Permanent Artwork for the Martinez Animal Shelter

Last December, Glenn Howell, the Director of the Contra Costa County Animal Services Department approached me with an idea for enhancing the appearance of the Martinez facility. He had seen another facility that had used large photographic prints to enhance the appearance of some of the animal enclosures. He wanted to do something similar with the rabbit enclosure at the end of the gallery in Martinez. After a bit of discussion I pitched to him the idea of mounting 4 large, dye infused, metal prints on the wire mesh sides of the rabbit pen. Glenn loved the idea and despite the fact that it took six months to get it through the county bureaucracy, the task has now been completed and installed.

The concept was to show that rabbits make excellent family pets. We quickly moved away from the idea of just photographing rabbits. We wanted to show people interacting with rabbits in a positive way.

On May 19 I took my studio gear to the shelter to photograph the rabbits and models. Cindy Smith, Volunteer Manager for the shelter, had arranged for a variety of individuals to pose with the rabbits. Over the next 3 hours we photographed many different combinations of rabbits and people. From the hundreds of photos we finally narrowed it down to the final four, that can be seen below.

The final prints were spectacular and the comments glowing. These prints have clearly added a bit of elegance to the main gallery at the Martinez shelter.

If you are interested in seeing the original prints, drop by the shelter at 4800 Imhoff Place in Martinez. While you are there check out all the wonderful animals. You might even find a friend that you must take home with you.

Mark

Click on Image to enlarge

If you'd like to see some of the photographs from the rabbit photo shoot click here.

HDR in Photoshop CS5

A few weeks ago I received my copy of Photoshop CS5. I was excited about some of the new features being offered, including the new Content Aware fill capabilities. However, another area that Adobe was touting was their new HDR (high dynamic range) Pro module. I’d tinkered briefly with HDR in the past but never seriously. Photoshop’s capabilities in prior versions were meager at best, so I was curious to try out the new version.

Two weeks ago I was in Napa Valley with a buddy and we stopped by the Old Bale Grist Mill. I wanted to take a look at it to figure out what time of day would be best to photograph it. It turns out that there is no really good time because it is surrounded by trees and open meadows. The combination of shade and bright light makes photography difficult. I realized that this type of high contrast lighting would be a perfect subject for testing CS5’s HDR Pro module.

I used a 24 to 70 mm zoom lens mounted on a tripod mounted D700 and took a series of raw photographs from +3 EV to –3EV, in one stop increments.



[Click on any image to enlarge it]

The image above is the 0 EV image, or in other words, this is the picture you would get by putting the camera in autoexposure mode and taking a photo. Notice that the sky and foreground are largely burned out. Because I metered the exposure on the building there is good shadow detail, although there is some loss of detail at the bottom of the waterwheel. The thumbnail images show the exposures of all 7 photos.

These 7 images were loaded into Lightroom. Before attempting to process the images I figured I needed to learn how to use the HDR module so I went to NAPP’s (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) Photoshop CS5 Learning Center and clicked on the HDR Pro icon to view an instructional video. Eight minutes and 45 seconds later I was an expert.

Returning to Lightroom I selected the 7 images, Right clicked and selected Edit in >>>Merge to HDR in Photoshop. All 7 images were stacked in layers in one image in the new HDR Module and a HDR image was automatically created. For this image I wanted a realistic look. So after playing with all the sliders I simply selected the Photo realistic preset and clicked OK. The 7 individual images were merged into one HDR image, which opened up in the normal Photoshop screen.



While the HDR image was good it was not yet ready for prime time. I went through my usual routine of sharpening, etc. In this case I knew that I wanted the final image to be Black and White so I used a Black and White adjustment layer to make the conversion. The final step was to correct the perspective of the image using the Transform command (Edit>>>Transform>>>Perspective) to produce the final image shown below. For my first serious try at HDR I was pleased with the image.



While at the grist mill I shot two other sequences; one of the side of the mill featuring the water wheel and one inside the mill showing two old milling stones. In each instance I followed the same process described above; shooting 7 images at 1.0 EV intervals. The image of the waterwheel I converted to an antique sepia tone in Lightroom after creating the HDR image in Photoshop. For the shot of the mill stones I pushed the details up in the HDR module to create a slightly hyper-real appearance.

I’m forced to conclude that Adobe did its homework on CS5. While the HDR Pro module may not be up to the level of Photomatix yet (or maybe it is) I found the interface simple and easy to use.

Mark