Hiphopsideproject

One of my 27 things is to master the art of HDR photography manipulation. If you’ve never heard of HDR photography before, let me divulge the little I know on the subject…

HDR stands for ‘High Dynamic Range’ and is an out of camera processing method to produce richly saturated, highly contrasted images that better represent the real life lighting of the scene. The usual method of achieving this is by layering several differently exposed versions of the same image and tone mapping the image until you get the desired result. Some of these can look quite garish (and sort of like they came from 1990s deviantart portfolios), but there are some really, really pretty results in quite a few of the more subtle examples.

I’m going to be having a go at this when I can afford the tone mapping software that’s required, unfortunately it’s not something that can be done purely in photoshop.. boo! Here’re a few of my favourite examples of HDR photography, oh and, you should check out this blog, HDR Spotting, where there are daily (amazing) examples of HDR photos.

Really loving this editorial by Miles Aldridge for Vogue Italia. The cats, obviously, make me adore it, but I’m also drawn to the distinct colour schemes in each photo.

Bramble and Pumpkin, image adjusted using the light leak tutorial that Katie (whatkatiedoes.net) posted a couple of months ago. Neat little effect, huh? Think I might start investigating more photoshop techniques. Yup.

Some photos I took of the exterior of the Glasgow School of Art the other weekend. I didn’t do the inside tour, it was 9 bastarding pounds :O Maybe next time.

(click the images to see them larger)

(Apparently Glasgow can look like San Francisco in the sunshine)

To keep the blog ticking over in this busy period, here’s a draft I’ve had for a while. Enjoy!

So, my weapon of choice (uuum… what’s the term for camera? you know, like an axe is a guitar?… anyway) is a canon 400D (that’s XTi to some). And whilst I love love love it for all it’s worth, I do love my lomography and vignettes. Sooo I once saw this tutorial on how to make your DSLR into a pinhole. Nifty, thought I! So here we go!

Here’s your ingredients

1 DSLR camera (or, a camera with convertable lenses)
1 spare body cap (don’t use the one that you actually use, cos we’re gunna drill holes and shit)
Thin aluminium or thick tin foil

Here’s the tools you’ll need

Coarse sandpaper (try 20 or 40 grade)
Dremel/hand held drill/power drill
Thin needle
black marker
electrical tape (darkest colour you can find)

First things first, you want to sand off the name from the body cap. There’s no real reasoning to this, other than it gives you a nicer flat surface and looks tonnes neater with the finished lens. Use you rough sandpaper, or one of your dremel attachments, then finish with a finer grade.

Then, drill a hole through the very centre of the body cap, quite a small hole is best! On the inside of the body cap, over the top of the hole, stick your thin aluminium/tin foil using the black electrical tape. Through the centre of the hole, and the aluminium, use the finest needle you have to poke a tiny little hole. TADA! You’re done.

Here’re some photos I took using the said pinhole lens, have fun playing with you camera settings for this one! Long shutter speeds and a tripod are most definitely your friends. I also really like the dirt spots, but they also make me feel like a bad camera mother.