Boy 400 (Where's Waldo?)

Here is another shot from a local antique shop... please take the

time to really look; you never know what you might find! Take

care...

I love your style with this series. I would love to have aprint of this. Let me know if that is possible.

Thank you Heather! You can email me and we can work out the details. The series of shots from this antique shop is being commissioned for a calendar and cards. The owner has run this amazing shop for over twenty years but has never been able to find a photographer who can capture his store until he saw my HDRs. People really slate HDR and often for good reason but this type of situation is perfect for it - there is almost no way to capture all of the detail lost in all the shadowy corners of these crazy rooms. I am really glad you like it and I am endlessly working on my technique for these shots - I would be happy to share with anyone.

 

ps I just posted another shot from some sequences I worked on today...

 

Take care and thank you so much. Glenn

Glenn, I've searched endlessly and I can't find Waldo, unless that's him in the center of the shot without his glasses and hat??? I would love to hear more about this process Glenn and so good of you to be willing to share - I'm frankly surprised that you don't seem to be using any specialised camera?? These images are fantastic!! Do you "stage" the rooms in this antique shop or are you capturing these images "as is" - because the compositions are wonderful!!

Jan, funny, yes the 'Waldo' is really just the boy in front - the shot just reminded me of the old 'Where's Waldo' pictures. I hope you found Jesus though! LOL - just kidding but he is there too. I am glad you like these. As for whether I stage to shots, no. This shot is probably the closest thing to a staged shot (out of all my antique shop hdr's) because the shop owner had a few empty spaces on the shelves and plenty of things hanging around on tables etc that would fit. Sometimes though there are one or two 'obvious' shot spoilers in the way that are taken out of there but for the most part I just wanted to capture the organised clutter.

 

About the process, well, other than the setup and finding the correct settings in Photomatix, the usual curves, shadow/highlight and/or levels, some exposure adjustments need to be made - usually that middle setting called offset has to be lowered slightly. Noise reduction is usually necessary because hdr has issues in shadow areas. Saturation usually has to be adjusted because of issues with the cyans (sometimes they are nice.) Hdr can do crazy things at the edges, can create halos and lighting errors when dark objects are contrasted against lights (like branches silhouetted against skies.) Other than that, it is mostly a bunch of tweaking and trail and error... Each type of image has it's own problems but exterior landscapes are the worst I think.

 

Anyway, sorry that there is no great easy secret techniques - mostly just hard work. Thanks for the interest though! Sincerely, Glenn

... on HDR and some of the problems. I've run into most of them myself. But you are right, this shop is a great way to use HDR. Congratulations.