edorayPhotography

3D_Illuminated_Kobe_2007 from Inoue_k3D on Vimeo.

Sometimes you've just gotta get the blues. This was taken right after the sun had gone down on a completely clear day. The blues were being reflected everywhere from the rich colors in the sky. I metered against the light to bring out it's highlights, letting the shadows fall where they may, causing the wall to disappear into complete blackness, but allowing the sky's colors to show through.

The blues tells a story. Every line of the blues has a meaning.
John Lee Hooker

“The blues ain't nothing but a good man feelin' bad”
Leon Redbone

Urban Xbox 360 Gaming from UrbanXbox on Vimeo.

Extremely interesting view of a slice of cultural traffic, using some very exciting new technologies.

This could change the way we allow our cities to grow. A must watch.

The show that the video is taken from will air on August 10 on the BBC One at 9pm and BBC Two at 10pm, if you're lucky enough to get these stations.

Would you like to see Abu Dhabi in 2030? You could wait, then get a plane ticket, or you can watch a video of their master plan here.

Plan Abu Dhabi 2030 from squintopera on Vimeo

OK, I know, this is a photo blog, but you gotta see this video. Follow the story closely and if you don't end up crying with joy, your heart must have frozen over. This is humanity at it's best. Maybe this could only have happened in the 60's, when people knew how to be people and loved animals without restrictions, and didn't mind showing others how they felt. You might end up saddened that, after 1974, they never saw Christian again, but then that was because he had returned to the wild, completely and had his own course to follow. But I'm sure he'll remember, to his last days, the time he had with these two humans.

This video is really something to see. Incredible use of 3D modeling and airborn 3D scanning. Rather than watch it in low res here on my site, you can move your mouse over the video and then click on the HD icon on the right-hand side to view it on Vimeo in High Definition, with a better explanation of what you're seeing.

Enjoy!

A Virtual Stonehenge Landscape from Wessex Archaeology on Vimeo

I noticed this seed pod about to explode, while on a walk through Balboa Park recently, but the lighting was poor. So I added a bit of off camera flash (1 meter away with the lowest power setting), and it was just enough to bring out the richness in the colors and light pattern. You wouldn't want to flood the scene with light, but just add a touch to highlight the explosion ;)

Geography in Second Life: Neogeography from digitalurban on Vimeo

An HDR image created from 3 separate images, taken 2-stops apart (one with the correct exposure, one 2 stops under and one 2 stops over), and then tonemapped in Photomatrix.

These columns are typical of the architecture used in Balboa Park. The colors and shapes are a great source for photographs.

My friend Wazari mentioned in a post below that I don't take photographs of people often enough, so here's another. Shot last night, and when I say that this is a 'Character' portrait, I mean it. I happened to find him in front of the Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park, so as we were talking he was weaving a tale of intrigue about his earlier days as a Admiral in the Japanese Navy. I was pretty sure, if we'd been standing in front of the Malaysian Museum, he'd have told me of his youth spend as the son of the President of Malaysia. Good thing we weren't standing in front of Victoria's Secret, because I can't picture him in pantie hose ;)

He was a character for sure, but he did say something that really struck me. He said cameras were only capable of capturing light. Which is something I always think about. But after he said that, he told me that I could photograph him if I'd only take his light, and not his soul.

I used a strobe about 3 meters behind him at shoulder lever, with a +1 setting, and another 1 meter in front of him about knee high aiming up, at a -2 setting.

Getting the most out of natural light is something even strobe purist should strive for. Even with my 3 off-camera flash units at the ready, when this opportunity came up, I had to quickly grab it. It only lasted a few seconds.


Pure unadulterated, natural light coming through the trees is obviously some of the best lighting you can have. The problem is bending it to fit your needs, or at the least, catching it at the only second that it's perfect. Strobe purist might want to control things a bit more than this, and of course they can, but the color of natural light cannot be duplicated with flash.

Sometimes it's nice to catch a moment in time without the usual smiles that photographers want to force on their subjects. Deeper, darker moods are much harder to choreograph and capture, and willing subjects, with this capibility, harder to find. But with the right person, place and proper mood, these photos can say a lot more.

Of course, along with a moodier subject comes the necessity to create a moodier atmosphere. But with the proper lighting, setting etc, it can be done. The arches of Balboa Park and the colors of the walls and railings help to get a somber mood going. Hopefully it comes through.

Fallingwater, also known as the Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr. Residence, is a house designed by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1935 in rural southwestern Pennsylvania, 50 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, and is part of the Pittsburgh Metro Area. The house was built partly over a waterfall in Bear Run at Rural Route 1 in the Mill Run section of Stewart Township, Fayette County, Pennsylvania, in the Laurel Highlands of the Allegheny Mountains.

Hailed by TIME magazine shortly after its completion as Wright's "most beautiful job," the home inspired Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead, and is listed among Smithsonian magazine's Life List of 28 places "to visit before ...it's too late." Fallingwater was featured in Bob Vila's A&E Network production, Guide to Historic Homes of America.
The above gratefully taken from Wikipedia

But then Cristóbal Vila has created this incredible computer animation of the house. Trust me on this, you'll love it. State of the art animation work.

Fallingwater from Cristóbal Vila on Vimeo

You can find out more about Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater here.

