Posted on May.06, 2009, under Architecture, Michigan, University of Michigan

(Olympus E-3, 7-14mm at 7mm (2x crop factor), ISO 500, 5 exposure HDR @ f/9.0)

As I was heading in to work one morning, I noticed that there were some interesting clouds in the sky and thought I might be able to capture some images with nicely lit clouds. I work near the University of Michigan, so I drove over to the campus area to see what possibilities might await me. I parked near the UM Law School and I liked the way the morning light was shining on the Law School Reading Room. Since I had my tripod with me, I decided to shoot several exposures to create an HDR image. I’ve always liked what HDR can do with brick and stone so this building was a natural.

When I processed the shots, I initially did a fairly strong HDR to get some details in the building. However, I didn’t like what it did to the sky, made it to comical. I did a second processing of the exposures using some different settings to get a better sky. I then merged the two in Photoshop. The finished image is still a bit stronger than I typically like in an HDR. The grass in particular looks a bit alien. I’ll probably rework this one to come up with something that is more realistic, but has a bit of HDR bite.

Comments and feedback welcome.

Image and text Copyright © 2009 James W. Howe – All rights reserved

Check out other images at my website at www.jameshowephotography.com

« »


One Comment

  • Ilan says:
    I just have to try this HDR stuff once – The result made me pick up pieces of my jaw from the floor.
    Stunning.

Leave a Comment

You can use these tags:

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>