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The photo-blog of an entirely unknown photographer.
u n d e r e x p o s e d
Up until this morning, this is my most recent photo set. It was just over 2 years ago now that I went to Minnehaha for the first time to do photographs. I wanted to play with long exposures on a tripod, and what better way to do that than with moving water. The inspiration for this trip was similar: Mike Wyman wanted to play with his new 10 stop neutral density filter. That was a lot of fun. However after my experience in downtown Minneapolis earlier in the week, I was excited to try some new HDRs.
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While the waterfall is pretty, it's so over-shot that I feel like it's been robbed of all it's creative juices. What I was most excited for was, wait for it . . . a storm sewer. Yes, I wanted to climb into a storm sewer to take pictures, and that's EXACLTY what I ended up doing. One of my wedding clients wanted someone who was not afraid to go get the shot. Let me say that the smell in there was unpleasant, but the resulting pictures are well worth what I had to put up with. Once I got into the storm sewer I found that it was actually built in such a way that there's a huge drain hole in the middle of the tunnel. Thus, I wasn't able to get in very far, but I far enough to get the effects I wanted.
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It's almost ironic that I think one of the things that makes some of these photos so interesting IS the graffiti. All the taggins and markings all over the place just lead to a more visually stunning image. I'm trying to imagine what these would look like without all the 'urban art', and honestly I don't think it would be nearly as visually interesting. In fact, on our way to the shoot we saw an empty can of spray paint lying on the side of a trail, so clearly some of the graffiti in the area was quite fresh.
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The final image from this set is not an HDR at all, it's not even in color - it's just a black and white. What's fun about this image is that I took it when there was a lot of fog evaporating off my the UV filter in front of my lens. While in the boundary waters this summer (that photoset coming soon) I noticed that when shooting toward a light source with fog on the filter you get some neat effects. I was unable to replicate them here, but I still like the image for what it is. Once again, ugly though some people may say it is, I actually like the graffiti on the bridge. I have some HDRs of this same angle too that really just make the graffiti pop out.
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For my technical note, and probably my last HDR technical note for a while, handheld HDR is still a myth - for me anyway. (I guess we'll see, I did some handheld HDR shooting this morning that I haven't had a chance to look at yet). For the next generation of digital cameras, since a 12 stop dynamic range sensor is just not going to happen, how about a mirror lockup HDR mode for handheld shooting? right now when I shoot AEB+/- 2ev (called the 'workhorse' HDR set) with motor drive I get 3 individual mirror slaps. What I'd love is a mode in which the exposure and focus is calculated ONCE, the mirror slaps ONCE, and all 3 exposures are done before the mirror slaps back down. I'd also love a 5 image +/- 1ev mode, but that might be too much to ask for.
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