More Hong Kong

So here is a continuation of my series of Images from Hong Kong. I do apologise for last weeks dissapearance due to technical dificulties (aka rats arsed internet connection), so without further ado...

Thus my time in HK approached a quick and unwitted end, and much to my dissapointment my camera had spent far too little time sitting around unused. I was determined not to leave the city without getting a few pictures! So on the morning of my departure I strapped myself to the roof of a moving vehicle (actually  I just popped my head over the sunroof, and shot like a madman. Of course I made some stops too, as fortunately y flight wasnt till later that evening. And so here are my results after a frantic run-around HK.

A lot of the pictures are some I wanted to do at night, but due to time restraints I was unable too....but Deff somehting I plan to fix on my previous trip.

I also realised I've been getting VERY sloppy lately with my post-processing, resulting in minimal if not nil  image adjustment resulting in my images not being all they could be. So although it will slow down my uploads, I have decided to take a step back and get back to properly post processing my images. Well thats enough rambling from me! Enjoy!












As you can see a lot of these were taken up high, where my aunt and uncle live giving me awesome views of the city. My next trip over these will be night shots as the city really lights up at night!

HDR Software Review: Hydra

So I recently got the oportunity to play with & review  an interesting piece of software (review also featured at http://www.sevenbyfive.net/), Hydra from the company Creaceed. Its an interesting piece of HDR Processing software, with lots of potential but unfortuantely brought down by a few minor faults. 

Enjoy the review below :) :

Firstly, What is HDR?

The term has recently entered the jargon dictionary of most photographers out there is HDR. You hear it mentioned regularly by the guys at Photoshop user, and intensively featured again and again in various magazines at different levels of photography. Almost to the point where it needs no introduction. However everyday the art that is photography sees more and more users pick up an SLR or semi-SLR camera, often overwhelmed by what is available in the market. Brands, Lenses, Techniques, Photoshop etc. For those who have only recently began to dip their feet in high end digital photography, or decided to expand their horizons and try out this "HDR" thats been so raved about one must first delve into what HDR stands for. High Dynamic Range. If you're still as confused about what this all means as you were a moment ago, not to worry. Dynamic range is the range that a light sensory device can attain when capturing and interpreting detail within the light. What this means is that whatever the dynamic range of a device is, defines the amount of detail that can be captured within a specific range of light from zero darkness, to so bright its all white. This is why often in cameras when shooting directly into the sunlight either our family is well lit, and the background is completely white, or our backgrounds are relatively well lit with detail, and our subjects are often obscured in darkness. This is because modern camera's simply cannot process the entire light spectrum from absolute darkness to fully white in the same image, unlike our eyes which perform much better because humans have a much wider dynamic range. In the past to combat this often a sacrifice was needed between light and dark, or in more recent times, using flash to light your subject out of the darker bottom of your camera's dynamic range allowed one to successfully balance backgrounds and foreground. However lighting a subject may not always be the desired solution to a lighting situation. Often in landscape situations there isn’t a subject to light that isn’t the building or landscape. So what do you do, if you're shooting in a cathedral, with light oozing in thru the rafters creating this beautiful scene? Only to realize your camera will only let you expose so that those beam of lights are surrounded by darkness loosing the gorgeous detail that is the cathedral except for what’s lit? Or do you keep the cathedral and blow out those shafts of light. Curse my camera's dynamic range you think! (Or not). You're on location and certainly not equipped to expose for the shafts of light and flash the bajeebers out of that cathedral. So what do you do? Well you do expose for both! Thankfully modern Image processing has come up with a technique (HDR) which allows us to artificially expand our camera's Dynamic range by shooting the same scene at various ranges, and essentially piling the various exposures on top of each other to recreate the scene our eyes gloriously basked in which was being, "under-appreciated" so to speak by our camera. And the best part is, all you need is your camera, and one of many available HDR software available out there. Making it a quick, easy and professional solution to capturing those scenes just as our eyes saw them. Ladies & Gentlemen the magic of HDR

