Iris

LaFoto · Mar 15, 2009

Another one from the "Playing with Photomatix HDR"-folder on my computer (I happened to look in there again after more than 1 1/2 years and thought this one turned out quite well, given the fact that it is a tonemapped pic from three differently saved files of the one RAW-"photo").

Makes me long for summer and the colours of spring and summer!

Antarctican · Mar 15, 2009

The iris is such an interesting looking flower, and your treatment of it in this image really makes it pop. Nice!

Michaelaw · Mar 15, 2009

Beautiful.....

roentarre · Mar 15, 2009

The colour is outstandingly beautiful!

bengtb · Mar 16, 2009

Wonderful shot. I really like how the light make the colours shine.

Cool G5 · Mar 16, 2009

Wonderful

LaFoto · Mar 16, 2009

:hugs: to all! Makes me :cheer: to know you like this one, too.
The colours are intensified by the tonemapping, of course. But it has always been a backlit photo ... which added to the colours in the first place, of course.

EricD · Mar 16, 2009

Awesome!! Love the colors in that flower....Nice job!!!!

Al-Wazeer · Mar 17, 2009

really beautiful!

never done HDR photo in my life, is it hard to make one?

LaFoto · Mar 17, 2009

Well, this is not a real and true HDR ... in order to create a true one, I would have needed to take at least 3 different photos (camera must not move from its spot, so using the autobracketing function helps) with three different exposure times - one would overexpose by say one stop, one would be the "middle exposure" and one would underexpose by about one stop (can be one-and-a-half or two, as well).

Later you would merge these three exposures into one photo, which definitely increases your dynamic range in a way the camera could never capture it in one photo alone.

What I did here (back when I played around with the technique just a little): I opened the ONE RAW-file I had created and changed the exposure values in the RAW converter from about 1 1/2 stops too little (underexposed) to about 1 1/2 spots too much (overexposed), saved the three files I created as 16-bit TIFF file, and had a programme called Photomatix merge these three files into one for me.

In a second step in Photomatix I tonemapped the result some more (that sort of fine-tuning is essential), and I might even (don't remember, it's been too long ago) have further worked on the results in Photoshop some more.

So, you see: when you shoot RAW, and you have a programme that does the merging for you (more modern Photoshop versions can do the same, too, but I need Photomatix for it as my version is too old), it is not difficult.

Garbz · Mar 17, 2009

This is great LaFoto. Tonemapped but not visibly overdone like most of the other HDR shots floating around. Love the colours, the green stem makes the flower appear to float.