Lately Dr. Hyperbolus and I have been going on hikes almost every weekend from Griffith Park to Malibu. Dr. Echo Bloom joins us sometimes, but sadly he will be departing to SF in just a couple weeks. Anyway, this past weekend TMFJ (Tom-motha-fuckin-Jones) was in town and we decided to conquer the Hollywood Sign hike. The path we took was a good 3 mile hike up and took around 70 minutes to reach.

View Hollywood Sign Hike in a larger map

Now, you can’t actually rub noses with the sign. It’s fenced off and there are fines/jailtime for trespassing. But you do end up around 100 feet behind it, and it’s still totally worth it for the awesome view of Los Angeles.

So, I wanted to test out some HDR photography again… however this time just using the technique to keep all the details in the shot. The first photo, Behind Hollywood, is a single exposure, but all the others used some sort of multiple exposure. Burbank uses traditional 3-exposure HDR and was created in Photomatix and Photoshop. The other two, Observatory and TMFJ in Hollywood use two exposures that are manually blended together in Photoshop.

Malibu Canyon

A couple weeks ago, Dr. Hyperbolus and I were on the search for an iconic shot of a single tree on a hill. We drove around for a few hours (traffic mainly) and ended up on Malibu Canyon Road (probably our next hiking location). As we were driving, we finally spotted our subject on the side of the road and quickly pulled over. Here she is.

I used 3-exposure HDR for the first two photos shooting directly into the sun and then just a single exposure on the last shot to complement the series with a blown out look.

The idea is to use bracketing, which is commonplace with most of today’s fancy cameras. You shoot one image at the correct exposure, then at least one overexposed (to see detail in the shadows), and at least one underexposed (to see detail in the highlights – typically the sky). I usually work with just 3 exposures, but I’ve seen some people use up to 7… and of course, more exposures = more detail.

HDR imagery seems to be the new trend. A lot of people are getting into it… but then again there are a lot of people who hate it and think it’ll eventually phase out. I personally like it. It’s fun and the results are usually pretty cool. The style can range from super realistic, highly detailed scenes to fantastical, painterly dreamworlds. I tend to dig it all.

Here are some of my recent attempts while on vacation in Atlanta:

LEFT: original, MIDDLE: HDR, RIGHT: HDR B&W using red color channel

LEFT: original, RIGHT: HDR

And these are some older shots I took while in Albany. Because of the dirtiness of the area, I tone mapped these images to be a bit gritty and added some grain to complement:

I still have a lot to learn about HDR and how to achieve those mystical dreamworld images. I also I need to get a tripod so my images are sharper. So stay tuned for more to come in the future.

Anyway, here are some of the HDR masters:

Ryan Eng and Pete Carr (with one of my favorite shots).

Canon 55-250mm f/4 and Speedlite 430 EXII Flash

Inspired by Dr. Hyperbolus’ post and his mention of The Man Who Wasn’t There, I wanted to recreate the harsh lighting in the image he referenced.

However, seeing as how I didn’t have a tripod, didn’t have any lights, and had never really tried to light a scene before, I had a difficult time. Thus I didn’t figure it out in time, so instead I salvaged what I had… which actually look like future solo album covers.

I had some fun with textures…

Yeah so, I’ve never really done self-portraiture like this before. What I learned (in addition to the technical details) is that it brings up the question of what are you trying to capture? Is it the essence of the person, is it a mood, or is it something different altogether? The weirdest thing is just modeling for the camera with any of these intentions in mind. I’ll definitely try this again as soon as I pick up a fluorescent light or two… yep… aaaaaand maybe a tripod would help.

My ghetto setup in case anyone is interested (couch sideways with blanket | flash instruction book on top of wacom box on top of cable box on top of receiver on top of dresser).

About four years ago I stumbled across lomography.com.
I became somewhat obsessed with their gallery section.
I kept asking myself: “How are these people getting their colors to pop so much?! What’s their secret?!”

After some inquiries, I learned the secret was two-fold.

Firstly, these people were shooting with slide film and not the standard 35mm print film, giving them much sharper “negatives” (I put that in quotes because slide “negatives” are actually positives). And secondly, rather than having the slide film developed with the standard E-6 process, they would intentionally run it through C41 chemicals, which is meant for print film. This effect is known as “cross processing” (sometimes known as xpro).

While I was glad to discover this, its not like I can just waltz down to the local

one hour photo and get them to cross process my film.

Thus began walk down the path of the faux-xpro. One of the great things about Cross Processing is that there isn’t one right way to do it. Essentially you’re blowing out the colors by slightly oversaturating them and increasing the contrast of the image overall. Some of my earlier experiementations excelled at this, but never seemed to come off as good as I wanted them to be. Case in point:

Classic example of pushing the colors too far. I’m aiming to enhance what’s already there, not overpower it. After much experimenting, I believe I’ve gotten a better grasp on how to achieve the right level of color manipulation.

Here are some of my more recent works in which I’ve attempted to apply the faux-xpro effect:

So… more about my process!
Now with real film, each brand of slide film reacts differently to the process. I mention this to reiterate that there is no one way to go about it.
Let’s take a photo I took recently of my friend Heather (heretofore known as “the HP”)

It’s already a pretty good photo to start with (IMHO).. but if we just up the blacks (I’m using Adobe Lightroom FYI)…

BAM! It’s already looking a hell of a lot better. Now at this point, I would usually be tweaking both the contrast and the Fill Light levels as well.. but I think this photo already has enough range. It also has true blacks and whites and that always puts a sparkle in my heart, my day, my mind.
Let’s get into color manipulation! Vibrance! Vibrance! Vibrance! This is where I push it (in the Salt N Pepa sense) right up until the breaking point.
The breaking point being where the colors become obnoxious and semi-pixelated.

This is +65 Vibrance. I like it. Let’s move on to messing with the actual colors. One thing that took me awhile to learn was that trying to push green in a photo that’s full of reds will not work in your favor. I try to utilize the colors that are already within the photo and push and pull them as i see fit. Yellow, Blue, and Red are the three colors that stick out the most to me. Let’s start with Yellow.

I punched the Hue of Yellow +40 to make it brighter and +40 to the saturation to blow it out a little.

The reds are coming! THE REDS ARE COMING! Ok. Hue -61 & Sat +71 for the Cherry Kool-Aid effect that clashes oh so nice with the slit of blue sky above. Speaking of blues…

Even though I went Hue -100 & Sat +100 on the “Aqua” color, it is an extremely subtle adjustment to the image. At this point.. I could stop and call it quits.. We have a pretty decent faux-xpro’d image.. but lemme tweak some of the subtleties of the hand a bit more by messing with Orange a bit.

Ah HA! It was close to the edge… but now we’ve pushed it to the SylvesterStalloneJanineTurnerCliffhanger/AnthonyHopkinsAlecBaldwin EDGE!

Let’s COMPARE start to finish!

(for some reason ALR won’t switch the before/after txt.. so just ignore it)

Anyhow, I hope you have enjoyed this transmission.
Dr. Salvatron broadcasting live from Alcatraz.
OUT!