During the blistering winter storms along the east coast, the left coast was filled with sunlight and warmth.  I was watching my twitter feed (@Onephotonerd) when @DaleChumbley chimes in with the idea to go on a photowalk.  Here are some of the shots from our photowalk:

My Fav:

When I say that G2 Outdoor Living is Baller Status, I really mean that these guys know what they are doing.  These are the best outdoor landscapers out there, second to none.  The thing that makes G2 Outdoor Living so great is that Garrett puts his heart into every project – large or small.  In fact, that is how I met G2 (from one of his past projects). Now we are really good friends and he hooks me up with fun jobs like this.  Take a look at the fun I get to have: Oh and by the way… Garrett and I met this cool girl that went by the nickname of “Tex” and we began to rap (T-Pain style).  Check out her phat trax here.

So I wanted to take a little time to explain a bit of my workflow for processing an HDR image.

First, I take up to 9 different exposures of a scene.  I definitely use a tripod if I have a choice.  I have been able to do some handheld but feel much more comfortable using a tripod.

Here are the 9 different exposures that are 1 stop of difference between each shot (ranging from 1/40 sec. to 8 sec. exposures:

I select all nine images and take them into Photomatix Pro 3.1.  Photoshop CAN do HDRs but they aren’t well known for it.  Frankly, Photomatix had the best reviews!  You don’t need 9 images and in fact for this shot 9 images is a bit overkill.  The rule of thumb is if the scene is high in contrasting tones (both really bright highlights and really dark shadows) then you need MAYBE up to 9 and for most scenes you can probably use 3 or even 2.  When I took this one, I didn’t have a whole lot of time to set things up so I just quickly popped off 9 and said, “I’ll look at it later… better to have too many than too few.”   I used all 9 and was pleased.

After taking it in to Photomatix Pro, this is what it looked like before I did tonemapping:

Right now, the image is in 32-bit color depth.  This means that after combining all 9 images together there are certain shades of color that cannot be shown on a normal 16-bit monitor.  Until we all upgrade and get these fancier-more expensive monitors we have to push and squeeze the shades of color until they all fit in a 16-bit color space.  This process is called tonemapping.

Here is what it looks like after tonemapping:

The image is now tonemapped and ready to take back in to Adobe Lightroom.  In lightroom I add some contrast, deepen the blacks, and bring up the exposure slightly.  This is a part of the “David Martschinske” look and things from here on out can all be done according to your personal taste.  This is what it looks like after I applied the previously-mentioned changes:

As you can see HDR photography can be fun!  I love doing it for still as well as moving objects.

Bobby Wood is selling his house! His Realtor, Steve Wertz of Keller-Williams commissioned me to do the real estate photos after having viewed my previous real estate post (which was my first attempt at realty photos). After agreeing upon a price, I set out to take pictures on the next sunny day at 6:30 in the morning in order to get some cool light on the east side of the house. I then stayed and did the indoor shots though the afternoon while eating food with the family. Then as the day was ending I snapped some great photos of the west-facing side of the house. All in all, Bobby was happy with the pictures which is what matters most to me!

Anyways, if you are interested in buying this house for $895,000 then I will give you an SBU by Focus Designs. The Self Balancing Unicycle retails for $1,890.

Here are a few of my fav’s (Most of which are done in HDR), click on the photo for an extended gallery:

So basically, that is the house, plus you would get this:

Garret Hergert, AKA: Man Candy of G2 Outdoor Living asked if I would take some photos of his work at US Digital for an upcoming Home and Garden Show at the Clark County Event Center for Friday, April 24-26, 2009.  While working at US Digital, I was able to see this going up and it pretty much rocks to see it finally in place.

Here is the setup for the above shot

Then later on, I noticed Mike Miller with Dare to Live and the whole Common Ground crew (the guys that put on things like The Carpenter’s Garage and The Fight of Your Life to name a few) were having their staff meeting outside… Cheaters!

The above landscaping photos were all done in HDR (minus the last two posted) and processed in photomatix, lightroom and photoshop using some of the techniques I’ve been learning from Stuckincustoms.

Hmm… As I sat in my office chair pondering the mountains of money that I was not making, it suddenly dawned on me… they really ARE putting less cream filling in Twinkies these days (JERKS!!!)… AND I need to get in the game and do some other forms of photography that I had previously not tried out.  On a more serious note… I seriously think we need to do something about this Twinkie issue – It’s madness.

I tried my hand at HDR photography for ALL of the indoor shots and NONE of the outdoor shots.  Click on the link to see my flickr set with more photos.

I wanna cook on that!

I would not have had detail in the windows or shadows without taking 3 exposures here!

I see that lawn and I see a PARTY!!!

So here are a few more attempts at HDR Photography (High Dynamic Range).  I’ve put the fully combined and tone mapped  image along with the zero or “middle” exposure so you can see just how much detail you lose in the high and low exposure points.

This is Verto

So I thought I would keep you all up to speed on a few new things I have been trying.  A buddy of mine, Dale Chumbley has got me interested in the idea of the architecture photography.  I pondered weather or not I wanted to invest time in photographing buildings for realtors or people and decided that I should at least give it a shot!  Knowing that I would have to improve my HDR photography skills from zero to something at least resembling cool, I went on a photo walk to scout out some cool buildings by my studio.  Here is the first image I popped off.

As you can see this has been heavily manipulated in photomatix pro… COOL software for HDR images.  Most people will tell you its the gold standard for this type of work.

In case you don’t already know, HDR imaging (High Dynamic Range) requires at least 3 exposures in order to pick up detail in all tonal extremes.  I used nine…  Here is a great tutorial on the matter by dav. d photography.