Griffith Observatory - HDR

I started doing HDR images about a year ago and it definitely takes patience and skill to get the look I have in mind. I don't always like the crazy surreal look but other times I do. I bracket to get 3 images of different exposures and use a program called PhotoMatix to merge them into an HDR image. Photoshop also can do this but I find PhotoMatix works better for me. I then bring them into Photoshop for a few more minor adjustments to get it just right. 

 

 

San Juan Capistrano - Natural Framing

Back in June a friend of mine was visiting from Sweden. We took her over to San Juan Capistrano for the day. Most of that was spent at the mission where I took these photos. It was a nice place with a lot of history.

Here I used already existing archways and doorways to frame the shots. They were post-processed in PhotoMatix (HDR) and Photoshop. I don't always like the extremely surreal look of HDR images so I didn't go too overboard with these.

 

 

 

The Stitt Family Photos

I had the pleasure of photographing this family a few weeks ago. For the location I chose a local park. Parks are great locations in my opinion because of the natural setting and ease of access. This was shot at midday with high sun. To deal with this 'problem' I tried to stick with areas of the park that were shaded and used fill flash to prevent harsh shadows on their faces. I also was sure to brush up on my 3 person poses beforehand.