If you have a center mouse wheel, try clicking on the image to the left, and then scrolling your wheel up or down. If you've scrolled up and increased the size of the image, you can then click and grab the image and move it around within the window.

As my friend Wazari (whose photographs are in the slideshow to the right), the bokeh, or the area that is out of focus in a photography taken at a wide open aperture, is a very important part of a photo. It sets off the subject.

What can I say. I was completely surprised, when I showed up thinking I was attending the wedding anniversary of two of my best friends, only to find out it was a birthday party for me, with 28 of my good friends showing up on a Sunday evening. It was a very special night that I'll never forget. Thank you all for making it so special.

Here's to the hosts, Ernst & Magaly Schmid. I love you guys.

A very special night with my friends. Thank you all so much for a great evening together. This video was made by Farshad, using some of the things we discussed in our class on Creating Video. He used Microsoft MovieMaker, and finished it and uploaded it within hours of our evening together. Thanks Farshad.

Sometimes it's fun just to take a photo and play with it in Photoshop. Here I just copied the original layer, then added a filter layer for B&W and masked back in the cap. Simple to do, but it's value as a photo remain to be seen. Fun though.

The importance of borders. I really like a border around my photos. Afterall, we usually hang our paintings with a frame, and very few works of art are on the walls of our museums without a frame. So then, why do most people post there photos without a border (or frame). Maybe a bit too much work. Well, macros and actions to the rescue. I frame all my photos, and I post a lot of photos, but all of them with frames. I just create actions to do it. But I leave the color of the frame for me to set, which I do by noticing what colors in the photo would best draw a viewer in. Sometimes it's a small splotch of color somewhere in the photo, while others it's the main color theme of the photo itself. So as a last step in my photoshop action, I'll select a color from the photo and apply it as the color for the frame.
This photo is an example of an otherwise ordinary photo, that was enhanced by the frame. Give it a try in whatever post production photo program you use and see if it doesn't set your photos off a little better (especially against Flickr's white background).

Take care and enjoy your shooting.

One more railing shot in Balboa Park. I took 5 photos for this one, all stabilized on a tripod, ranging from 4 stops under to 4 stops over. Brings out the rich color contrasts in the cement and the tonal changes in the bars.

I always try to use either the first 3 hours of morning sun or the corresponding evening sun, to take advantage of the shadows and the rich color of light. I see so many people snapping photos at noon. Especially in the case of portraits. That high sun will usually cause unwanted effects. At noon I use a flash, which might seem counterintuitive, but it'll wash out the harsh shadows that exaggerate wrinkles. At the least, try to find a shady spot to photograph your friends. They'll be glad you did.

Decided to try some of the railings in HDR. Every new type of photo add a new challenge with HDR. Here the tone mapping was especially tricky. Easy to over saturate.

A shot from the same area as the one below, but I left it in color.

Still exploring HDR, but now with a B&W image. There's great tonal range in a B&W image to work with, so once again take at least 3 images of any great image you see and give it a try. Photoshop has some very nice HDR capabilities or you can use Photomatrix. Most people like Photomatrix better, but there are some really nice features buried deep within Photoshop.

I love these special finds, when the light is just right. Amazing how many people walked by, seemingly unaware of this light gem. Oh well, their loss, my gain. Stay aware of everything around you. There's beauty everywhere, if you bother to notice.

I'll get it eventually ;) For those that don't understand HDR; it's basically a layering of 2 or more photos (usually an odd number), and then tonemapped to bring out the lightest and darkest components of the image. So, you start with a well exposed image, then take another a couple of stops under-exposed and one a couple of stops over-exposed. When they're merged together, you can map the tones to bring out the rich darks of the under-exposed image, and the high lites from the over-exposed image. Good results are hard to achieve, but like everything in photography, a lot of practice pays off eventually.

This is the pot that I discovered nearly a year ago, neglected and unnoticed out behind a museum in Balboa Park. I took 5 images of this scene, all with a 2 f-stop difference, using a tripod to stead the images, and then tone-mapped them in Photomatrix Pro.

This is the first photo I took of it, taken during the middle of winter, with the sun very low in the south (helping to create the background).

Took 3 images, one with the correct exposure, one 2 f-stops over and one 2 f-stops under, then tone-mapped them in Photomatrix Pro, bringing out the rich dark tones of the under-exposed image, and the highlights of the over-exposed one.

This is the daughter of one of the students in my photography class, demonstrating off camera flash. One is situated just behind her for the backglow to her hair, while another is just off camera to the left. The photo was actually taken by the mother, not me. I was busy setting up the flash effects.

Mixing natural lighting with strobes, to fill in the shadows while preserving the skin tones. Had one strobe bounced off the wall behind the model, with another filling in the shadows from the natural ambient light from the indirect sun.










For this one, I cranked up both the off-camera flash left and the flash behind the model, washing out the background a bit too much, so I had to do some work in Photoshop it get the skin tones back to normal.











Backed off the flash units a bit, creating a fairly well balanced background.

Me studying the flower (as usual) and Ernst looking at the camera (also as usual ;) Thought it was a nice pic.

We had a photo workshop the other day and spent a little time learning the ins and outs of lighting. Basically a simple setup of one softbox just off to the right of the subjects, and flash just behind the subjects to whiten the background. An on board flash triggered both and these are the results.