247 - Cobweb Summer



Around noon I had to fetch something from the basement, and turning to the window facing east-south-east, I saw the cobwebs behind the window illuminated, interspersed with fallen rose petals. I knew I didn’t have much time, ran, fetched the camera, found the contrast impossible to cope with, ran again, fetched the tripod and, well, here we are with another HDR image from seven bracketed exposures.

The approach was different this time. I used two different exposures as layers and an HDR image tone-mapped with Photomatix as base, duplicated some layers and threw in some blending modes and a mask.

Basically, the idea was to map with Photomatix to an extremely flat image with not much light smoothing, an image that would hold maximum detail everywhere, and then use the other layers to modulate this detail base in different blending modes and opacities. There are endless possibilities and the result is somewhat random. Effectively I used what finally looked good.

I had not known Lambchop until last fall when I saw them in Vienna’s “Konzerthaus”. Well, I guess you have arrived at respectability once you play there 🙂

The Song of the Day, “The New Cobweb Summer” is from their 2002 album “Is A Woman”.


There are 6 comments

pnfphotography   (2007-06-17)

I like your eye and how it sees the beauty in everyday things. The HDR work is very nice I have read a little on it. Very nice outcome here and great song to go with.

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andreas   (2007-06-17)

I'm glad you like it. Actually I myself was amazed at how well this process turned out. It is not very controlled yet, but I'll definitely do more along these lines: using a flat HDR base with maximized local contrast and overlaying that with some of the original exposures. It gives the detail of HDR, but keeps more to a natural look than pure HDR tone-mapping.

Thanks

Andreas

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Ted Byrne   (2007-06-20)

I like the way the portable light is a visual title for the image. After all... it is about portable light, right? But I have to admit, I'd never thought about self titling images before (and I shall also admit that may not have been your intent... but take credit for it anyway... it's a powerful idea).

And now I'm wondering if I could pull that off. Hmmmm...

Oh the image? The color palette alone makes it wonderful. And it is not alone. You deal well with complexity.

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andreas   (2007-06-20)

I could say that you see more than there was to it, but otoh the reality of an image is not what it depicts but what, depicting, it has come to be. In this light, who am I to disagree?

A self-titling image? I would never have known, but, yes, and it's fairly typical that you recognized 🙂

Andreas

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John DeMott   (2007-06-20)

This is one of your very finest shots, Andreas. The portable light is such an utterly unremarkable everyday object and yet it is the perfect subject to anchor this shot because...on the other side of the dirty pane of glass is a completely fantastic mix of light and color looking something like a newly discovered nebula viewed by the Hubble space telescope. Perhaps you should title it Cobweb Nebula. The combination of the rose and blue colors with the extreme contrast of highlight and shadow are beautiful. The framing of the shot with the window frame works very well indeed. Great shot!

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mcmurma   (2007-06-26)

This is an astounding image. I really like the way it all comes together. It's so commonplace, but yet so cool looking it commands attention.

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