ProjectVISUAL

The Deceptively Sunny Dingle Harbor.

Stephen — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:58:17 +0000

Here is one of the very few scenes I could capture when I spent some time in Dingle, in County Kerry, over the new year. I never did get the opportunity to get out onto the water – even though the photo looks picturesque, Dingle is home to possibly the chilliest winds anywhere in the world and the last place I felt like being was away from the shelter of the shore

If you’re interested in knowing how I made this, along with my other photos, you can check out my HDR Tutorial

Technorati Tags: ireland, kerry, dingle, boat, water, sea, dock, port, coast, rust, reflection, hdr, tone mapped, high dynamic range, nikon, d300, projectvisual, rope, shore

The Slowly Rusting Docked Boat

Stephen — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 21:58:59 +0000

Here’s another of my many pictures from my time in Malta, specifically at the port in Gozo. Although I took five exposures of this I only realised when looking at them that the boat was bobbing up and down with the tide so they couldn’t really be aligned It still turned out alright from one exposure – the great thing about using one exposure in making HDRs is that you can take shots of moving objects like people, and boats!

I should have Part 3 of my HDR Tutorial up tomorrow, I spent all day in a snowball fight (I lost) so I’ll have to put in a super writing bout tomorrow

If you’re interested in knowing how I made this, along with my other photos, you can check out my HDR Tutorial

Technorati Tags: gozo, malta, mediterranean, boat, water, sea, dock, port, coast, rust, reflection, hdr, tone mapped, high dynamic range, nikon, d300, projectvisual, rope

How not to use a fishing net (And it’s my 200th post!)

Stephen — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:03:45 +0000

I spent new years in Dingle, a small, small (small) village in Co. Kerry in South Ireland. The sum total of my activities were, in no particular order: eat, drink, sleep and shoot.

Seriously, shouldn’t that net be in the water or something? I’m no fisherman but my non-fishermen instincts were kicking in here. Unfortunately there were no actual fishermen around (apart from two I saw in a pub drinking Guinness at noon) outside who could help me on this niggling matter

There was a whole load of noise in this image – you can see some remnants of it just below the clouds. It was far worse but I cleaned most of it up using some nice software from Imagenomic. It’s called Noiseware Professional Plug in (this link is for the MAC version, the WINDOWS version is here.) It’s a Photoshop plugin that works wonders to drastically reduce the amount of noise in your images – the first time I used it my jaw nearly fell off! I now use it all the time (it’ll feature in my HDR Tutorial). I’ll do a proper review of it when I get the time.

I’ve said it already but I’ll say it again just to remind myself, I’ve started Part 3 of my HDR Tutorial, it’s getting there but still won’t be online for a couple more days – let’s put a definite latest date on it: 10^th January

If you’re interested in knowing how I made this, along with my other photos, you can check out my HDR Tutorial

Technorati Tags: dingle, kerry, ireland, 2010, new years, fishing, net, ships, boats, sky, winter, cold, tone mapping, high dynamic range HDR, D300, nikon, tonemapped, projectvisual

The Empty Church of Gozo that echoed every sound

Stephen — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:28:42 +0000

So it’s now 2010, we’re in the future, and I still don’t see any flying cars! Well maybe 2011 then. In the meantime here’s another photo from Gozo. I always find churches especially creepy, and this one was no exception – inside was totally lifeless and every footstep echoed all over the place; it was in the absolute middle of nowhere so I wasn’t really surprised though.

I’ve started Part 3 of my HDR Tutorial, but it won’t be online for a couple more days – college has begun again and some things just have to take priority

If you’re interested in knowing how I made this, along with my other photos, you can check out my HDR Tutorial

Technorati Tags: gozo, malta, mediterranean, tone mapping, high dynamic range HDR, D300, nikon, tonemapped, projectvisual

HDR Tutorial Part 2 – Hardware & Image Capture

Stephen — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 21:40:09 +0000

(N.B. This is Part 2 of my HDR Tutorial. Part 1, which is a brief introduction to HDR, can be found here.)

Right, we know now what HDR is and what type of results we can achieve from the whole process. The next step is to actually get outside and take some RAW images! For this you will need:

A camera (essential, DSLR is highly recommended), that can shoot in RAW (preferable but not essential), and can auto bracket (preferable but will be a real pain if it can’t ).
A tripod (preferable; I have one, rarely bring it with me on trips, and always regret not having it.)

