Cowing Around: Just playing around with my new toy.

I haven't got a chance to go to any place of real interest, but have been experimenting with the new camera. Being digital, I can do more things that I wouldn't have with film. Film doesn't make trial error affordable, so having digital means I can try and try without worrying about wasting money. Digital works different from film, especially during long exposure shots like star trails, which I love. Therefore I will have to learn the trade from scratch.

In the mean time, I've been exploring HDR photos. I am using CS3. The HDR module doesn't seem to be the most advanced and I haven't seen the result that I was expecting. Basically, I think I can do a better job of piecing different brackets of the same photo together as opposed to using CS3 HDR tool. I get more control when I do it manually.

That said, here are some photos from recent experiments:

HDR shot. So far I have not been able to create satisfying result from just HDR alone. For this example, I had to create two HDRs, one for the sky and one for the "ground" and compose them together, then further editing to make them look like they belong to each other.

Here's another HDR composite shot, similar to the one above. Same set of bracket photos, two HDR settings and composed together, plus dodge and burn.

Here's a non-HDR shot. The power of Photoshop!!!
This is done with traditional dodge and burn, levels, saturation and really milking the concept of layers.

Original

Edited

This is just some crazy lucky moment. I was taking a photo of the sun in the clouds and prepared to take a bracket of 9 shots for the HDR. I set my camera on the tripod and aimed at the sky. Just as I started clicking my remote shutter, a vulture flew across the frame, coincidentally at the same speed as it took for my to click 9 times. I did not use all the 9 brackets in the final HDR, but included the vulture in what became a time lapse.

Lastly, just for fun. At the end of the day, I decided to do some driving shots. I was alone, so I held my camera out of the sunroof with my right hand and drove around the parking lot with my left on the wheel. Not every fast at all, but this is something that I wouldn't "waste" using film. Some levels adjustment and dodge and burn.

More car shots. There's a weekly car meet near by. The variety of cars isn't the greatest, but still some interesting subjects to try the camera on. The meet starts at 6pm, which is just before sunset. It's good and bad. Good when the warm light shines on the cars, bad when you are facing against it. Here is a HDR with other post processing.