All about Psych-K

Metarazzi Photo&Graphics - | Artistic Photography by Jeff Carter

The Spirit Of Boise

Here’s an early morning launch photo of the Spirit Of Boise Balloon.  More to come.  Enjoy!

Metarazzi Photo&Graphics - | Artistic Photography by Jeff Carter

Back To School

This is our son Jack on his first day of school in the first grade. My wife took the photo with her smartphone (same phone I have, Motorola Droid X). I originally posted this on my personal Blog at Pepperfly.com.  Since I did post-edit the photo I figured it qualified to be shown here, too.  :-)  For the photo on Pepperfly.com, I  simply cropped out the kids’ elbows that were standing on either side of him (I maintained the phonecam aspect ratio) and also added a vignette.  For this photo I further sharpened and de-fogged the image a bit.   The built-in phonecam app did a pretty good job capturing the image, and Laurie has been picking up composition tips from me and did a great job filling the frame and adding an interesting tilt.  No, Jack isn’t tired.  The bags under his eyes are a combination of a bit of allergies and his natural grin that has probably stretched as big as he can make it on an exciting day like this.

Metarazzi Photo&Graphics - | Artistic Photography by Jeff Carter

Photo Contest

I’m considering entering one of these photos into the first ever Idaho Farmers Market Week Photo Contest sponsored by the Idaho State Department of Agriculture. Submissions simply must capture the essence of a farmers market.  Photos have to be submitted by August 31st, so I’m likely to go back to a famers market and shoot more frames.  I showed up  late in the morn for these shots and no doubt missed the best opportunities when vendors had more produce and crafts and more local people were buzzing about.

Which one is your fave?

[View with PicLens]

This photo is an HDR version of the vegetable stand photo in the image list above.

Metarazzi Photo&Graphics - | Artistic Photography by Jeff Carter

What is Phi?

Phi is a very magic number.  It’s around us everywhere we look, and even if you’ve heard of it before and remember what it is, unless you’ve been trained to notice it, you probably don’t really even know it’s everywhere around you.

Simply put, phi, a cousin of pi, is considered the “golden ratio.”  Simply explained,  the golden ratio is a mathematical constant whereas the ration of the total of two segments is the the larger segment is the same ration as the larger segment is to the smaller segment.  That ratio is approximately 1.618 to 1.  You have a HDTV with a 16:9 display?  OK, a little margin of error here, but close enough to the golden ratio (why didn’t they make HDTV 16:10?).  Watch this 3 minute video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

You can find lots more stuff on YouTube, Wikipedia, or a Google search will easily explode your brain.  And as your brain scatters out, the gray matter that already spewed out in front of the gray matter just beginning to spew out will spread proportionately to the golden ratio.  OK, enough with the sick phi humor.  ;-)

What’s that got to do with this post?

Well, the perspective in which the banner photograph was taken creates a sense of this golden ratio between the pillars.  The ratio between the space of the first and second pillars compared to the space between the second and third pillars is about 1.618:1, and this sequence keeps occurring to infinity, errrr… or at least to the end of the barn.  ;-)

That’s it?

Well, there’s the phi side of a barn… but I also wanted to share with you my recent exploration into HDR photography.

What is HDR?

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range.  Basically, with the help of specialized software and intricate algorithms, it’s weaving the best pixels from a bracketed set of exposures into a single composite creating a tapestry of a dynamic range of luminance far greater than you can get with digital camera sensors alone.

I see

Of course you do, and you do it much better than the sensor in your digital camera does.  You eyes can see more range of light than a digital sensor.  The light that is interpreted and recorded by the image sensor is only a part of the same light that you remember seeing yourself while you were taking the picture., even it it was perfectly exposed.  Your eyes are able to see more detail in shadows, where your camera sensor may drop that detail and represent it more darker or blacker.  Similarly in highlight areas, your camera sensor may blow out some hot areas and represent it more lighter or whiter.

