Greetings~
Well, we seem to be on a roll here, so let’s continue with the “Music & Photography” theme, eh what?
Here we see a shot of The Sandcarvers at Nexus Studios … actually, here we see many shots of the band at the studio, as what we have here is an HDR/Panorama merge. So, how did I capture this shot? Glad you asked.
The first thing I did was drag my camera—mounted on a tripod with my widest lens attached—up into the “loft” area of the studio, which is approximately one story above all the action. After setting up in the furthest possible location I adjusted the head (I said …) on my tripod to the “Portrait” position and then pointed it toward the left side of the studio from my vantage point. After fine tuning the composition (and making sure the tripod was perfectly level) I then set my camera to the Auto Bracket function and fired off three shots at -2EV, -1EV & 0EV. Then, I swiveled my head (On the tripod! Jeez!) to the right, making sure first that things were still level and also that I had overlapped about 25% from the previous scene. Once this was done I fired off three more shots at the same bracketed exposure values mentioned before.
Once I got back to the “digital darkroom,” I made some minor adjustments to all six images, most important of which was to make sure that they all shared the same white balance setting. I then brought the first set of images into my HDR software, making sure that the “remove ghostly artifacts” option was switched off, then I did the same thing to the second set of images. Now, I had two new shots from the original six.
After I had achieved a nice tonal balance and the widest possible dynamic range within and between these two images in the HDR marge, I brought these two images into Photoshop’s Panorama software and stitched them together. This software further assures a nice tonal balance between the two images so it doesn’t look like things were shot under two separate lighting conditions.
Now, I had one image of the whole scene. A few minor tweaks back in Photoshop and, “Viola!” A somewhat abstract representation of the folks currently “haunting” Nexus Studio.
I’m especially pleased with the double exposure capture of lead singer A.J. Laird, who we see messing around at the drum kit and getting ready to take his position at the mic behind the screen in the lower right. Very cool, if you ask me.
Technical Info:
Canon 20D; Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 USM lens; Av priority; Three images @ 0.4s, 0.8s & 1.6s; Three images @ 0.8s, 1.6 & 3.2s; f/8.0; ISO 100; HDR merge; Panorama stitched.
In Other Words … and Images
“New Dawn Fades,” from AbsolutelyNothing
“BSC – Workington,” from Chromasia
“The Wave,” from Addicted to Pixels
“Holga Sudy #2″ from Bill Ballard (NSFW)
“Snow Covered Town – Redux” from Beau A.C. Harbin
“Limited Possibilities,” three shots (two in color!) from Wouter Brandsma
“Stanley Cup Photoshoot,” from Dave Seeram
Slainte
Gareth — The Celtic Camera Photography
LISTENING TO
“Earth Dweller” (from “Ancient Power”) – Steve Gordon & Deborah Martin
(STREAM: The Cosmic Island — The Internet’s Best Mix of New Age and Ambient Music)
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