HDR tutorial part 2

I went to sleep really late last night, but the second part of my HDR tutorial is online. This time the theme is preparing your photos in Lightroom and combining them in Photomatix. You can acess the tutorial either from the side menu, or directly here: Using Photomatix Pro

Hope the tutorial is helpful and all feedback and questions are very welcome.

The next part will be about correcting the most common HDR processing problem with the help of Photoshop. But that will be sometime later.

Last moments of sunset in Madrid

As you can see, my luck for days without any clouds stayed with me also in Madrid. For a moment I was thinking of cropping the sky, but I could get myself to remove even the smallest part of that beautiful sunset orange.

Cathedral in Madrid

I like taking similar photos of the same subject at different times of the day. Same with this photo. I already posted a sunset photo, and this one was taken around lunch. The difference in colors is stunning.

Neo-Romanesque crypt

What a place this is. When I first entered, I thought it was endless. The rows of pillars just repeat into the distance. It’s just stunning. And as I was there quite late (around 7 o’clock) it was completely empty. Just me and my camera. It was also a great place for HDR. If you look at the before/after comparison, you will see that the bottom part was quite dark, with the ceiling brightly lit. A perfect example for when to use HDR.

Looking up in the Almudena Cathedral

I think I spend at leas one hour in the Almudena Cathedral. If my friends weren’t waiting for me, it would be many more. It’s a really nice cathedral, with endless possibilities for HDR photos. It’s also a nice example of a very high dynamic range. I went with 6 shots here, from -2 to +3, taken in two series (one -2,0 and +2, the second at -1,+1,+3). But this was still not enough. As you can see in the windows, the light coming from outside is still too strong, so you can’t see any detail in the windows. If I had the Promote Control remote when I took this, I would go at least from -4 to +4.

About this blog

When I was creating the new page, I was searching around for what to use. What theme and what plugins. And each time when I found a site, that had something I like, it was quite hard to find what they are using. So to hopefully help someone in the same situation, I created a page in the about section, where I list information on the used theme and plugins. Maybe one day it will help someone. You can find the page here.

Fountain on the Plaza de Espana

When I was on the top of the Almundena Cathedral in Madrid, I seen this building in the distance. So I had to go and take a photo. I used 6 brackets here, because it was right before sunset, and the sun was shining directly onto the building. So it was so bright, that with the classic three, I had very little detail in the water and the statue.