Well, if you take a correctly exposed shot and an under exposed shot (say by one stop) and another over exposed shot (say by one stop) and blend the very best pixels together from each of these images, you can render more detail, which is a better approximation of what you actually remember seeing with your own eyes at the time you took the shot.

The difference is like broadcast TV signal to an HDTV signal.  Or the sound coming from a transistor radio compared to a hi-fi stereo.  Or your kid’s coloring page on the refrigerator compared to a Monet painting exhibited in a museum.

I was experimenting with an application called Photomatrix.  Looks like it’s gonna cost me about a $100 bucks to get rid of the watermarks.  Done deal.  :-)  This is a quick-n-dirty rendering, so please don’t be to harsh on my unrefined HDR skills, but check out this example:

[View with PicLens]

Metarazzi Photo&Graphics - | Artistic Photography by Jeff Carter

Welcome to Camp AmeriBen!

This gallery is especially for the AmeriBen/IEC Group family visiting this page. I hope you’ll enjoy these lifestyle and perspective photographs of our time at Grayback Gulch during the 6th annual Camp AmeriBen.

I apologize if the photo captions are vague or missing.  I either ran out of juice at the moment or am in the process of getting details about the photo.

Click on individual thumbnail images -or-

[View with PicLens]

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License

You are encouraged to share the link to this webpage, but please do not copy unlicensed images for your personal use.

You may purchase a CD of the full gallery of photos for $20.  A limited license will entitle you to print or share any of the images (e.g., Facebook/email). Web optimized resolution may limit best print format to 7″x5″.

AmeriBen Special

Employees of AmeriBen/IEC Group receive a $50 dollar photo session credit.  Book a session today!

Metarazzi Photo&Graphics - | Artistic Photography by Jeff Carter

Necessity vs. Nice-ity

This is my first attempt at creating an HDR image. The purpose was not to create a mind-blowing pop-out-of-the-screen high dynamic range photo, but in this case the necessity is to correct lighting issues of an incorrectly exposed image.

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To begin with, I was not setup on a tripod and I didn't bracket the shot, meaning that I don't have multiple versions of this exact shot with different exposure values. As you can see, it's very overexposed. Since this was the only shot I took, I had to create my own variations of this image with different exposure adjustments that I could blend together into a final composite.

Metarazzi Photo&Graphics - | Artistic Photography by Jeff Carter

Congrats Katie & Alan!

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Metarazzi Photo&Graphics - | Artistic Photography by Jeff Carter

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Metarazzi Photo&Graphics - | Artistic Photography by Jeff Carter

I want to share more examples of my editing process.  This isn’t a step by step, but just some screen shots with some explanation of what’s going through my mind as I edit.

In the first panel, you see what the shot looks like straight out of the camera (SOOC).  No adjustments have been made.  I take care to make most, if not all, adjustments in the camera before I take the shot.  Often I need to make an exposure adjustment, or bump contrast or vibrance, or even adjust orientation and crop.  Although I have the composition and exposure I intended, there’s still work to be done now that I have the picture out of the camera. Afterall, that’s Metarazzi — picture perfect after the shot.

As you can see in the first panel, the skin tones aren’t very smooth and the wine glass is foggy.  These are the only elements in this shot that I want to make further changes to before beginning my color processing.  Panel #2 shows the changes.

In panels #3 and #4, I’ve applied two different color processes that I developed especially for this gallery.  The really cool thing about the process is that I’ve saved all my steps as an action in Photoshop so that I can quickly apply the process to other images.  In fact, I’m likely to use the process for future work.

The style for panel #3 is inspired by English country. The name I gave to this process, Chelsea” was inspired by a Google Search for prominent London Landmarks, where I discovered about Chelsea Barracks. Shifting the light and colors to create a slight essence of surrealism, the style for panel #4, Paris (update: I’ve changed the style name to “Rêve”), evolved from the Chelsea style and is similarly inspired by French country romance blended with my own dreamy interpretation of impressionism.

Stay tuned for the complete gallery set!  :-)

Metarazzi Photo&Graphics - | Artistic Photography by Jeff Carter