Kwade Hoek and HDR
Sep. 2nd, 2010 09:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
janestarz"What did you think, that I'd let you stand outside in the cold?" My aunt Chris said. I smiled at her words. "We'll see you tonight then."
After work on Tuesday and a hurried eggroll dinner, NoKey and I jumped into Iota and drove to Goedereede. We arrived in fair time, around 7 pm, and drank a hurried cup of tea with my aunt and uncle in Goedereede before driving to the Kwade Hoek. The sun would set at 20.38 so we were a bit pressed for time.
De Kwade Hoek (Dutch) is a piece of nature near the coast. It's one of the few pieces of the Netherlands that is still growing by natural means. It's also quite treacherous to this day. Many a ship has sunk there, but the main reason it's dangerous to the unaware pedestrian or hiker is that the water rolls into the area from behind the dunes -- where it bounces off the Haringvliet sluices.
My best memory of the Kwade Hoek is when we went walking there some ten to fifteen years back, when Curly was still alive. It wasn't much more than sand, some dune grasses, and lots of wet, semi-salty lakes. Nowadays the area is more dry, and there are shrubs and grasses aplenty. It's also a haven to some rare birds.
I'd come up with the plan to visit because Rijnmond News said it had flooded (Dutch). It would be an excellent opportunity for some photography. After an enthusiastic e-mail to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aroka, he replied with tips (and more entusiasm).
Too bad there wasn't any sign of flooding, but I did get to make several good pictures.
NoKey had to taste the blackberries, of course... I passed. Too sour!
We were just in time to catch the last rays of light over the edge of the dunes.
Just before sunset the light gets really funky, and everything turns golden-red. I only caught it in two pictures, but this one actually has some interesting composition going on.
I did some research on HDR and exposure blending before I went (thanks toaroka), and read in my camera booklet (the online version, since I'm not so fluent in German and Italian!) how to use the exposure bracketing function from my camera. The idea is to take several pictures in a burst, one being underexposed and the other being overexposed and the third in the 'correct' exposure, and blending the three to get a very funky photograph. It needs a tripod.
I downloaded a GIMP plugin and installed a program called Qtpfsgui, which next to having an impossible name is a little hard to use. The plugin in the GIMP worked like a charm though!
Ok, this image is not so interesting in itself. Yay, grass. Yay clouds. But it was good to practice HDR imaging* and this is actually one of the few images I blended that did not have a blurry part in it! It's a very subtle HDR, not psychedelic at all but both the clouds and the foreground have correct exposures. It doesn't sound like a big deal because your eyes do it right all the time. The trick is: camera's do NOT.
Another HDR/exposure blend image. Should you want to see a very good reason why you need a sturdy tripod, just zoom in and watch the middle range of the picture, near the bend in the 'path'. Or just look closely at the outline of the dunes.
Still, much more interesting picture, with lovely foreground and good clouds.
Visual lines drawing the eye, texture, depth of field, composition... check!
Just in case you're wondering what the difference can be between HDR and regular...(mouse-over in case you don't know which one's the HDR image)
Softer clouds, a slight blurring because of crappy tripod, and you can still see details in the dunes in the foreground. That's the added bonus of HDR. The other picture (which was taken on its own, and isn't part of the HDR 'burst') is a little too dark, the foreground is underexposed but the ships are more defined.
Every set you find your favorite picture. This one just 'does it' for me...
The lights of Europoort over the water, with dark clouds over them. All the horizontal subtlety works nicely.
There's a few more pictures in the set on Flickr, should you be interested.
-----
*) It seems like whatever the subject is, there's a fanatic around -- and this goes doubly so for photographers. There's people who swear you should always always always use a filter. There's flash fanatics and natural light puritans, there's lens fanatics, there's people who don't understand why you can't shoot macro's with a regular lens and will tell you so, and there are HDR puritans. Some people say HDR creates technicolour images and dislike the effects. There's people whining that HDR can never be HDR because what you're really doing is expanding the exposure range and you only go into the 8-bit colour range, and so it's called exposure blending and ITS NOT HDR gâââââh!!!
The scariest part is that in the hour or so I did research on HDR and exposure bracketing (the technique for taking the pictures needed for HDR) I found enough people being anal about the term HDR that it scared the living daylights out of me.
After work on Tuesday and a hurried eggroll dinner, NoKey and I jumped into Iota and drove to Goedereede. We arrived in fair time, around 7 pm, and drank a hurried cup of tea with my aunt and uncle in Goedereede before driving to the Kwade Hoek. The sun would set at 20.38 so we were a bit pressed for time.
De Kwade Hoek (Dutch) is a piece of nature near the coast. It's one of the few pieces of the Netherlands that is still growing by natural means. It's also quite treacherous to this day. Many a ship has sunk there, but the main reason it's dangerous to the unaware pedestrian or hiker is that the water rolls into the area from behind the dunes -- where it bounces off the Haringvliet sluices.
