Photos - Mike Cohen

HDR Image of the day

April 4, 2008 by Mike Cohen

I tried a few more HDR images this evening, this time trying for a more subtle effect. My new tripod, a $30 Dynex, makes it a lot easier to align my pictures accurately.

I took a few more pictures for HDR processing tonight. This time I used my new tripod, which is a lot more stable & solid than my old 48″ tripod (which I just sold), so I was able to position the shots more accurately.

You can see the rest of them at my HDR set at Flickr.

I also posted a screencast demonstrating how I produce HDR images at techblast.tv.

Mini Photo Walk

March 29, 2008 by Mike Cohen

Today I took a walk around the condo, photographing the best gardens, which I used to create a gallery at the condo’s web site. I also created a view where people can rate each photo and see the highest rated photos.

HDR Photo of the day

March 28, 2008 by Mike Cohen

I’ve been doing more experimentation with HDR processing. I really like the glow effect I got in this one. Since Aperture 2.1 now supports editing plugins, it would be great if Photomatix made a tone mapping & merge to HDR plugin for Aperture, so I wouldn’t have to export to Photoshop as I do now.

My latest HDR

March 27, 2008 by Mike Cohen

I created this one from 3 exposures at -2.0, 0, and +2.0EV, with Photomatix tone mapping plugin for Photoshop CS3.

More HDR photos

March 24, 2008 by Mike Cohen

I’ve been trying out more HDR processing using the Photomatix tone mapping plugin in Photoshop.

Here’s one I took tonight, using 5 exposures at -2.0, -1.0, 0, +1.0, and +2.0EV.

Here’s one I took a few days ago, using only 3 exposures at -2.0, 0, and +2.0EV.

Easter pic of the day

March 23, 2008 by Mike Cohen

Here’s the Easter basket I got today.

Nikon VR lenses are great

March 17, 2008 by Mike Cohen

I wanted to take pictures of tonight’s sunset, but it was already getting late and it was pretty dark. I grabbed the camera and went out without a tripod. I managed to take this fairly passable shot with my new 55-200mm VR lens at 2.2 seconds just by resting the camera against the building.

HDR with Photomatix plugin

March 16, 2008 by Mike Cohen

Here’s an HDR image I created from three raw images. I imported them into Photoshop, used the ‘Merge to HDR’ automation, and adjusted the color, luminance & contrast with the Photomatix tone mapping plugin. The flowers moved slightly between the shots, resulting in some ghosting around the edges.

Tone Mapping

March 16, 2008 by Mike Cohen

I bought the Tone Mapping plugin for Photoshop from Photomatix, which lets me do some amazing enhancements to my raw images. It takes a 16-bit per channel RGB image and lets you enhance the contrast, color saturation, and luminance range. The effect can be intense with a single raw image, but with a merged HDR image the results are simply stunning.

Here’s what I was able to do with a picture I took a few days ago using only a single raw image.

Before

After