Photography Techique – Brian Dixon Photography

Denali HDRI

Brian Dixon — Tue, 13 Aug 2013 08:32:19 +0000

HDRI (High Dynamic Range Imaging) is a technique that I have been experimenting with for quite a while now, but with limited success. The technique involves taking 3-7 photographs of a subject with 2 stops of exposure difference between each photo. A little back ground: the human eye can see about 14 stops of light (stops being a unit of lightness/darkness) however, the eye can change its sensitivity as we look at a scene, this gives us the feel of 24 stops. The average digital camera can only record around 8-11 stops. This is why photographs sometimes can’t capture all the information that our eyes can see. An example is a moon lit night, your eye can see detail in shadows on the ground then you can look at the moon and see detail in the moon, a camera can only capture detail in one of those.

This is the best that a DSLR can do with one exposure.

With HDRI you can put together huge amounts of data and actually capture more detail than the human eye can see. The only problem with this is that there is nothing to do with this file. You can’t print it, no paper has 24 stops of dynamic range, you can’t email it, no monitor can display that. So, what you have to do is selectively pull out the detail in the highlights and shadows until you get a file that can be used. The way you do this is open to interpenetration and expression, and there are many programs that help you make those choices. For the most part, I use Photoshop and Lightroom to make these adjustments. With Lightroom 4 Adobe allowed you to work with 22 bit images inside the program (before that you had to go to Photoshop). This is great because you can get a very realistic look with it. I did some photography for a B&B out here and was able to get great detail in the room and still show off the beautiful view out the window. With Lightroom this looked very natural and “real”.

There is of course another way to process HDRI photos and it gives them a very gritty distinctive look. Even if you don’t know about HDRI you will recognize the look when you see it, its full of texture. I call the look hyper-realism and with out going too far into here is why it works. The eye sees texture as something light next to something dark. What I mean by that is a 3D object gives off a shadow and has a highlight. If there is no contrast on its surface we perceive that object as smooth. What HDRI lets you do is extract shadows and highlights from everything in the scene.

Below you can see how the mountain comes alive and punches out, but the foreground is also much more interesting because it has texture and more color. This was done with one of Photoshops presets, scot5 its called. The preset is named after Scott Kelby who started Photoshop TV (a great podcast for picking up random PS tips). The other preset worth playing with is RC5, also named for a Photoshop TV guy, its a mild version of Scott5.

HDRI representation of Denali, with that HDR "look".

I found that Denali National Park really looked great with the HDRI effect. I ended up shooting a bunch of scenics with it. I even did a HDRI panorama. You want to talk about working with big files, take 9 5D MKII pictures and squeeze them into one panorama, the 8 bit version was 500 MB. Here is the Polychrome mountains in HDRI and panorama.

And oh yes, they do have bears there. Smaller and more fuzzy than we have here. But still pretty cute.

Polychrome Mountains in HDRI and Panorama

Cute little fuzz ball

Kodiak Bears

Brian Dixon — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 08:53:49 +0000

I had the opportunity to do a bear viewing trip down to the other end of the island this fall. I flew down to Frazer Lakes on Kingfisher Air with my father in-law for the afternoon. If you are ever in Kodiak and want to do some flight seeing I highly recommend Kingfisher, Glenn and Kyle are very professional and know the island like the back of their hand.

I took my full set up with everything from my 300 mm F2.8 down to my 17 mm (which at times would no have been a bad choice). I threw a x1.4 teleconverter on the 300 which was connected to my Canon D50 (a 1:1.6 camera), all this together gave me a 600 mm F4.0. Pretty sweet.

After we walked from the lake down to the salmon weir (where the best bear viewing is) I realized that my setup was more than I needed. I pulled my teleconverter off and eventually put my 5D MkII on to drop back to 300 mm. One of the biggest things that you can’t control in this situation is the position of the sun in relation to the bears. When we first got there there was a large mother bear who was heavily backlit. There isn’t a whole lot you can do in this situation but shoot RAW and aim for the middle exposure. Later in Camera RAW I was able to dial back the highlights and pull as much detail as possible out of the shadows.

Big Momma Bear

When you are faced with an impossible mission like photographing +10 stops of dynamic range you have to make some choices. I decided to keep detail in the bear (the main subject) and let the grass get burned out.

With moving subjects like this there isn’t much else you can do. Fortunately the weather smiled on me and sent a cloud to soften the light.

Once the sun was defused I was able to balance the exposure better to get some color and detail in the grass. IT seems like a minor thing but it makes a huge difference in the feel of the photo.

You can see the sow has her lip out, she was popping her jaw and making some huffing sounds. Not a good sign if you are in close proximity to her (we were up on a berm and in no real danger….I think). In this case she was giving the business to her cub who had wandered too far away from her and too close to us. Shortly after this photo the cub came back to her.

Mother and her cub.

The two of them rolled around for a while and played before walking down to the river and looking for some lunch. Mom found an old rotting pink to chew on and the cub just played with the grass.

All in all a very enjoyable day, even with all the mosquitoes and the tough lighting. If you ever have the chance to see these majestic beasts up close I highly recommend it. They are awesome to see.

Mother bear eating a Pink Salmon

Cub playing with some grass.

Puffin Photography

Brian Dixon — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:28:22 +0000

I’ve been doing some work on photographing puffins in the Kodiak area. Trying develop a set up that will work from the water. Puffins are very skittish and easily disturbed when approached from land. Many of the puffin shots you see in magazines were taken from blinds. This causes disturbance initial until the birds get used to the blind. This allows you to get very close to a hand full of birds who are at their nest for a limited time in the morning and evening. The down side is you are locked into a couple of shot angels and if weather/lighting isn’t perfect when the birds are there you walk away empty handed.

My hope was for a simpler lighter setup that would allow me to move to several different locations and shoot the birds from the water (where they are less skittish). I also wanted to get some shots of the birds taking off on the water. The closer to the water you get the better subject isolation you can achieve. So here is what I came up with: My normal tripod, with an Induro GHBA gimbal head placed between my legs in the kayak. With minimal adjustment I could put the camera at a comfortable height. The gimbal head allowed for smooth panning and made compensating for the motion of the boat easier. Here is what it looked like:

300mm 2.8 Lens on Gimbal head in Kayak.

This ended up working quite well. The birds were more curious than afraid and would allow me to get quite close. When I wanted to move I could just lay the lens over my shoulder and paddle around, then clip the paddle in and start shooting. Here are some of the results:

Tufted Puffin

Pelagic Cormorants

While photographing the puffins I was surprised to see a group of parakeet auklets approach me. I have only seen them a couple of times while walking the beaches in Dutch Harbor. This group was particularly friendly and made for some very cute shots.

Parakeet Auklets

Finally the wind started to pickup and photographing birds on the cliffs got too difficult. I moved out a bit and tried to get some shots of puffins on the wing. The technique that worked the best was to paddle up wind and let myself drift into a flock of birds. This had several benefits; it allowed me to approach them with out paddling, which tends to scare them. Second, the kayak turns sideways when drifting and made for a more stable/predictable platform. Lastly, when the puffins finally decided to take flight they always fly into the wind, thus closing the distance even more. At the last minute they would turn and pass me on the side.

Tufted puffin in flight

Tufted puffin on the wing

All in all an excellent day on the water. No camera gear went for a swim and I got lots of good shots. I have to say that post-processing was a challenge. You can expose for the bright white head and loose the body to shadows or expose for the body and blow out the highlights in on their heads, its a no win situation. In the end I exposed for the body and used some dogging to get detail back in the head.