I’m keeping it short tonight. I captured this beauty in the basement of the abandoned U.S. Post Office in Gary Indiana.
To view a larger version, click HERE
Gary's Graffiti
I was lucky and got to visit Gary Indiana recently with a great group of photographers (Blair, Jason, Jake, Mike and Bob). You might ask, why visit Gary Indiana??? We went to capture the beauty of their numerous abandoned buildings and film our experience for the next edition of “Shutter Rush”, which is now entering post-production. I don’t know the release date yet, but I’m looking forward to watching the final product.
By the way, I captured this photo inside the abandoned Post Office. I love really good graffiti and I appreciate the talent it takes to create art like this. I’m not exactly sure what it says, but I loved how the light comes down through the roof lighting the art.
To view a larger version, click HERE
Bradley Elementary
It’s been a while since my last Detroit Urbex trip. Way to long, but I still have tons of great shots from the last time. This is from within Bradley Elementary. I’m not sure if this was an office or a small science classroom. Regardless, I loved the fire place in this old structure.
To view a larger version, click HERE
The Chair
How creepy is this spot??? Super creepy, if you ask me. I took this photo inside a school nurse’s office at an abandoned elementary school. Here is my question….why would an elementary school nurse’s office need an adult medical chair? Now that is creepy!!
To view a larger version, click HERE
Don’t forget to check out my photo galleries. I update and add to them often.
Common HDR Photography Questions (Part 2) - Example Brackets
As promised on December 13th, I will continue with Part 2 of the most common HDR photography questions that people inquire about. Today’s question is:
What Is HDR Photography?
HDR Photography stands for High Dynamic Range Photography. Basically it’s the combination of two or more pictures of the same exact subject to display the best of all light levels (detail) similar to what the human eye would see. Cameras capture less detail in the many of the light and dark areas, so there is limited light ranges captured in each photograph…they can be extremely bright or dark. The human eye can see the world in a greater number of light levels allowing you to see everything from extreme dark areas to bright areas at the same time in great detail. By combining photos taken at different exposure levels to create an HDR photo, you can produce a picture closer to what the human eye can see.
So how do I make that easier to understand, since I didn’t explain it well? Let me try this. Everyone has seen a photo taken inside a room looking at a window during a sunny day. One of two things usually happens. Either the camera creates a picture where you can see outside appropriately and the room is very dark. Or the room looks good in the photo, but the window is so bright you probably won’t be able to see anything outside the window. With an HDR version of that, both the room and the environment outside the window will look good in the picture allowing you to see both clearly (see my example below). Thus the term High Dynamic Range, because you end up with a greater dynamic range between the lightest and darkest areas of the picture. If you want more detail on this, you can look at a bunch of websites, but Wikipedia has a good page on this topic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDR_photography). Sorry I can’t explain it better, but I hope it helped.
My HDR Example Picture:
Eisenhower Executive Office Building – otherwise known as the EEOB. This building sits right next to the White House in Washington DC and currently holds the White House Office of Administration/Executive Office of the President. You can see the final HDR product after I merged the original photo (0 Exposure Value) with two bracketed photos at intervals of +1 EV and -1 EV. As you can see (make sure to look at both photos below), the final HDR photo captures light and details from the best areas of all three photos to create a great image with more detail in all areas that the three individual photos can't provide by themselves. Hopefully this helped.
Note:
I’ll post my answer to the third and final question in Part 3 in the near future. If you have any questions, please post a comment and I’ll do my best to answer clearly and quickly.
HDR of the EEOB with the original brackets displayed below.
Eisenhower Executive Office Building
All Bears Today
Looking back at some photos from my trip to California, I came across this picture I took outside the Governor's office inside the capital building. As it was explained to me, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger found this while on vacation and purchased it for the State of California. It now sits outside the Governor's office. The capital building is very cool and I was glad I took the time to tour it both inside and out.
fyi... The employees at the capital building refer to this bear as "bacteria bear" because all the kids like to touch the bear. It stands about waist high and is probably about 4 to 5 feet long.
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