My best memory of the Kwade Hoek is when we went walking there some ten to fifteen years back, when Curly was still alive. It wasn't much more than sand, some dune grasses, and lots of wet, semi-salty lakes. Nowadays the area is more dry, and there are shrubs and grasses aplenty. It's also a haven to some rare birds.
I'd come up with the plan to visit because Rijnmond News said it had flooded (Dutch). It would be an excellent opportunity for some photography. After an enthusiastic e-mail to
aroka, he replied with tips (and more entusiasm). Too bad there wasn't any sign of flooding, but I did get to make several good pictures.
NoKey had to taste the blackberries, of course... I passed. Too sour!
We were just in time to catch the last rays of light over the edge of the dunes.
Just before sunset the light gets really funky, and everything turns golden-red. I only caught it in two pictures, but this one actually has some interesting composition going on.
I did some research on HDR and exposure blending before I went (thanks to
aroka), and read in my camera booklet (the online version, since I'm not so fluent in German and Italian!) how to use the exposure bracketing function from my camera. The idea is to take several pictures in a burst, one being underexposed and the other being overexposed and the third in the 'correct' exposure, and blending the three to get a very funky photograph. It needs a tripod. I downloaded a GIMP plugin and installed a program called Qtpfsgui, which next to having an impossible name is a little hard to use. The plugin in the GIMP worked like a charm though!
Ok, this image is not so interesting in itself. Yay, grass. Yay clouds. But it was good to practice HDR imaging* and this is actually one of the few images I blended that did not have a blurry part in it! It's a very subtle HDR, not psychedelic at all but both the clouds and the foreground have correct exposures. It doesn't sound like a big deal because your eyes do it right all the time. The trick is: camera's do NOT.
Another HDR/exposure blend image. Should you want to see a very good reason why you need a sturdy tripod, just zoom in and watch the middle range of the picture, near the bend in the 'path'. Or just look closely at the outline of the dunes.
Still, much more interesting picture, with lovely foreground and good clouds.
Visual lines drawing the eye, texture, depth of field, composition... check!
Just in case you're wondering what the difference can be between HDR and regular...(mouse-over in case you don't know which one's the HDR image)
Softer clouds, a slight blurring because of crappy tripod, and you can still see details in the dunes in the foreground. That's the added bonus of HDR. The other picture (which was taken on its own, and isn't part of the HDR 'burst') is a little too dark, the foreground is underexposed but the ships are more defined.
Every set you find your favorite picture. This one just 'does it' for me...
The lights of Europoort over the water, with dark clouds over them. All the horizontal subtlety works nicely.
There's a few more pictures in the set on Flickr, should you be interested.
-----
*) It seems like whatever the subject is, there's a fanatic around -- and this goes doubly so for photographers. There's people who swear you should always always always use a filter. There's flash fanatics and natural light puritans, there's lens fanatics, there's people who don't understand why you can't shoot macro's with a regular lens and will tell you so, and there are HDR puritans. Some people say HDR creates technicolour images and dislike the effects. There's people whining that HDR can never be HDR because what you're really doing is expanding the exposure range and you only go into the 8-bit colour range, and so it's called exposure blending and ITS NOT HDR gâââââh!!!
The scariest part is that in the hour or so I did research on HDR and exposure bracketing (the technique for taking the pictures needed for HDR) I found enough people being anal about the term HDR that it scared the living daylights out of me.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-09-02 07:58 am (UTC)(Nice pics and interesting explanation, I didn't know that.)
no subject
Date: 2010-09-02 08:13 am (UTC)HDR is interesting, but I'm not very good at the whole "exposure" thing yet. I have a lot to learn.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-02 11:00 am (UTC)The one with the cows is my favorite, though I also like the one with the water (5th one?), the 4th one (with the grass) just hasn't got enough contrast for me, which makes it look fake, though that could just be my laptop instead which has a horrible screen.
And yes.. there are quite a few HDR fanatics out there..
no subject
Date: 2010-09-02 11:17 am (UTC)Thanks for your help and your praise!
no subject
Date: 2010-09-02 11:44 am (UTC)HDR is a very interesting technique, only it seems to be overdone so that could explain why some are tired of it. I find it still interesting.
Lovely pictures. I like the last one and the footprints in the sand one. With HDR watch out with the halos. I see them in the clouds and they can ruin the picture. I like the non hdr more, but I'm more a cloud lover ;)
no subject
Date: 2010-09-02 11:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-02 12:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-02 01:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-02 01:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-02 01:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-02 01:45 pm (UTC)Ordering from there is also not a problem, takes a while (few weeks) to get here though :)
no subject
Date: 2010-09-06 11:46 am (UTC)