First assignment completed

Today I helped a client hang my first photo assignment on the wall. It is a six foot wide (1.8m) by 2 foot high (0.6m) print on stretched canvas in black and white.

The photo is located in the reception area of an Interior Design firm named The CHIL design group in Vancouver. They specialize in Resorts, Hotels and high end residential design. The owner was looking for an image that gave a strong feel for the Pacific North West, and when he saw my book gave me a commission to produce a photo for the reception area.

I am very pleased with the results.

In the Beginning there was HDR

HDR today - From my current project about Cape Roger Curtis

Gustav Le Gray - HDR in the Beginning - The Brick in the moon

I discovered an interesting fact today. HDR was first used in the 1850's by a photographer called Gustav Le Gray who was frustrated by the fact that the sky was always rendered white in his photos.

His problem was that the light sensitive material he used was highly sensitive to blue and kept overexposing the sky when he got the exposure right for the foreground. His solution was simple and it turns out timeless.

He made two exposures, one for the foreground and one for the sky and then combined them in the darkroom on the final print. (see the example of his work in the image above). It was called combination printing at the time.

I do exactly the same with my digital camera today in my landscapes, making on average three exposures. One each for the foreground, middleground and sky. I do this because the dynamic range of a digital sensor is fairly limited and cannot get close to seeing a scene as the human eye does. So if the the sky is correctly exposed the foreground is black and if the foreground is correctly exposed then the sky is blown out. Afterwards I layer and combine the images in photoshop with masks. There are dedicated softwares out there that will combine the images for you into a single image. I do not use them because I enjoy the dodging and burning in photoshop with the creative control it gives me. It reminds me of the darkroom. I hate learning new software anyway.