(Note on 7/19/08: I've also posted some images that were extremely difficult to create on my new post at http://activerain.com/blogsview/600282/HDR-Interiors-on-the which you may also want to review.)
I apologize for our absence of late. I thought I would share some our newest marketing images because they show how we've changed our photographic work. In the past, we took multiple exposures of a room and John blended those images in photoshop to achieve a blended image. We have now moved to an approach where we combine non-HDR/strobe photography with high dynamic range photography. We like this a lot for a few reasons:
Our experience with HDR processing (maybe just OUR HDR processing) is that it can lead to a number of issues:
1) A case of the "flats." The exposure value range is all there and it's been compressed, but in the process everything is thrown to the middle of the range. The whites are grey, and so are the blacks.
2) Depending upon the local contrast settings, some HDR images can just look weird as they come out of the processor.
However, that said, HDR definitely allows for a beautiful way of expressing reflections, sunlight, and, as we have found, can give richer color expression because of the gradations than traditional photos. But we still like to have our whites white and our blacks black (less critical than the whites), and this is particularly true of walls and ceilings. To accomplish this, we photograph the room with our strobes getting a well-balanced exposure of a room. Then, we turn the strobes off and take the same photo again, this time bracketing it for HDR processing; we then create a second HDR image. The original image is then overlaid on top of the HDR image, and then the original is carefully erased (sometimes only 10-20%, sometimes up to 100%) in places where we want the HDR image to enrich the original image.
For those of you who haven't read my posts before, here's the equipment I'm using: Canon 5d, with a 24mm tilt/shift lens, multiple 580exII strobes on umbrella stands. Photomatix for HDR processing. Because I use a tilt-shift lens rather than a wide-angle lens, it increases the processing, but improves the size of the image (to over 20megapixels), and we also like the proportions of the image (less stretched).
Here are some images (these are all 20megapixel images, though the ones supplied here have been shrunk for ease of viewing). If you want to see how these look in print, email me and I'll try to mail you a brochure or two.
Anyway, I hope you liked the images. We think they really help express the character of the rooms for what they are. If you have an interest in understanding what I did to capture these images, don't hesitate to post a message explaining your interest. If there is interest, I'll try to give some explanation as to the compositional aspects of the photographs.
Margaret Hokkanen, Encinitas and Carlsbad Real Estate
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