The Software

The HDR Scene has been predominantly dominated by Photomatix with their Lightroom Plug-in, or standalone version. Made easier as such by Lightroom's ability to quickly "merge to HDR" in Photoshop, creating a merged Image in Photoshop which could quickly have the photomatix plug-in filter applied to it, to bring out more customized sections of the dynamic range. Enter "Hydra" another contendant in producing those lovely HDR Images we all love. Available only for Macs in Aperture and Stand-alone flavors (coupled with a lightroom plug-in). Presenting itself in a lovely and what appears to be, simple UI, the software appears to be very promising indeed. Unfortunately this is not the case as its simple interface is essentially its downfall. Like most users who consider themselves computer literate, I quickly delved into the software not interested in going thru guides, or documentation. However I quickly discovered that this would unfortunately be inevitable. With various unexplained modes, buttons, tabs and jargon, I was at a loss of where to begin or what did what.

Being a heavyweight lightroom user my first priority was to install the advertised lightroom plug-in. This was unfortunately not explained and took me about 30 minutes of scouring their website and Google before figuring out there was an install option located inside hydra’s file menu. Having accomplished such, I went into Lightroom, and selected six of the images from my recent trip (a landscape) to convert to HDR. As opposed to using the “merge to HDR in Photoshop” function, Hydra requires you to use the export panel to make use of its plug-in. So I dutifully exported the Images, using the originals to maintain maximum dynamic range and under Hydra options I set it to Tiff8 Simply because my computer is old and rickety.

Once Inside Hydra I was greeted by an artful UI, Displaying the Images I had chosen on the left with a “result” large central Image.

Not knowing what was obviously available I clicked Render, assuming it would bring up some dialog boxes of some kind. I quickly discovered it was the render button, producing a grayed out jpeg, similar to the initial image you get when “exporting to HDR” in Photoshop. However considering the framework of the software I don't think that's what was supposed to come out.

Upon my second trial and doing some reading on the website I discovered that the little dialog box to the right (the transparent one) is the software’s control panel and where all the fun happens. If you see there are four options along the top, Import, Align Merge (or fusion) and Pro.

For the purposes of the review I tried out the Align option and found it to be a nice addition in being able to fine-tune the software’s align feature, however I eventually left it on automatic as I found it did a pretty good job of aligning the Images.

The Merge button is essentially the most important one in the software, transforming the tool dialog into the sliders that give your image that HDR look. And of course leading to the confusion.

Initially this is what you will get

This left me quite stumped, as it appeared a little too simple. And Upon investigating the three methods in the dropdown box to and finding them to be independent of each other, I was confused as to how to get the results I wanted. That's what the final pro button is for.

Opening up options more closely tuned to those available in photomatix.

The rest is simply a matter of playing with the modes (HDR & 8Bit) and shifting the sliders to get a desired result. Something, which is also not clearly outlined (I.e. what do I play with for a specific outcome)

Image Critique

Below are the 7 Images I used to produce the final HDR Image (3 Stops Below, Above plus the “correctly” metered Image)

And this is the final Image I outputted from Hydra

As you can see the colors are considerably more punchy, and I have managed to retain most if not all of the detail from the previous Images.

The software manages to produce Images in a variety of output options form TIFFS to PSD’s to simple Jpeg’s making it easy to incorporate into any workflow. The quality of the Images are of a high enough caliber to compete with Photomatix, although it may not be as visible thru these Images due to the compression for web, but Noise Levels are low, and detail and sharpness is well maintained, as well as colors.

Conclusion

Overall Hydra is a sturdy and well-rounded piece of software with lots of potential in producing incredible HDR Images. Its biggest flaw would be its UI and its inability to properly explain itself. Some work in explaining what each slider does In Software (even a first time “what does this do” dialog box which opens the first time (and every progressive time unless the checkbox do not open anymore) with some explanations would go a long way in making this more user friendly than it already is. Everything is laid out in front of the user, in an easy to view format, it just needs some clarifications and tooltips. Overall a descent piece of software

An old book Finally Published!!!

