Justin Acuff Photography » HDR

December 31, 2009

Justin — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:52:42 +0000

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Marble Springs Porch

Coming Soon…

Justin — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 02:51:29 +0000

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I’ll admit it… I have really been slacking when it comes to blogging. So for the next few days, I am going to post some of my more favorite photos from the Photo-A-Day project I am doing this year. After I finish up January through June, I’ll post on some of the lifestyle family portrait sessions as well as some events.

This post will focus on the month of January. I’ll give a little info on where it was shot from and also how it was shot.

For the shot of the keyboard, I set my camera on a tripod and composed it how I wanted it. I had two remote flashes setup and used the Canon timer remote to trigger the camera times 6 times with a 10 second delay between shots. I then proceeded to play. Of the six images, this one came out the best. Since my keyboard is predominately silver anyways, I decided that a B&W conversion of this image would suite it best.

For the night driving shot, I set my camera up on a tripod in the back seat and mounted my 15mm Fisheye lens. I used the timer remote to fire a series of long exposures. It took some experimenting to get this right. I would drive a little bit and then pull into a parking lot to check my photos. Once I got a combination I was happy with, I left it there and drove around some more. If I recall correctly, this was in the old city area.

The shot of Gay Street Bridge is simple, yet a favorite. I love shooting at night time. A subject can present itself in a totally different light (pun intended). Not much to explain in this shot, I set my camera on a tripod and did a long exposure. What makes this shot, is the time it was shot. Several minutes earlier or several minutes later would have resulted in a much ligher or much darker sky.

The group shot was a 26 image stitched panorama. I’m guessing there is somewhere right around 1,000 people in it. By far, my largest group shot ever. For the past 4 years now, I’ve been one of the official photographers for Gulf Coast Getaway, a Church of Christ conference targeted towards college-aged students. To shot this, I was up on the roof of one of the penthouse suites of one of the towers at the Edgewater Beach Resort. I oriented my camera vertically, set my exposure, and shot away. Although I posted this images as the Photo-A-Day, I have a much better image I was able to process after I got home. I have it available here: http://www.justinacuff.net/potn/637772.html.

This is kind of a cliché shot of Downtown Knoxville. I drove up to the top floor of the 11th Street Garage and shot World’s Fair Park, the Convention Center, and Downtown Knoxville. As cliché as it is, an image like this sales.

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The photo of Regas’s sign is quite unique. Since I work during the day, I found myself shooting at night a lot. I really hadn’t planned to shoot the sign, but thought I’d give it a try with an ultra-wide angle lens. From that one exposure, I envisioned doing something similar to my final photo. This photo combined several techniques to give it that look. The first is it was a multiple exposure (7 exposures) HDR image. I tone mapped it, but it still didn’t have this final look I had imagined.

Cades Cove: Hyatt Lane

Justin — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 02:03:36 +0000

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I woke up early this morning and already had my camera gear packed, so I decided to head up to Cades Cove. I have been recovering from being sick all week and in some ways, I’m still not entirely better. Cades Cove offers so many photographic opportunities, but as I can usually only go on weekends, I try to get there early and leave as quickly as possible. (This can be hard thanks to the cove’s abundance of deer and while there is usually a pullover a few yards ahead, vehicles insist on stopping in the road.) I was going up to see photograph some fall colors, but today just wasn’t the day for that and the colors are still probably about a week or two away from being peak.

Once I got to Hyatt Lane, I decided to turn there and bypass the Cable Mill area and about 15 vehicles that did not understand the concept of the pullover. (I really encourage you to only stop in the road when wildlife is crossing the road, otherwise please use the pullover.) Hyatt Lane offers great opportunties to photograph deer and some great landscapes. However, with the heavy overcast sky, most landscape shots wouldn’t work too well. I think this one only works because I used HDR. I tend to create more photorealistic HDR images rather than the over the top over processed HDR images typically seen.

Damascus Caboose

Justin — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 22:47:07 +0000

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I have passed by the Caboose many times as I have biked the Virginia Creeper Trail. The Virginia Creeper trail is a popular bike trail that runs from White Top Mountain down to Damascus, VA and into Abingdon, VA. I was meeting up with some friends over to weekend but since they were coming from Nashville, I arrived a few hours before they did. As usual, I had my camera with me. To kill some time, I decided to walk the town and look for some interesting stuff to photograph. There were a few Churches and some Bed & Breakfasts, but when I think of Damascus, VA, I think of the Appalachian Trail and the Virginia Creeper. So I was drawn to the park that hosts this caboose, which is also used as a visitor’s center.

To create this image, I took two exposures (15 seconds and 30 seconds) and merged them to an HDR photo using Photoshop. Flash was not used. Next I used the Photomatix Tone Mapping plug-in to reveal more of the details. Using the quick selection tool I selected everything but the caboose, then switched the selection to the inverse. This helped to lock all modifications to the caboose and not the surrounding areas. I used an edge enhancement to make the caboose stand out more. To give it that final pop, I used the burn and dodge tools to emphasis the lights and shadows.

The final photo is a little different from my normal shots, though I’ll continue to experiment with this method.

Foothills Parkway Sunset

Justin — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 11:23:42 +0000

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This is just a test post. I want to be able to put images of up to 900×600. You may see a different logo watermark in future posts. This image was a featured photo on the GoSmokies website for several months. It is a High Dynamic Range (HDR) image created from 7 exposures (-3,-2,-1,0,1,2,3). HDR photography is an area that I am still learning how to process properly. To do HDR properly, the camera should be mounted on a tripod. Keep the aperture the same and just adjust the shutter speed to get the different exposure values. This image was processed entirely in Photoshop CS3 using only the Merge to HDR… function. I have since bought the Photomatix and the Tone Mapping Plugin. I save all my RAW images after converting them to the DNG file format. This might come in handy should I decide to reprocess some HDR image sets that I have taken.