HDR Shots for Property Owner's Portfolio

I was recently hired to take some shots of the interior and exterior of 6 medical office buildings around Nashville.  This is sort of an unusual type of shoot for me but I really enjoyed it! That is, all except for the getting up super early to get buildings before cars showed up. I used the HDR process in the examples below. 

HDR or High Dynamic Ratio is a process that works especially well with buildings. To get an HDR image, you need to use a tripod and take multiple photos while bracketing to get different exposures.  I set the shutter speed and aperture and change the ISO to get a perfect exposure and then overexpose a shot and then underexpose a shot.  Then you layer the 3 shots using a script in Photoshop or any number of plug-ins such as Photomatix.  They usually come out sort of smoky looking so it helps to raise the contrast afterwards and then you get images that look like the examples below.  You can vary a number of settings to control how cartoonish the images come out.  

I've tried this with portraits and it usually makes people look bruised or dead but if you are willing to spend the time in Photoshop, you can make a background look like this and then cut the person out of the shot with the best exposure and lay them over the HDR image so the background looks cool and the subject doesn't look like they were boxing before the shoot.  That is always something fun to try to mix things up a little and give your clients a little variety!

Birthday Photobooth for Alicia

I was hired to set up a Photobooth for Alicia's birthday party at the Standard at the Smith House.  I had a blast fitting as many people as possible onto the background.  In addition to the leaf blower, I brought a fog machine this time so I set my light on the floor for some monster lighting to go with the fog.  A couple of those shots crack me up because they look like promo shots for a magic show.

The rest of the photos are located at the following proofing site.

http://pictage.com/938016



I was going to use Flickr but Pictage will work better since you can click "make private" if there is a photo that you would rather not have the world be able to see.  You're much less likely to end up on a billboard this way!  Alicia will be getting an image disk so you will surely be seeing the shots posted on her Facebook soon!

Enjoy!
-Matt

Ruthie and Kevin at St. Henry's

Ruthie and Kevin were married at St. Henry's Catholic Church on October 2, 2010.  I occasionally photograph the weddings of high school sweethearts but this couple went to the same grade school (St. Henry's), same high school (Father Ryan) and same University (Tennessee Tech).  Ruthie told me that she and Kevin held hands on the swings in the playground when they were children so they decided it would be appropriate to do their wedding photos there in the playground and grotto.  I discovered that Kevin and I not only both went to Father Ryan but were both Eagle Scouts who pledged Fiji in college.  Half of Kevin's fraternity was there and I took a fun video of his buddies singing Don McClean's American Pie for the last song.  The bride and groom didn't see each other before the ceremony and it was dark after the ceremony so we couldn't use any natural light for the photos but I found some pretty great spots in the church which had been renovated since the last time I was there.  I'm looking forward to hearing how the newlyweds' honeymoon went.  Ruthie won the trip to Hawaii as a contestant on the Price is Right last year.

Wedding at the Hermitage and Tulip Grove Mansion

Amanda and Ryan were married on September 25, 2010 at the Hermitage chapel with their reception at Tulip Grove Mansion which were all on the grounds of the Hermitage, the historic home of Andrew Jackson.  Its so much fun for a photographer to shoot in these old Antebellum homes because they were built before electricity so they are designed to give you tons of beautiful window light.  Plus, they have gorgeous grounds.

The shots below were taken a week prior to the wedding during Amanda's Bridal Portrait shoot.  We shot her bridal portraits at the Hermitage also.  It was great shooting with all the time we wanted and we took advantage of the overcast skies and shot until it was close to being dark.

Following is the proof site in case you are interested in seeing the rest:
http://pictage.com/919220