Hey guys!

Sorry for having missed last couple of weeks' posts its been a little crazy for me hehe. But that means I only have more to write about now. Some of you might remember I mentioned about a year ago that my 2008 book was complete and that I would have it available for sale, but never did. Well it turns out I Put the book together using Iphoto, assuming I could export a PDF and upload it to Mpix or wherever I wished it to be printed. Turns out it wasnt so easy, so after having recreated it using my publishers photobook software I'm pleased to say its now available for sale here!  Although I've been asked why am I still inclined on promoting the 2008 book when its 2010! People will want the 2009 book. As any photography enthusiast will tell you that its not nescesarilly a relevant point. I publish these books as a sort of memoir into my photography, not only so that other photographers and artists might want to see the progress and mental intricacies of a learning photographer such as myself, but also as an awesome photobook or coffee table book, which I strongly believe is very well presented in the book. Despite being over a year old, some of the Images still amaze and remind me of what kind of quality Images I can create. Thus making it a book I can continue to reccomend.

I hope you guys will purchase a few copies and aid me in my photographic Journey, and if you are of those who still prefer the 2009 book, worry not, It will be out, hopefully by the end of the weekend. Also on its way a 2010 Calendar! Its still not too late to get one of these too! Enjoy!

Hong Kong Stop Over

Hong Kong! One of the cities of Wonder, and Financial Centers (South East Asia's to be exact!) of the world! A place I think I could quite thoroughly enjoy would I have the oportunity to visit it more often (A luxury my little brother seems to attain regularly, along with regular visits to New York....Prick lol (No offense little bro ;)  ). Anyhow this time around on my way to India I was fortunate enough to stop over with enough time to spend some time in the City! And although it was nowhere near as long as I would have liked it was still an enjoyable experience none the less. I was able to meet a dear old friend whom I hadnt seen in the longest time (with the exception of the Bangkok trip where we did catch up a little), so it was quite enjoyable to hang out with him and get the extremely extremely extremely abreviated tour of the city...which involved me rushing to a tech mall to get a new camera bag (with my recent shoulder injury a right shoulder sling backback continues to cause me pain and dispair! However I was able to pickup a bag that could transform both into a dual shouldered backpack, aswell as a left or right shoulder sling! Perfect!) and a quick trip up to the mountains on the tram for some low angle photo ops!.

Unfortunately it was quite foggy, reducing visibility, and I would have liked to have had my tripod and some filters(which I was this close to purchasing, stopping myself only because i hope to upgrade my present gear in the very near future to higher quality lenses) to add some ambiance to the Images but I suppose these will have to do for now.  Hopefully on my next trip I can get a model up there and get some amazing backdrops!

More Japan

Hey Guys, so these Images have been WELL overdue, I'm tempted to just dump them all on Flickr right now, but they are amongst the best I've shot all year and it would seem a pity for some of them to just get lost or never seen simply because of an overload dump, so I'm going to try to do 30 a day or so. I'm very close to having uploaded all my remaining archived Images for 2009, hopefully in time for years end, they will all be up, as for 2010, I'm looking to start a new page in my life as a photographer. I'm hoping by then I will have completed my Wordpress jump. Aditionally I'm hoping to close my current Lightroom catalog in hopes of opening a new one, as the current one holds 3 years of Images and is beggining to slow down, considerably. Anywho, here are some of the Japan Images from the latest batch, as usual you can see the whole set here.

Enjoy

Images I turned in for the Comicon Photography Competition/Entradas de la competicion mejor fotos del salon/

Hey All! Here you guys can find the pictures I turned in for the photography competition! The first is the Best natural pic of the weekend I turned in, and the second the best retouched image of the weekend (First prize Winner)

Bueno Aqui por ahora teneis las fotos que entregue para la competicion de fotografia del salon. La primera fue la foto natural y la segunda la retocada (ganador de primer premio) :)

Security, Protection and Photography.

