Steven Bourelle Digital Arts

I’m currently going through a faze where I’m pushing my creativity a little more. I’m trying some new things with my photography and walking the fine line of my comfort zone. Some of my experiments are working well and others are stinking the place up. But the key is, I’m trying new things and growing as an artist in the process. This image is a good example of that.

The other day I noticed that the leaves on one of our Lilac bushes had started to change colors. Since the wind was blowing and I couldn’t shoot the leaves outside, I picked a few and brought them into the house to play around with.

I tried a few different closeup ideas but wasn’t satisfied with any of the pictures. I was starting to get frustrated and thought about giving up on this idea. That’s when I picked up one of the leaves and held it to a window. Wow! I was blown away by all the detail that came out . The back lit leaf was exactly what I was looking for.  So I got a roll of Scotch Tape and taped the leaf to the window and started shooting away.  Before I was done, I had taped up three different leaves and tried many different compositions and ideas. Of all the pictures, this one is my favorite. The detail is a little hard to see at this resolution, but in the full resolution image the detail is amazing.

What’s most interesting to me about this experience is that I was able to come up with a way to capture the beauty of this leaf. Now taping a leaf to a window might not be an original idea, I’m sure others have done this before me, but it’s an original idea to me. I’ve always been an outdoor nature photographer, not an indoor one. But by thinking outside of the lines, pushing my comfort zone a little and experimenting with a new idea, I feel my creativity has grown and the possibilities of showing nature’s beauty have grown too.

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Here’s a new black and white image from our trip to Badlands National Park in South Dakota last spring. I’ve been trying to find the name of this formation, but I can’t find it online. If anyone happens to know it’s name, please leave a comment for me. Thanks.

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Yesterday I posted this image of a bighorn sheep that I took in Custer State Park in South Dakota. What’s interesting about this picture is that it’s an HDR. You might be wondering how I made an HDR image of an animal since HDR requires multiple exposures and there’s no way an animal is going to stand still long enough to do that. I actually created the multiple exposures in Lightroom, not with my camera. So I guess you can say it’s not true HDR, but a pseudo HDR.

Here’s how I did it.
Since I shoot everything in RAW I have quite a bit of flexibility with my images. So instead of taking 5 exposures of the bighorn, I only took one. Then I exported 5 different exposures of that image from Lightroom using the Exposure setting under the Develop tab. The first image was exported at -2, the second at -1, then neutral, +1 and +2. All of these exports were done to the straight RAW image. No other post processing was done.

I then imported those 5 images into Dynamic Photo HDR and made the HDR image. Amazingly I didn’t have to make that many adjustments from the default tone map. Just a few adjustments to the brightness and gamma and then I adjusted the light radius, light strength and surface smoothing until I got the results I was looking for.

Here are the five images I exported from Lightroom, beginning with the -2 exposure.

Here’s a comparison of the original image with some post processing and the HDR with some post processing. Click to enlarge the image.

Notice how the sheep in the HDR image looks so much more alive than the other one. It’s all in the eyes. The eyes in the HDR image have a more natural, lively look to them. In the normal image the eyes are kind of muddy and dull. In the HDR there’s also much more detail in the shadowed part of the face and more contrast overall to the horns and fur. I also feel that the HDR image has more of a three dimensional feel to it. The sheep seems to pop out from the background. All in all I feel the HDR image is a huge improvement over the normal one.

So far this is the only wildlife image I’ve tried this technique on, I don’t know why it wouldn’t work in most situations though. I’ve also used this technique on landscape images. Sometimes it works great, other times it just makes a mess. It all depends on the image.

One other note, I used Dynamic Photo HDR in this example, I’m not sure how this would work in other HDR programs. I own Dynamic Photo HDR and Photomatrix. I’ve found that they give very different results with the same images so I use whichever one gives me the results I’m looking for with the image I’m working on.

Give this technique a try. It’s interesting to see how it can improve your images.

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This last spring my wife Lynne and I took a cross country road trip from our home in Wisconsin to my last home in California. On the way back we stopped for a couple days in South Dakota. Our first full day there was spent visiting Mt Rushmore and Custer State Park.

Custer State Park is an amazing place. The wildlife there are very unafraid of people. Bison roam in front of cabins and block traffic along the road. Pronghorn stand within feet of the main roads. And then there were the six Big Horn Sheep camped out on the front lawn of the lodge. This guy was one of the six, he stood there posing for me while took pictures from the truck.

Luckily he was standing where I could get a good shot of him without getting the parking lot behind him in the frame. It’s quite a thrill to be that close to a wild animal and have him not be afraid of you.

Technical Details:
Canon Digital Rebel XTI
Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM
ISO 100
f/5.6 @ 1/500 sec.
Hand held with Image Stabilization turned on.

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