Posted by posted by Kevin Barber
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
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First of all, I need to apologize for being late on this post. I had said I'd have it Monday and it is obviously past that!
We have been traveling -- "On Assignment", as we like to call it -- to Washington State and were actually preparing our postings from the road. We have some great photo creations that we'll be sharing with you soon from there.
For this post, we wanted to share with you two of the more creative (or experimental) photographs we created for Doug and Molly. This first photograph was created using our new wide-angle that Kindra was excited to invest in. I'll admit that I was not all that excited about a wide angle lens because I didn't see the need to (as I saw it at the time) wildly distort our photographs. As it turned out, I was able to find all kinds of great ideas using the "fisheye" lens and Kindra had to fight me to get it back!
This portrait of Doug and Molly under the campanile at Iowa State was one of the first portraits I created with the wide angle lens. I wanted to be able to capture all of the campanile as well as Doug and Molly inside because that is where Doug proposed to Molly. There were two challenges to overcome with this, though. The first challenge was fitting the entire structure into one frame and the second was the dynamic range of the lighting (the bright sky and sunlit campanile in contrast with the shadow area inside the campanile where Doug and Molly are).
Obviously, I was able to solve the first problem with the wide angle lens. The second challenge was solved by using
High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography. This was actually the first portrait I have created using HDR - the challenge there is that several photographs must be captured to contain enough information - so that means that the subject(s) need to be in the exact same position so that everything lines up perfectly - or else "ghost" images will appear.
This second photograph is a technique that I have been working on which creates a "glow" around the subject(s). [I don't have a name for it yet so if there are any suggestions, please leave a comment.] This is created by placing a flash unit behind the subject and directing the light directly toward the camera. The challenge here is that when the subject is a couple dancing, they are moving quite a bit and if the angle is not just right, there will only be a big bright spot filling the frame.
It was a pleasure to be able to try out a few new techniques for Molly and Doug. And yes, we are holding back on even more photographs that Molly and Doug are going to LOVE! Fortunately, they'll be able to enjoy them at their viewing session and will be able to view and share them permanently in their home for years to come.
Labels: HDR, Iowa State University, portrait, Wedding