I'm sure many of you have heard, and been in outrage at facebook's recent change in contract and policy as blogs and news sites all over the interwebs have been in outrage at facebook's indiscretion in proclaiming ownership over the content we place on their website. If by chance you have been living under a rock and havent heard of this facebook policy, or havent kept up to date with it, let me bring you up to speed.

Initially Facebook laid down a policy indicating that all content that us, the users, upload on facebook becomes property of said company. However at the bottom of the clause there was a subclause indicating that this ownership would expire when the content was deleted or if we shut down our account, therefore returning full ownership to us the user, and only documented copies of our content would remain with facebook, for of course...documentation. However recently Facebook decided to remove this clause, thus making all content ever placed on facebook theirs. This of course presents a problem to many of us digital artists who use facebook as a form of networking, publicity, and having our work viewed through the networking system that they have developed by facebook taking ownership of the images that we place on there. However the chances that facebook would contest the ownership of the work placed on there should it ever be used, or of facebook abusing this clause and use the artwork for their own purposes are of course low, the chance is still there, scaring many artists into not publicising their work, or downright not using facebook at all.

This brings to question of where do we draw the line? Have we reached such a point where we are happy to live in a society where our privacy is is continously beeing lost for convenience and protection? In certain cases I think Facebook goes to far with the contract clause, when easily alternative options are available which would have the same efect, particularly for the purpose that facebook is claiming to require the ownership for. Since facebook has become such an integral part of the web with its content beeing streamed, replicated, streamed and reproduced, in order to protect itself from the abuse of its content they supposedly need to claim ownership so that problems dont arise in these situations. However rather than claiming ownership, Facebook could create a clause stating that by accepting the agreement facebook has the licence to use its content at its own leisure. This way facebook is free to allow its content to behave as it does on the web, and users continue to retain ownership of their work.

Overintensive security measures though, dont only affect photographers and artists on the web and on facebook but also in the streets, especially as governments become more paranoid and police forces begin to abuse the power in the name of national security. Living in a city where a cctv camera is located every 10 steps or less, I'm quite happy to on film in the name of providing a secure environment which is used to catch criminals and true threats to national security. not a drunk taking a piss behind a tree. However when Jailtime is a possibility for simply photoraphing a police officer I begin to wonder why? On Photo District New's website Today one of the main articles was of a police officer arresting a photographer on the New York Metro for taking pictures of a train. It truly Befundles me. I have pasted the article here (can be viewed on www.pdnonline.com) because when I try and click on the article link i get a blank page, but just so you all can get the gist of it

Arrested for Photographing a Train: "It's Almost Embarrassing"
© Robert Taylor	An amateur photographer was arrested and cited for unauthorized photography after taking pictures in a New York City subway station. The charge, for a crime that doesn't exist, has already been dropped. More

An amateur photographer was arrested and cited for unauthorized photography after taking pictures in a New York City subway station. The charge, for a crime that doesn't exist, has already been dropped. More Supposedly the more link will take you to the full article but its just a blank page. Something that they will fix soon I hope.

They have also made it an arrestable offense to photograph a police officer in the UK, however at least the metropolitan police has been kind enough to recently have a few talks at some photographer meetups regarding photography laws, which can be found online, and I belive photocast.net even did an podcast on it (its number 23 I believe)

to Conclude I hope my readers have a better awareness of what is happening in security in protection out there and how it affects us, and for those of you who did know the comment button on this blog is there for a reason, comment on it! Let me know what your thoughts are!


