Where is Ben?

Route 66: Odell, IL

The photograph above was taken in Odell, IL while I was following Route 66 back in August. That's a restored 1953 Winnebago Trailer by the way.

Processing Notes: I opened this single exposure through Adobe Camera Raw making no overly special adjustments. I then applied an antique look to the background to make the trailer stand out and retouched out the edge of the building that was on the left edge of the photo and a few radio towers that where in the background. I wouldn't really say that I'm done with this image since I'm not happy with the antique look yet, but knew I was done working on it for the day, so I thought I'd post the image here.

Sneak Peek At New Web Site

I'll be officially introducing a new web site that features my photography on January 1st. Why not go take a sneak peek at the site and give me your feedback before its official launch. I'd appreciate any comments you might have. This site is special in that it will show you large versions of my images that can easily fill a 30" display. I really find  that my HDR images are best seen large. I plan to add a few more images before the the end of the year, but otherwise the site is close to being done.

Back to Route 66

The photograph above was taken while exploring Route 66 in Texas. I found the original photograph to be a little boring when processed as a straight photo, so I decided to make it look nothing like reality which made the image much more interesting to me.

Processing Notes: This image was created by shooting a three shot bracket of exposures and combining them into a 32-bit HDR file. I then processed the images using Photomatix Pro and then opened the resulting file through Adobe Camera Raw and then applied a few actions that come with my new HDR DVD.

HDR Mastery Class Finally on DVD!!

My new HDR Mastery class is now available on DVD! I know, it's just in time for the holiday season :-) You can thank Jeremy at xTrain for all the delays (I'm more pissed off about the situation than you can possibly imagine and it's the only reason I don't have plans for any future classes with xTrain).

The DVD covers the techniques I use to create many of the images I post on this site. If you've ever seen an image that resembles an illustration more than a photograph, then you were looking at an HDR image. It's also possible an image that looks more like a straight photograph as well. This DVD would be useful for images where:

1. Shadow detail is overly important
2. The scene contains a wide brightness range (beyond what can be captured in a single shot)
3. You'd like to exaggerate textures and other fine details
4. A scene looks overly busy and you'd to produce a unique look to the image

There are 4 sections to this DVD course:

• Shooting for HDR
• Merging Exposures
• Processing HDR Files
• Enhancement in Photoshop!

I'm sure the question will come up, so I thought I'd answer it here: I do not offer any special discounts for people who have taken the on-line version of this class. Why? Because I don't have a list of those people and don't care to maintain a system of keeping track of them since it would distract me from spending time developing new techniques and going out shooting. You could check with xTrain... they might have such a program set up, but I haven't heard anything to indicate that they do.

Manhattan Skyline at Night

I took the photograph above from Jay Maisel's rooftop while attending his workshop. The image was cropped and processed in Adobe Camera Raw. The main thing I did was to bring up the Fill Light slider and Blacks slider to brighten the buildings while maintaining an area of black within the image.

Heading Back to Florida

I'm heading back to Florida after spending a week in New York. I'll be parked in Titusville until the end of the month and then I might start heading further South.

Exploring New York City

I snuck up to New York city on Saturday and have been attending Jay Maisel's Photography Workshop all week. The class has been running from 8:30am until 10pm each night and has been great. I'll be heading back to Florida on Saturday.

The photograph above was taken a block or so from Jay's place. I was drawn to dirty Santa outfit that was in basket and loved that it was the only color in the shot. This image has had minimal processing. I mainly adjusted the Black slider in Adobe Camera Raw to make sure there was a small area of solid black in the image.

More Wine Country

Here's another photograph I took while visiting Northern California. In this shot I'm standing on the end of the trailer that grapes are transported in. The two guys look over the grapes as they are added to the trailer and pick out any leaves and other undesirable stuff.

I just used lightroom to process this image using not much of anything fancy.

More Moscow

This is a photograph I took at a Russian sculpture garden that is associated with a large museum in Moscow. The image was processed purely in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

Moscow?

I bet you'd never be able to tell that this photograph was taken in Moscow. I liked the scene because the amount of space between the vertical lines increases rather evenly as you move from right to left.