It’s an older part of town that was completely refreshed over the last five years so it has a very modern and classic feel. It’s a very pretty building but it’s a challenge to shoot because there are many things to exclude. There are street lights, signs and cars just outside the frame on all sides. So while this isn’t really a super strong composition, I don’t have many choices unless I’m willing to Photoshop out objects. I’m not a fan of removing objects. This is a three shot bracket shooting from -2 through +2.

The thing that stands out about this shot for me is how I processed it. It’s an HDR out of Photomatix 4 beta 8. I’ve been playing with Photomatix, HDR Pro and several other tools for nearly six months and have had zero luck with them. It’s been a frustration for me at no end. I was always getting flat and unrealistic color. I knew it was a matter of a learning curve because photographers like Tery Ratcliff have been getting amazing results consistently. So this week I spent even more time with Photomatix and had an epiphany using the white point, black point and smoothing sliders. The white and black points have to get set correctly in order to get decent contrast. I still don’t understand the slider units coming from a curves background, but I “get it” now.

With the tone map complete, I brought it back into Lightroom to adjust the curve to get even more contrast out of this shot. Overall, I love the way this turned out. I don’t think HDR works in every situation. I certainly don’t think it’s a tool to overcome extreme dynamic range like many do. I think of it more as a tool for bringing out subtle nuance and texture that is already there, just not very well emphasized.

So I hope this doesn’t tarnish my no-HDR reputation. I’m certainly not a “HDR guy” by any means. I just have another tool in my box that is ready in waiting.

They live in the little town of Grenada, CA which is under the northern shadow of Mt. Shasta in Siskiyou County. In the winter, the wind blows at hurricane strength and this barn has stood the test of time. It’s also hard to grasp the full scale of immensity because all the fences and doors you see are for horses, not people. A horse can walk through that door without ducking.

On this day, inclement weather was rolling in and it was a pleasure to take shelter from the wind. The barn also has a very distinct scent. It’s a unique combination of old timbers, alfalfa and livestock. That aspect is very hard to convey here in a photograph.

Despite this shot looking very dark, there was plenty of light to shoot this hand held. I was free to move about and compose this shot carefully. Architecture is about lines and placing them carefully into the shot. Handheld was easiest here.

Later in Lightroom, I converted the shot to BnW and pumped the blacks way up. That brought out all of the drama in the clouds and texture in the barn. I further took the tone curve for a spin to fine tune the contrast. I love how much different the clouds look from left to right. It doesn’t even look like the same sky. I’m going to get this one printed BIG to present my grandparents with at Christmas this year. I’m sure they’ll love it!

The composition was a bit of a balancing act trying to hide the signs of civilization while emphasizing the best natural features. I really wanted to see more of the gnarly ravine on the bottom left side of the shot, but if I got closer to see more, you’d also see a gated driveway that was tucked between where I was standing and this ravine.

This vantage point I had let me see for miles and a single shot could not capture it all. So this shot is really a composite of 8 vertical frames stitched together. It is a 31.8 megapixel shot. I was a bit sloppy when I shot these images which made the stitch much more difficult and I lost many of my pixels when I cropped it square.

On my first attempt, I merged all 8 individual frames together in Photoshop CS5 from Lightroom. There was a pretty big stitching error that I first tried to correct by hand editing masks and frankly I was too tired to keep it all straight and got frustrated. So I stepped back and decided to stitch in stages. I took the top four frames, stitched them and did the same with the bottom four. With these two new images, I had to adjust the exposures to get them to match. I then merged them together into the final image without any banding or stitching gaffs. Merged all the layers and saved the shot.

Back in Lightroom it still needed a bunch of work. I used a hard-edged gradient to bring up the foreground exposure. In curves, I adjusted the white point and gave it a brightening curve. I basically anchored the blacks at the given levels and increased the highlights to taste. The color was straight out of camera. To get this much color, I shot with the color on Vivid and saturation +3.

Overall, I really love this shot because I feel the same way now looking at it as I did when I was there. I am also pleased with how this doesn’t look like a stitched panorama. I want to see this thing printed BIG!

What do you think?

My shot tonight was another one I caught during one of NorCal’s rare summer rainstorms. This really gives you an idea of the country I’m blessed live in. I love the rolling hills with golden grass with ancient Oak trees throughout.

I started shooting down closer to that ravine and they were okay, but this shot up higher gave me a better perspective of the expansive valley. I choose f/13 to keep the whole shot in focus at ISO100 to have a clean noise-free shot. The camera chose 8/10 second exposure. I also compensated the exposure down -1 stops to expose the sky properly. In Lightroom I used a gradient mask to bring the foreground back up. I dodged a few places for emphasis and adjusted the tone curve to get better contrast.

