HDR is fun to do, fun to do, fun to do. Went out with my good friend Darrin Johnson of WasatchReflections.com a few weeks ago in the bitter cold. It has since warmed up a lot. We’ll see if that cold comes back or not, but cold was the theme of the day. I had no gloves, since then I have bought some photo gloves. It hasn’t been that cold since I picked them up, we’ll see how they work when it gets really cold again.

I’d also like to thank Darrin for letting me use his split ND filters, of course now i’m wanting some of my own.

• i love how the ice looks like waves yet frozen.
• I like the ultra wide view you can get with a 24mm on a full frame camera.
• I like the warm glow on the foreground rocks.

It’s interesting shooting two brothers who love playing and wrestling together.

• The expression here is golden.
• The flash did it’s job perfectly, in a way you can’t detect.
• Getting the angel up was a little trick, but worked out well here.
• Simplicity in light keeps the look clean.

Here is Joseph, sitting patiently as we worked on the angel and Mary. Just turn the camera and push on the light to turn it a bit.

• I like the natural look of the light. You don’t notice the flash, but it’s giving us light in the eyes and allowing us to see our subject.
• I like the natural pose and comfort level you can feel.
• Again, I like the varying shadows around the background and the one he is casting.

Mary and the Angel. Our angel had to double as the inn keeper and the shepherd. He was pretty cooperative for a two year old though.

This is near the location of the other shoot. You can actually just see the other spot a bit at the very right edge of the scene. Again the light on the face is provided by the small soft box. That little thing is amazing, I now love this item.

• I think the image tells it’s part of the story well.
• The angel could be posed better, but that’s all we could get him to do for us this day.
• This small hill the angel is standing on was perfect for his placement above.

HDR Spotting – Gallery of HDR Photos by the HDR Photographer’s Community

I don’t know how long I’ll be on this page but I made it into HDR Spotting.

When is the best time to shoot a vertical image? Right after/before you shoot a horizontal.

This rule is especially true when you are shooting for a story. You don’t know where the images will need to fit. The cost involved is setting up and having the equipment. You can shoot a horizontal and vertical of almost any shot, so shoot one way and then shoot the other, just to be sure you’ve got it.

• The vertical layout eliminates a bunch of the background and focuses more attention on our subjects.
• I like how we can just see a sliver of Joseph’s face.
• I love the shadows and such on the ground.

Here we have another image from the series. This image the light and the subject stayed in the same location and I just walked around with the camera. It’s nice to shoot wireless with your flashes.

• I like the front view.
• Light Direction is good.
• The bright background area isn’t my favorite. But was able to keep detail there.
• Looking now, I should have shot an HDR of the scene and masked out our people. That way I could really tone down that area.

Merry Christmas, What a wonderful day it is today.
Continuing our series of Children Nativity images. I’ll show you our traveling series for the next few days. This is actually the first set of images we made for our little book. Maybe I’ll post that book as well, at least some of the layouts from it.

So here we have Joseph and Mary on their way to Bethlehem. This is at a park near our home. For lighting I just used my SB900 and a small soft box. Worked out wonderfully.

• Love the scene here, The cracks on the ground and the coloring.
• I think placement works well.
• I like the direction and quality of the light on our subjects.
• I think a blurrier background area would be better, but not worth risking losing focus on the people.

I finally got an invite to hdrspoting.com. I love this web site, it’s a great place to get inspired with wonderful imagery. They’ve also got links to some great tutorials and all the different software available. Go and check it out.

It’s Christmas eve! Merry Christmas! I have been working on this project for a while but it is part of a present so I couldn’t post any of the image til now. So I thought we’d start with this one and post some of the others in the days following.

I made this image in the middle of the day. First I created an HDR image of the scene, I wanted to be able to darken the sky significantly and still see the rest. Then we moved in our subjects and my little lumiquest softbox. I really like that little softbox. Light is provided by 1 SB900 in the box and of course the sun. With the camera still secure on the tripod we made several different images, as you can see the shepherd is in there twice and he’s also the angel.

Compositing this image was easy thanks to the auto align layers feature in Photoshop. Just mask out what you don’t need and you’re done. I painted the star in by hand in Photoshop.

• For some reason when children will portray something like this it warms your heart and brings a smile.
• I like the lower center placement of Mary, Joseph and the manger, being a focus point.
• I also like the vertical shot, It seems you don’t normally see this portrayed in this orientation.

Come back tomorrow for some more of the shots in this shoot. We put together a little book of these portraying different passages from the New Testament.