EDIT 1: A fellow photographer reports on his knowledge and an incident he recently had regarding security and photography http://wildlifephotographer.blogspot.com/2009/02/by-arresting-photographers-weve-lost.html

2oo8 A Year in Pictures

Its that time of the year again, as the hours into 2009 slowly tick away we make last minute reviews on our year, was it good? Bad? Will the next year be any better? What will my resolutions be? So I thought it's about time I did the same with my year as a photographer. However if you really aren't intersted in reading my valuable pearls of thoughts, and want to go straight to the images my book, " 2oo8 a year in pictures" is available for sale right here! right now! with prices starting at about 30 quid for a large hardbound book. The perfect Item to help bring you and your coffee table into the new year :).

sample pages from 2oo8 A Year in Pictures:




Hope these will entice you to purchase a copy! To order one just drop me an email, or pop a comment down saying you are interested and a full price list will be emailed to you.

2008 began quite slowly for me as a photographer, but with two particularly important shooting oportunities. One beeing my trip to paris producing a vivid new environment for me to shoot in, resulting in some of my fave images of the year. I was also able to have my first proper photoshoot after having joined the NAPP and benefiting from the ounces of knowledge made available to me. throughout the month the only other memorable shoot was the opportunity to shoot the 3 kings celebrations as they passed the floats through the streets.

three kings/xmas celebrations





Febuary and March were rather slow months for me as a photographer, the only pictures beeing results of "work". In Febuary aside from a party at my dorm that I was asked to photograph and som other random social portraits I was devoid of proper shooting oportunities. However despite that I was quite happy with the results of some of the images from the party proving my slow but steady mastering of flash photography.



March As I mentioned was devoid of photography minus some portraits for Asian woman of Director Imtiaz ali and actress Karen David. which due to ownership issues I cannot at present post.

In April my photography picked up considerably, with some shooting done at the local airport, portobello road market, and of course Photoshop world! bringing to me my latest upgrade in photography my new camera body the 40D! and my Pocket Wizards and additional strobes giving me full power on off camera flash photography, and of course my first oportunity to try it out, the photoshoot I did with my cousin in the tight confines of my room which ended up producing some rather impressive images.



May once again slowed down due to the increasing ammount of deadlines and procrastination, however that didnt stop me from my seccond photoshoot making use of my off camera strobes



June
In June the photos began to pick up once again as I was home for the summer. I also took the oportunity to organise a sunrise photoshoot on the beach which turned out brilliantly!

July Continued with my photography, however this time it was based more on clearing backlog from previous months and some heavy duty photoshop studies. However despite that I managed to arrange a little shoot to help me try and shoot jewellry in a fashion context. This is the month that I also began my travel to the US stopping by LA and in August New York. I was also able to shoot at the salon de comic de benalmadena in malaga extending my networking into the local anime community.



August Began in New York a gorgeous city for photography, with oportunities cropping up left and right. However what followed, the city of pittsburgh proved to be the complete oposite as it always does. However thanks to Model Mayhem I was able to meet with a lovely model who introduced me to an artists hangout, a brilliant photoshoot and her husbant another fellow photographer.


September brought the beggining of the end of summer. I was also able to work under Nacho Alcala a National Geographic photographer who although having only met him twice was able to greatly open my photographic eyes. I hope to meet him more often upon my return to malaga. Aditionally I also spent a weekend in madrid, proving to be very exhausting and usefull as I met Hitesh Sawlani (www.hitkaiser.com) and his merry band of photographers to go and shoot a classic motorbike run and the famous anual white night of madrid!




October brought the return to uni and a frantic house hunt/move in leaving little time for photography except for a shoot for Asian Woman of renowned Bollywood film director Karan Johar
November brought me back to the studio as my friend Lavina volunteered to do a shoot with me, resulting in much better shots than I had anticipated. Certainly since my last time in the studio which was January.

December the last and final month of the year has been quite photo heavy, with me making a trip up to bristol, adn finally making my first trip with the London Photo and graphics meetup group and an anime group which I meet weekly, as their oficial photographer designer (North East london anime society). The London Photo and Graphics meetup went extremely well and I hope to frequent it much more in the comming year.



In Conclusion 2008 has certainly been an impressive year in terms of my photography. With the resources made available to me and the oportunities to shoot i feel I have made leaps and bounds in the quality of my photography. Something that I hope will continue in the comming year.