Matt's Blog
8th March 2010 - HDR: The Photographer’s Secret
How many times have you looked at a landscape photograph and thought “that looks almost unreal” Or “how come my photographs never look like that?” Well the chances are that the images you are looking at have been created using a technique called High Dynamic Range (HDR).
A quick flick through last years successful entries in the Landscape Photographer of the Year Competition – Take a View reveals that it is a technique which is fast becoming commonplace in landscape photography, but what is it and how does it make the images look so amazing?
All cameras have a limit to the range of light intensities that they can record (the dynamic range) and this means that if there is something very bright in the picture (e.g. the sun!) then if you expose the image for this object the rest of the image will be a lot darker – think about your own photographs where the shadows always look a lot darker than they seemed to be at the time. Conversely if you expose for a shadow area, then areas that were a lot lighter than this will be burnt out white. This problem is actually a lot worse since the advent of digital photography, as colour film used to have a very high dynamic range anyway (in fact it still does if you are one of the rare people who still use it!).
What HDR does is to combine several images (usually 3 or 5) taken at different exposures so that there is detail in both the shadows and highlights of an image regardless of the extreme lighting conditions that may have been present when the image was captured.
So isn’t this cheating? Well no not really, because your eyes are so quick at adjusting to light intensities that a well-created HDR image can look much more like the scene you would see if you were there than the single digital image most cameras would capture. However, like all techniques it is a bit overused and some images can look very unrealistic and cartoon-like in character if not handled properly (here are a some examples I’ll let you decide which ones used the technique well, although here’s an example that I really don’t like).
Do I use it? Not yet (hence no image on this blog article!)….at the moment HDR doesn’t really suit the style of images I produce but I wouldn’t rule anything out as I’m quite happy to take advantage of other Photoshop tools to achieve the image I am looking for.
So look carefully at the next stunning landscape image you see….is it HDR?
4th March 2010 - Undiscovered Locations
Despite the fact that I’ve lived in the Brecon Beacons nearly 10 years I’m always finding areas that I’ve never visited before and today was a good example.
I’ve walked a lot of the Brecon Beacons for both photography and leisure purposes and I’ve visited Crickhowell on numerous occasions (primarily to visit the Bear Inn!), in fact that’s where we originally saw our house advertised for sale. However, I’ve never really walked the hills behind Crickhowell and after doing so today I don’t know why. Looking for a new location to capture some images of the Beacons last night I scoured my OS maps and had a quick look on Google Earth (a great landscape photography resource!) and identified this area which appeared to have great views over the rest of the Beacons and would be a good walk – and what a place! A huge frosty plateau from which I could see all the major peaks of the Central and Eastern Brecon Beacons with numerous possibilities for landscape photography.
Of course the weather conspired against me today (as it often does!) and didn’t come out for the image I had planned to capture, and then came out in the wrong place for almost every other shot I tried. However, I have a list of potential locations on the plateau from which I can capture images of a variety of landmarks when the sun is in the right place.
Here is one of Sugar Loaf Mountain which sort of worked.
24th February 2010 - Childhood Memories Reinforced
As you may gather from some of the pictures I’ve just published I’ve recently been to York – and what a fantastic city! The last time I went to York was back in the early ‘80s as part of a school field trip and my memories of the city were (I imagined) somewhat rose-tinted due to the passage of time and the fact that it was a trip without my parents when I was only 13! But no, the city was exactly how I remembered it and I even enjoyed walking around the old city walls with the same enthusiasm.
If you’re looking for a UK city break with lots to do for the kids then you should certainly give it a try. Especially if you have young boys, as the combination of trains (it is home to the National Rail Museum, which is free!), castles and Vikings seems to be irresistible.
Of course, being a family holiday had its usual constraining properties on a true photographic experience, but I still managed to get some useful results. Here’s one of my favourites 
but for some more traditional images see HERE.
11th February 2010 - The Great Outdoors
I love being out in the countryside!
For the last month of so I have been somewhat housebound when it comes to photography. Primarily because of the work involved in being executor of my uncles estate – a role which involves a lot more work than I imagined and very little appreciation from the people who are going to benefit from it – and also because I foolishly let my wife go away for a week to Sierra Leone leaving me and the kids at home!
However, today I had my first day of “freedom” again and I decided to take a trek up to the twin lakes of Llyn y Fan Fawr and Llyn y Fan Fach and their surrounding mountains. The weather was beautiful – clear, a light covering of snow, and crisp – and after 4 hours of walking I felt a lot better. Now all I have to do is work through the images I captured – here’s one for starters (Fan Brycheiniog).
3rd February 2010 - The Best Camera Money Can Buy
Digital photography has its pros and cons, but surely the worst aspect of it is that there is constant pressure from the manufacturers to keep buying newer and supposedly better cameras.
A few years ago I could see the point. My first digital camera had only 4MP and wasn’t an SLR. Then I bought a Canon EOS350D which was a “proper” camera with 8MP that enabled me to use all the lenses I already had. But there was still the annoyance of the 1.6x magnification factor which meant that my favourite lenses were no longer the focal length I expected them to be. So after committing to photography as a serious career option I splashed out on a Canon 5D. Decent build quality, full-frame sensor and 12.8MP gave me everything I wanted. Sure I could have increased resolution but for most of the work I do it is overkill and a waste of disk space.
So what do I buy next? I have just inherited a sizable sum of cash that, although far from life-changing, would allow me to buy any camera I wanted. Canon would have me at least upgrade to the MkII 5D with over 20MP, or maybe I should go for the 1Ds MkIII, or perhaps go the whole hog and get a new digital Hasselblad (40MP anyone?!). However, given that I have a perfectly serviceable camera and all of these models will undoubtedly be superseded again in the next few months what’s the point. The best camera money can buy is the one you use regularly to produce good images, my view would be don’t be tempted by the upgrade unless you really need the new features.
That still leaves some money burning a hole in my pocket and it would be boring to just keep it all in the bank, so what I am going to do is buy all the remaining Canon L-series lenses that I’ve ever wanted. Still about the same price as a new 1Ds but something which will survive most future camera body upgrades when I’m finally tempted by the 100fps, 100MP, 1,000,000 ISO offering from Canon (or Nikon!).