My current camera of choice is the Nikon D300 (you can pick up its successor, the D300s at B&H Photo); it’s solid, heavy, fast, and takes great images. It also shoots in RAW, a feature found on all DSLRs. RAW is the uncompressed sensor data that is captured by your DSLR each time you take a picture. If you shoot in JPG then what you are really doing is shooting in RAW and letting your camera compress the data into a JPG before saving. This all happens in the background and requires no input from you, however you are losing valuable image information by setting your camera to shoot in JPG. HDR is still doable with a set of JPGs; it just probably won’t give you the best results.

The D300 also has that single most important feature I mentioned in Part 1: auto-bracketing (AEB). AEB is the ability of a camera to take a metered shot (that’s your initial shot), followed in quick succession by a user defined number of under and over exposed shots (remember my five thumbnail shots in Part 1?). The amount of under or over exposure is measured in exposure values (EVs). I’m sure there are entire books on just exposure. In fact, here’s one! And here’s another! However I’m going to explain it as best I can in just a few lines!

Understanding Exposure Values- A crash course.

EV is a function of your camera’s ISO, shutter speed, and aperture size, and all other things remaining constant (e.g. if you’re in manual mode), will vary like this:

If you increase your ISO, you increase the EV. When shooting for HDR we only use a single ISO value (the lower the better to minimise noise), so we don’t need to worry about this.
Opening your aperture, e.g. from f/11 to f/4 will increase your EV. We also only use one aperture setting, to keep the depth of field constant (I always shoot using aperture priority) so we don’t need to worry about this either. Easy so far!
Shutter speed is where all the action happens . Increasing the shutter speed will reduce the EV. Specifically, if you double your shutter speed, say from 1/15s to 1/30s the EV will decrease by about 1. Conversely, if you half your shutter speed, say from 1/30s to 1/15s the EV will increase by about 1.

Many DSLRs, the D300 included, can be set up to automatically take under and over exposed images at EV values of ±1 and ±2, relative to the initial metered shot. In Part 1 of this tutorial my metered shot was at 1/60s, and my under and overexposed shots were at shutter speeds of 1/15s (+2EV), 1/30s (+1EV), 1/125s (-1EV) and 1/250s (-2EV). As you’ve probably realised by now this is a very, very handy feature to have on your camera if you’re interested in HDR photography; without it you would have to manually change your shutter speed to give you the proper change in EV, something I’m sure I would grow tired of very quickly! When getting any DSLR make sure it has AEB functions.

Anything else?

Yes actually! You really should get a tripod. Keeping your camera steady while it is taking multiple images at different EVs is quite tough without one; I’ve tried it handheld and it just doesn’t really work. Sitting your camera on a wall or table is a workaround but then you are severely limiting the number of directions you can point your lens . On the rare occasion I bother to bring them, I use Hahnel Triad 50 tripod legs with a Manfrotto 322RC2 Joystick Head. The joystick head is a real wonder – it allows almost 360 degree positioning for your camera with nothing more than a squeeze of the grip. A tripod is well worth investing in if your serious about tack sharp images, there are plenty to choose from over at the B&H Photo website. The Manfrotto joystick head is also in stock .

I know now what I need, what do I shoot?

I don’t know! Whatever you want! Anything can be HDRed, the trick is knowing what can be HDRed well. Personally I love landscape shots with cloudy skies, shiny vehicles are great too, oh shots when the sun is prominent can be wonderful too, but they’re a bit tricky. The best thing to do is just get out and experiment. The one thing you want to keep in mind is you’re looking for a scene that cannot be captured by a single exposure; they’ll benefit most from the HDR treatment. Some examples are a dark room with a bright window, landscapes with a glaring sun, you get the idea…

To aid this tutorial I went out, set up my tripod, fastened my D300 securely to it, set my ISO to 200, aperture priority at f/9, and AEB to take a metered shot and four others at ±2 and ±1EV. The shutter speed of the metered shot was chosen by my camera to be 1/800s. Can you work out the other shutter speeds from this? Remember I don’t have to figure out these other shutter speeds, the camera does that for me, I just tell it the EVs to use. Here are the five images I took, below it is the finished HDR.

