So, there was these little paperbag-like seed pods resting inside of the cactus stems. "Interesting", I thought, but there's something about the combination of cholla (choy-ya) cactus spines, the wind, and my face that wouldn't work for me. So instead of trying a macro I went with an HDR and tried bracketing. C&C appreciated.
that's quite a thicket of chawla you got there... the hdr seems to work pretty well balancing out the shadows. love the title. :thumbup:
I think it's amazing that looking into the confusion, that nothing is touching or growing against each other.
I'm still waiting to see the photo of the photographer who decided that he'd try to get his macro shots of the cholla cactus, all the same! I am glad to hear you will NOT be the one!! Good choice. Good choice on the HDR, too, which does not look like one to me at all! In how far is this one strikingly different from a "normal" photo you could take of that cactus?
You'd be talking about my friend, "Meatball." It's not that remarkable a shot other than showing parts that would usually go too light or dark in a normal shot. I wanted to try 'bracketing.' As far as a 'properly exposed' photo, here's about what I usually come up with; IMO, the shot has portions that are too light and dark. The following is -1; Typically I would like to work with this. I'd lighten up the dark spots and keep the highlights the same--too much work with uneven results (although I've been having better luck using RAW). This one is +1; And it brings out the dark areas pretty good. Although I worked with RAW on the HDR, I didn't adjust anything but the orientation- The white balance is on 'cloudy', which I prefer to shoot with all the time (learned this from a National Geographic photographer). for convenience, here's the HDR again; I made as little adjustment in Photomatix as possible to the tiff files and saved the result as tiff. In CS2 I made minimal adjustment on levels and curves- saved the file and resized. With the reduced size, I copied the shot to a new layer and used the sharpen filter, then reduced the opacity to about 60% (to try to take care of my over-sharpening problem). Flattened and... At worst, I figure it can be used eventually in my Cactus Guide page as a 'document' photo showing the stem structure in a month or two when I expand it; http://mojavedesert.net/cactus/silver-cholla.html In relation to the windy conditions, and having to shoot between gusts and keeping all the needles lined up in the HDR and producing a natural looking shot, well, I've achieved a solid position at the top of the bell curve (neither real good or real bad). :thumbup: -short story made long.
Damn Cholla! Nice to look at but DAMN keep your distance, my butt hurts just thinking about the time I backed into one almost 3 years ago. Good job using the HDR, by showing the "proper" exposure shots, you can really tell the difference HDR can make. It's not always such a grand scale editing technique that can make a shot look outer worldly, it can also be subtle and show what your eyes actually see.
Thanks. I actually caught a spine in the calf backing up after the shot. I move pretty slow in the cactus patches as getting stuck happens quite a bit, but not enough to deter me. A multi-tool survival knife is a necessity to carry- and it looks so-cool!
