in 25 steps...

Sunrises are some of the most shot events because they are so beautiful. I wanted to make something special out of the sunrise on 2 March so right before the scheduled sunrise time of 6:40 am I started taking a series of 6 pictures to make one HDR, and I essentially kept going until the sun had risen far enough to my liking.
In order to take those 6 shots, I took two sets of 3 shots, one centered at -1Ev (-1, -2, 0) and the other centered at +1Ev (+1, 0, +2), so I was essentially shooting and switching the setting nonstop. The first shot was taken at 6:38, the last one at 6:45.
I processed all the HDR pictures using 5 of the pictures from each set of 6, and I used my software of choice, Nik HDR Efex Pro. I then used Photoshop CS5 to arrange this collage...

a panoramic of the Mall...

I've always wanted to do more panoramic pictures, I enjoy the challenge of taking multiple pictures and them merging them in Photoshop.  I've found that the earlier versions of Photoshop were not all that great at merging pictures, seams were usually very noticeable.  But I thought I'd give Photoshop CS5 a try at merging photos and I have been very pleased, seams are hardly noticeable, some more slight blending is however usually required.  And the effect is rather pleasing and sometimes hard to grasp, as is the case in this picture.

I went out to the Mall in Washington, DC (if you couldn't make the location out from the picture) on the evening of 3 March to catch the sunrise.  I was walking around the Mall to find a good vantage point after finding parking, a whole other issue in DC, and ended up in front of the White House between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. 

Well I liked the conditions (temperatures were definitely on the chilly side, especially with that wind), and proceeded to take bracketed shots (-2, 0, +2), because a panoramic shot is nice, an HDR panoramic shot is more nice!  I started to my left with the Lincoln Memorial, and 9 bracketed shots later (for a total of 18 pictures) I ended up to my right at the Washington Monument, with the White House visible in the center.

I then processed each HDR shot individually using Nik HDR Efex Pro.  Next step involved using Photoshop CS5's photomerge capability to some rather remarkable effects.  I used the clone stamp tool to blend some of the pictures a little more seamlessly.

The final picture is about 88" wide by 12" high, and rather remarkable I think. Almost Escheresque maybe too?

before the sun rises...

I've always wanted to take some pictures from here as the sun rises, and on this past Wednesday (2 March) I woke up before 6 am and headed to the hill in front of the Netherlands Carillon.
This particular picture was the first high dynamic range (HDR) picture I took in the series, taken around 6:08 (sun rise happened around 6:40) and under some chilly temperatures. As I usually do now, I shot two brackets of three shots each, one centered at -1 exposure (-1, -2, 0) and one centered at +1 exposure (+1, 0, +2).  I returned home and selected 5 shots (-2, -1, 0, +1, +2) that I processed using Nik HDR Efex Pro, my software of choice now for HDR pictures.
With the shot processed, I used curves in Photoshop to enhance contrast slightly and Nik's Tonal Contrast to tweak the picture a little more.  I finished with Nik's Dfine 2.0 to reduce the noise.
Behold the finished product...

What is this about?

I've decided to start this blog to show off some of my better pictures (how to choose my better pictures though?) but also to explain a little what goes into making these pictures the objects of art that they are, at least to me!