In Part 3 we’ll actually talk about turning the five images above into the finished HDR photo. The one essential piece of software you’ll need for this is Photomatix, which can be found at Hdrsoft.com. There are others, but Photomatix is in my opinion the best I’ve tried. If you have it already that’s great, if not you can download a free trial version from the website for either WINDOWS or MAC OSX. Any images made with the trial version will be watermarked however .

Purchase Photomatix at 15% discount with Coupon Code “projectvisual”

If you’re feeling adventurous you can jump straight in and buy Photomatix for either WINDOWS or MAC at a discount of 15% if you use the coupon code “projectvisual”; you’ll see where to enter it if you click either of my oversized links below! Hdrsoft were kind enough to give me this code because I asked them so nicely

A quick recap.

You’ll want a camera with AEB functions. The D300s, with a 16-85mm VR lens has them, but may be a bit expensive at over $2000! For the more budget conscience consumer, the Nikon D5000, with an 18-105mm lens and AEB controls will set you back just a shade over $1000. Of course there are cheaper ones still, browse around B&H Photo.com and see what catches your eye.
Tripod legs and head: anything sturdy will do . Again, I’d recommend the Manfrotto Joystick Head, just because it’s unbelievably convenient.

Some final tips that I’ve learned from the D300:

If you have slow moving subjects in your scene like clouds or leaves perhaps, use a large aperture to increase the speed at which your images are captured. This won’t help when it comes to dynamic scenes such as people moving – but there’s a way around that…
Use continuous auto-focus; if you chose single auto-focus your camera will refocus (possibly on different subjects) between each shot, and we don’t want that now!
Shoot in aperture priority when shooting HDR; pick your own depth of field and leave the shutter speed to the camera.

Part 3 of this tutorial will arrive early in the New Year, in the meantime I’m heading down to south Ireland to ring in the new decade

P.S. If there is some information you feel is lacking / not explained well here please lets me know and I’ll fill in the gaps

Seeing the Paris skyline from the Tour Montparnasse

Stephen — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 12:08:54 +0000

On my second trip to Paris in October I was made aware of the Tour Montparnasse: a giant of a building on top of which you can go outside and view a wonderful 360 degree panoramic of Paris. The Tour Montparnasse also happens to be home of Europe’s fastest elevator – rocketing you up from the ground to the 56^th floor in 38 seconds!

You may notice a rather large structure in today’s photo; it is of course the Eiffel Tower, and just like the last time I was in Paris, I wasn’t able to go up to the top of it since it was once again closed for maintenance! I’m beginning to believe that I’ll never make it inside.

This trip was the first where I used my Nikon 50mm Nifty Fifty lens, the fact that it’s a prime lens and so doesn’t zoom took quite a bit of getting used to; I was constantly stepping back to try and get everything in my shots!

If you’re interested in knowing how I made this, and all my other photos, you can check out Part 1 of my HDR tutorial; Part 2 should be online sometime tomorrow

Technorati Tags: Paris, France, Eiffel Tower, HDR, D300, nikon tonemapped, projectvisual

HDR Tutorial (Part 1)

Stephen — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 16:23:02 +0000

(N.B. This is Part 1 of my HDR Tutorial, Part 2 can be found here)

It’s been one year now since I started dabbling in HDR photography and thought it was high time to put together a tutorial on the subject.

HDR (High Dynamic Range) photos are running rampant on the internet at the moment, so I’m going to assume you all know what is meant by the term HDR – blending multiple pictures of the same scene, shot at different shutter speeds in order to capture the full range of lights and shadows.
…
OK quick example: look at the array of five images below. They’re all of the same scene, but one thing is different in all of them: each was shot at a different shutter speed. Why did I do that? Well, if you look at each photo you can see that different parts are either under, over, or properly exposed. Look at the middle photo; that’s my metered photo and was shot using a shutter speed of 1/60s and aperture of f/22 (at an ISO of 200). I was using aperture priority at the time and exposure, apart from the sky, looks OK. However, if I hadn’t been shooting with the intention of making a HDR image then I would have only taken this image and I would be left with an overexposed sky. But I also took four other images, at shutter speeds of 1/250s (1^st image), 1/125s (2^nd image), 1/30s (4^th image) and 1/15s (5^th image). Between the five images I should have the full range of lights and shadows in the scene (the first two contains details of the sky while the last two contain details in the foreground). You can see from the histogram beneath each photo that it moves from black to white as the exposure is increased so I know I’m getting the full spectrum of light.

