to do HDR processing.  There are many interpretations, from realistic to artistic to surrealistic and everything in between.
• The one big advantage that Photomatix always had for me (as compared to Photoshop's own built-in HDR processing capabilities) was the ease with which I could deliver something "usable" (as a side note: I never once produced anything that I liked using Photoshop's HDR capability).  Photomatix 4.0 adds the notion of Presets which quickly allows one to home in on the "look" he or she is trying to achieve (or to simply experiment with an image) by clicking on each of the presets and then playing with the sliders to fine tune the results.
• HDR Efex Pro 1.0, right from this first release, comes with presets as well - and has many more than presets than are found in the new Photomatix release (and showing a wider variety to begin your experimentation).

Conclusion

So now that I've played with both, which do I prefer?  I have to say Nik HDR Efex Pro!  And the thing that wins it for me are the presets because, once again, a new tool has made it "easier" for me to arrive at an interpretation of an image that I find pleasing to the eye.  But I also think that the quality of the output I got from HDR Efex Pro beats the output I got from Photomatix Pro.

So I started by capturing 3 images (under exposed by 2 stops, normal exposure and over exposed by 2 stops).  I used a tripod so that all three images would align well and easily merge in an HDR tool.

The images below are simply INTERPRETATIONS of those three images.  Both HDR Efex and Photomatix offer a wide variety of interpretations and these are but two from each.  So don't take these as the "final word" on what either tool can accomplish.  I merely show them to help you see the images I used when evaluating the capabilities of both tools.

Click each image to view large.

Nik HDR Efex Pro:

Photomatix Pro:

Nik HDR Efex Pro:

Photomatix Pro: