Toyed with car photography today

[Nuffles]

So I'm a student studying photography, film + video and Philosophy at the moment and dabble in paid shoots as well (parties, raves, birthdays, gigs - that sort of thing). Today I decided to go and shoot some actually nice shots of Aristotle. I shot some HDR too, but they'll come later This is the first time I've really done any car photography or proper HDR work so these aren't the best but I will get better as I shoot more. I introduce my car, Aristotle, too The 40 year old paintwork comes out surprisingly well in sunlight when photographed, although there are quite a few areas that could do with a respray. This location is a few minutes drive from where I live






Then I started doing some combining for HDR. Sorry about the Photomatix watermarks I'm going about aquiring the full version at the moment so I can generate proper images without watermarks.




Annnd then I started cranking the HDR up to max :twisted:






Obviously the more extreme HDR isn't to everyone's tastes but it was more to experiment with how far I could push the program more than anything. Any professional use of HDR that I might use would be very subtle and would mainly focus on even exposure across the frame rather than creating surreal effects.

[sgray]

I don't know what HDR is but it looks a nice car, and I love the name

[alanworland]

Aristotle looks good, but I think HDR works best when you don't know its been applied! (just my opinion)

[bmcecosse]

Best to avoid poles/overhead wires etc in the pictures!

[Nuffles]

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, and basically entails you taking 3 photos of the same scene (ideally from a tripod, although Photoshop and Photomatix both have auto-align if you hand hold it) but one underexposed, one exposed normally, and one overexposed. The under exposed shot holds detail in the highlights, the evenly exposed shot in the mid tones, and the over exposed shot holds detail in the shadows. When you used a program like Photomatix to combine the three images and tone map them, you get a resulting image with much higher dynamic range (taking detail from much wider along the exposure scale than one shot can possibly achieve). With the first images with watermarks you can see the effect is quite subtle - the hedge has more detail in it, as does the paintwork and reflections in it, along with a well-exposed sky which is hard to achieve under normal shooting. As the tone mapping gets more extreme the tones are dragged closer together and the shadows become even lighter and the highlights darker and the image gets steadily more surreal. There's a fine line between just right and too much but it's always fun experimenting.

The car does need some work. I've got quite a list of things to do once I've been paid/sold my Land Rover including Halogen headlights (thankfully it's already been converted to an alternator and negative earth), replacing the nearside front hub bearings, installing some sort of rear light for reversing at night and most importantly some welding to the rear off side sill for the MOT. It's going to be a rolling project but it's an awesome little car for the 750 I paid for him. I've already replaced one of the near side front brake calipers and sorted out a pretty good CD player/speakers/small sub for some chooons, taken the razor sharp headlight 'eyebrows' off and replaced a few bulbs.

[bmcecosse]

Well done removing the lethal pedestrian choppers!

[limegreen]

these photographs are very nice - HDR-wise, I think you could crank the saturation up a bit to give them more vibrancy.
check these out:
http://exxx2005.deviantart.com/art/suba ... 3-79159318
http://exxx2005.deviantart.com/art/Solb ... -161475722

(: I do like HDR.

[Nuffles]

these photographs are very nice - HDR-wise, I think you could crank the saturation up a bit to give them more vibrancy.
check these out:
http://exxx2005.deviantart.com/art/suba ... 3-79159318
http://exxx2005.deviantart.com/art/Solb ... -161475722

(: I do like HDR.

They're both pseudo-HDRs, and although they're pretty visually stunning they're simply different exposures from the same RAW, rather than true HDR. Beautiful to look at all the same though, and impossible to achieve through 'proper' HDR techniques.

[limegreen]

these photographs are very nice - HDR-wise, I think you could crank the saturation up a bit to give them more vibrancy.
check these out:
http://exxx2005.deviantart.com/art/suba ... 3-79159318
http://exxx2005.deviantart.com/art/Solb ... -161475722

(: I do like HDR.

They're both pseudo-HDRs, and although they're pretty visually stunning they're simply different exposures from the same RAW, rather than true HDR. Beautiful to look at all the same though, and impossible to achieve through 'proper' HDR techniques.

This is true, as the multiple exposure isn't exactly easy to get with a fast moving rally car. (: I still see it as HDR, even though the 'multiple exposures' are taken from the same RAW.
I've been using photoshop recently to try combining images, but as I usually photograph animals, and Rose isn't parked in a very photogenic place at the moment, I've been having to play with pseudo-HDR.

[stephenpolhill]

Some really interesting pictures there! Where abouts in the UK are you, it looks a familiar landscape for some reason