Once you have a set of such photos, and I’ll explain the best way to do this, you can combine them together using some software like Photomatix or HDR Max, and do some touch up in Photoshop, I’ll explain all this later so don’t worry

First though, here are some of my favorite photos that I’ve taken. Just to confuse you a little more, some of these were made using just one photo – I’ll explain how that works too! I’ve included the original metered image so you can contrast it to the HDR photo; I think you’ll agree HDR can significantly umph up your portfolio!

Glendalough (Ireland)

Barcelona (Spain)

Notre Dame (France)

Barcelona (Spain)

Valletta (Malta)

OK, now you’ve seen the type of results you can achieve using HDR techniques (these photos are really tone mapped rather than high dynamic range, but to 90% of the internet population they’re called HDR so let’s not nitpick!), the next step is to run through quickly what you will need to get great results. First on the list: you need some decent HARDWARE!! Check back soon to hear what I use, and find out what the single most important feature is that you’ll need on your camera to maximise your HDR photos

Edinburgh Castle at the end of The Royal Mile

Stephen — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 16:18:57 +0000

There’s a famous stretch of road in Edinborgh, that reaches from Edinburgh Castle to Holyroad Abbey. I don’t know why but I didn’t get any photo of the Abbey – I did do the Mile though! We went inside the castle walls but didn’t bother with paying into the castle interior – it was the morning after the night before and no one was really in a cultural frame of mind . I would recommend Scotland, if only to try out some delicious haggis, check out any Scottish menu and you’ll see something called ‘Haggis, Neeps and Tats’, which is an affectionate way of saying Haggis, Turnips and Potatoes . It’s really really nice!

This photo was made from one image – exposures of ±2EV and ±1EV were pulled from the metered shot using Photoshop. I really have to take my tripod on more trips!

Technorati Tags: hdr, tonemapped, scotland, edinburgh, cold, winter, castle, stone, sky

New Theme – Yay or Nay???

Stephen — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 14:24:40 +0000

Christmas is a time of change blah blah blah… so I’ve been looking to change my site’s look for a while now, the blue and orange just wasn’t cutting it for me anymore. I found this great theme over at Digital Visions and so far I’m loving it far more than the old one. I’ve tried it on Firefox, Opera and Safari, but not internet explorer – let me know if there are any problems

The Scottish Jungle

Stephen — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 15:46:58 +0000

I’ve just finished wrapping all my Christmas presents (I’m not sure you can call it ‘wrapping’, more like sticking bits of scrunched up paper to boxes until I can’t see the box anymore!), so It’s relaxation time

Here’s another picture from the botanical gardens in Glasgow, Scotland. There is a central circle of tropical plants and the humidity while in there is almost unbearable! – I much prefer cool and dry myself

Since I didn’t bring a tripod to Scotland with me I took this as a single RAW shot and then pulled out 4 additional exposures at ±2EV from the file using Photoshop. Photomatix was of course the magic tool I used to create the HDR tonemapped image.

Technorati Tags: flower, stem, plant, nature, beauty, botanical, green, rock, moss, scotland, hdr, tonemapped, projectvisual

Fan Shaped Flower at the Botanical Gardens in Glasgow

Stephen — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:18:01 +0000

It’s been a while since I posted in any sort of consistant manner but it’s the Christmas holidays now so I have some free time .

After jumping on some super cheap flights (€12 return!) to Glasgow with a few friends, I was dragged to the Botanical Gardens there by one particular tree hugin friend! It was small and humid but it I did see some really strange looking plants there – this is probably one of the more normal looking ones though! There was also a banana tree!

Technorati Tags: flower, stem, plant, nature, beauty, botanical, green, rock, moss, scotland, hdr, tonemapped, projectvisual

Still Alive

Stephen — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 22:09:08 +0000

I’ve just noticed that it’s been over 2 months since I last posted anything!! I’m coming within the last two or three months of my PhD and it’s really taking over all my time, leaving me with very little oppertunity to do anything else

I was back in Paris recently as part of my work so I’m gonna run through some pictures I took while over there – the weather was much better than the last time I was there in January, although I only brought an effective 75mm prime lens (Nifty 50 with a DX sensor) so it was hard getting far enough away from subjects to compose anything properly!