Sometimes Often, I put certain high expectations on myself when I got out to shoot. I have a very type-A personality. I’m very focused and very driven. I hate failure. Unfortunately, photography for me isn’t something that can be perfected by trying harder. There is no perfect and like all art, it’s an expression. There is no right and wrong way to do it. There are things you can do that will give you consistently better compositions and you can head out the shoot during blue hour knowing there will probably be good light, but none of that guarantees a good photos. So in a nutshell, I am my own worst kill-joy.

Looking through my photostream, my very best shots are ones where I didn’t have any expectations. I had my camera, I was relaxed and I was just having a good time. Too many times the self-induced pressure blocks my creative energy. Case in point. Last night we had some clouds in the sky, a very rare occasion this time of the year in NorCal, so we headed out to try to get a nice sunset. Staying close to home, we went down to the Sacramento River. Lake Red Bluff has been returned to natural levels so there was this large dry lake bed area. (Lake Red Bluff is formed on the Sacramento River by a seasonal dam that diverts water for irrigation.)

I tried several compositions on the riverbank shooting towards the color in the sky, but I just could not find a strong shot. Walking back to the car I got captivated by the cracking mud from the dry lake bed. I knew there was a shot out there somewhere. I though about other great shots I’ve seen like those of the Race Track Rocks in Death Valley. That idea was my inspiration for this shot. I’m really please with this shot because not only was the light fantastic, it led me to think outside the box. I had to actually let go of my idea of where the best shot was and look around.

To get this shot, I set my tripod as short as it would go, about 12 inches above the ground. To give this shot a sense of depth, I tried to place these two stones into the shot where they’d lead you into the sunset. I actually got lucky because if you look close, I managed to find five stones in a curved line. I set the the camera to f/16 on aperture priority and the camera chose an 1/8th of a second exposure.

Lately, I’ve come to really love Lightroom’s gradient tool. I prefer to use real filters, but this tool is almost as good. I used a -2.6 stop gradient which really made this shot. There is so much drama now. I set the white point and the contrast with the tone curve. I burned in a few places to emphasize the texture in the soil.

It was still cold here in April and you could see the sweaty horse’s breath. They were all standing together amidst the dust with a view of an old barn in the background. This shot has a very nostalgic and classic western feel to it.

I cropped out the sky and extra foreground to really focus on the lady patiently watching her gelding. In Lightroom, I started with the Aged Photo preset which brings the look I wanted. I did a curves adjustment bring down the blacks to get better tones on the horses. I was shooting at a fast shutter speed 1/500 because previously they were all running full speed around the arena. I also added a vignette to add to the aged photo look.

This time of year, the water levels are low and slow. It was a weeknight so we had the area to ourselves. We let the boys play in the park while we tromped around the vegetation and shore looking for a nice shot. The light was turning into a wonderful orange glow which really made for some interesting trees. However this shot is my favorite from the day. You have the placid water reflecting these exposed roots which look lifeless. Overtaking them is new growth from young trees and vines underneath.

I wanted freedom this evening so I didn’t use my tripod. I shot everything handheld and used higher ISOs. For this shot I chose a really wide DOF at f/13 on aperture priority. I have the minimum shutter speed set to 1/60th which is more than enough with good hand holding technique and VR. The camera chose ISO 5000 which is pretty noisy. Lightroom 3 to the rescue and unless I told you, most would never have noticed it was such a high ISO shot.

I did my normal curves adjustment to optimize the contrast and I moved the vibrance a tad to make the greens pop more.

Tempus II from Philip Heron on Vimeo.

I found this really interesting elongated rock to carefully place in the foreground. In Lightroom I applied the one of Bryan Wheeler’s presets called Ansel Adams. Right off the bad it creates really awesome ink-like blacks. I applied a typical S-shaped curve to bring up the contrast even more. I love how the texture explodes off the image.

I was here earlier during blue hour and these banks were flat and uninteresting. Midday when I returned to my Suburban, the harsh light was really bringing out all the cool details in the ice. I was torn though because in color the water is a spectacular topaz blue, but that alone wasn’t enough to carry the shot. The subject here is the remaining snow cupping the lake shore and to really capture a conversion to black and white was what I settled on.

The sun had just passed the highest point in the sky so it was bright. I wanted a deep DOF to keep everything in focus. So at f/13 on aperture priority, the camera chose 1/200th of a second which was perfect shooting hand-held. Sliding all over the ice being carefull not to slide into the lake, I managed to get the snow to draw a leading line into the shot which leaves with the view of the lake and Eagle Peak behind. Just to the right of the frame is Mount Lassen.

In Lightroom, this was cropped down to this panoramic aspect ratio. I started with the built-in preset “B&W Creative – Look 3″. The shot was still flat and washed out so I brought down the blacks with the Tone Curve leaving the whites alone.