Magical HDR

Nikon D90 with 17 - 50mm f2.8 wide angle lens (Shot at 3 exposures)

Post Processing: 3 exposures combined together i Photomatix

I walk past this odd looking monument everyday, I always thought it was some Greek monument or something like that and never paid it much attention. I always looked at tourists madly taking photos, posing in front of it, reading the writing and walking around it to have a closer inspection of every detail. One day I though "damn it, I'm finally going to figure out what this thing is". So I too felt like a tourist in my own city (sometimes thats a good thing, it means I don't have to explain why I have a camera and snapping away in a voyeuristic manner). It turns out it's a war memorial dedication, for one of the wars Australia was involved in I can't remember which one though (I have to admit I kind of lost interest once I figured out what it was :P ).

Something from the cutting floor

Nikon D90 with 17 - 50mm f2.8 wide angle lens (shot at 1/250 sec @ f3.2, ISO 200)

Post Processing: Bit of photoshop work here I must admit, some contrast effects and blurring.

I have to admit that this photo is actually a few months old now (taken on the Australia Day long weekend, January 26th for the uninitiated :) ). For some reason the family (including the extended members i.e. the Uncles and Aunts) decided to travel to the Dandenong Ranges and tackle the notorious "thousand steps". The thousand steps is a set of walking trails including a set of vertical stairs that are a sort of dedication to those soldiers who travelled the kokoda trail in Papua New Guinea in WWII. So it's meant to be reasonably challenging. Being the fittest one there, they instructed me to run up the steps, and run I did. I managed to reach the top in under 12 minutes, which is reasonable considering I had to dodge, weave and overtake the crowds of much slower people.

The photo was taken of a spiders web on a overhanging tree branch at the top of the thousand steps, and when I first saw it on my pc at home I was less than impressed. Infact I had my hand hovering over the delete button before I received some inspiration and decided play around with the light and shade. By the end of it all I came up with an image I can be reasonably proud of.

It's funny how sometimes we take our digital camera's for granted. We just snap away at the shots and often delete so many unwanted images that don't make the grade. Sometimes just a little effort can yield a rewarding surprise.

Warning.. Blue Skies Ahead!

Nikon D90 with 17 - 50mm f2.8 wide angle lens (shot at 1/1250 sec @ f2.8, ISO 100)

Post Processing: Another one of those images where I "tweaked" the vibrance ever so slightly in CameraRAW.

Believe it or not, this image is NOT a HDR although it does have a HDR look about it. It's from my last phototrip into Melbourne CBD. The blueness of the sky shows what a picture perfect day it was. In fact it was almost too sunny at times, as the buildings started casting nasty shadows. I took this shot while standing directly beneath the building, looking directly up (all while trying not breaking my back in my display of gymnastic ability). Funnily enough, this elegant building is a Optus mobile phone store on the ground floor, and for all this time thats all I have known it to be (until now of course).

Barely any post processing to speak of, other than to tweak the exposure and to set the vibrancy slightly higher.

Vintage Voyage

Nikon D90 with 17 - 50mm f2.8 wide angle lens (shot at 1/100 sec @ f2.8, ISO 100)

Post Processing: This image was actually cropped from a large image. All post processing was done in Camera Raw.

On a whim I decided to travel into Melbourne city on a beautiful winter's day. This was a non-tpical Melbourne winter, beautiful, sunny and picturesque. Anyone that knows Melbourne weather knows that "Temperamental" is putting it kindly.

I ventured into the New York end of the Central Business District (CBD) and managed to duck into and out of some amazing lane ways, some I had never known existed. I tweaked with this image for about 10 mins, something about it showed potential. I just couldn't figure out what I wanted to do. I cropped it from a large image that had "stuff" that just didn't interest me. Lately I've been going crazy with increasing the vibrancy of my photo's, but this time I decided to remove it all together, giving an overall "Vintage" feel. Yeah, I think thats what I wanted, a classic "Vintage" style shot