If I don’t post again before the the end of the month Happy New Year!

Endless Fruits

Stephen — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 22:07:18 +0000

This was from one fantastic market in Barcelona off las ramblas – furits, fish, sweets of every colour – amazing!

I’ve been dabbling in the world of microstock photography of late – it definitely requires an element of contraint when choosing what to photograph! I’ve submitted to a number of sites with varying degrees of success – Shutterstock has been the most welcoming site by far. More to follow!

Technorati Tags: fruit, strawberries, red, vibrant, market, colour, nutrition, organic, passion, pieces, refreshment, ripe, salad, season, sweet, delicious, fod, fresh, healthy, diet, dessert

Grandiose Glendalough

Stephen — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 09:49:07 +0000

This was sort of the halfway point of my hike around Glendalough – we started on the left hand side down at the lake and worked our way around the hilltops down to the right hand side of the photo. This was one of those times I really wished I had a wide angle lens

You can see a largeer version of this image at my FlICKR page if you’re interested – see my FLCIKR link on the right sidebar? ——->>> Go on – give it a click

Technorati Tags: glendalough, lake, water, grass, landscape, nature, hdr, tone mapping, nikon, d300, projectvisual

Glendalough Lake

Stephen — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 11:37:06 +0000

This is Glendalough, literally ‘Glen of the two lakes’. A group of us headed on a walk around it on Wednesday – a 9km hike involving wet socks and annoying midgets trying to eat you alive. Apart from that it was great though! I was in a rare mood and decided to take my tripod with me so I was able to make this shot is from 5 exposures +2 to -2.

Technorati Tags: green, glendalough, ireland, scenery, fence, lake, water, trees, calm, peaceful, hdr, nikon, d300, projectvisual

The Orange City

Stephen — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 17:28:48 +0000

I’m just back from a quick stroll around Glendalough in Co. Wicklow (Ireland), so expect the next few post to be suspiciously green, but first here’s another quick shot from Malta. It’s in the city (loose term) of Mdina, where the designers decided absolutely everything should be a shade of orange.

Technorati Tags: malta, gozo, mdina, orange, city, hdr, nikon, d300, projectvisual

If You Visit Ireland Only Once, Make Sure You Drop By Kerry

Stephen — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 23:02:51 +0000

It’s been 46 days since my last post. I used to post every single day, until I went out one night to grab a quick Guinness with two friends in Dublin and ended flying to Barcelona for two days – after that my daily routine was properly screwed up!

With any luck this post will be the first of a more regular series of updates, one every two or three days; again it’s from Kerry, the nicest place in Ireland I’m told, and I agree!

Technorati Tags: ireland, kerry, mountain, crannog, hdr, nikon, d300, projectvisual

Inch Beach In Kerry: Niiice

Stephen — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:10:24 +0000

I spent the weekend of last week in Kerry visiting four friends and checking out some seriously awesome beaches along the way. This one here though was the best of the bunch – probably because the weather sucked at all the others. I was getting some real impressive driving lessons from my friend Catherine as well, well I was just sitting in the back seat while she bombed along the coast at 160mph – it was still great though!

Technorati Tags: ireland, kerry, beach, inch, sand, clouds, hdr, nikon, d300, projectvisual

Who’d Sit On This Bench

Stephen — Tue, 26 May 2009 19:57:59 +0000

Wow it’s been some time since my last post – they will likely be spread out like this for the next few months unfortuantely – more pressing life matters have taken over

I go on an unplanned trip to Barcelona for two days and all I find is wind, rain, and overcast skies! Meanwhile I was dutifully informed that Ireland was in the middle of a heatwave! Sometimes you’re the dog, other times you’re the tree.

Technorati Tags: bench barcelona lonely solitary single wet gloomy

The Never Ending Path

Stephen — Sat, 16 May 2009 09:05:36 +0000

There’s a great public garden somewhere in Florence that we took advantage of since our original plan to visit some museums was ruined by the fact that they were all closed for a national bank holiday! Although I didn’t actually walk up here it looked like it went on forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever…………………

Technorati Tags: florence, firenze, projectvisual, nikon, d300, garden, sheltered, green