Sunday, September 19, 2010

Dying Sunflower #13 - HDR Series


Composing limp sunflowers is a bit of a challenge because you have to compromise with gravity.  These photos all started with five shots, bracketing two stops over and two stops under the camera's reading.  This base picture started with the HDR Pro "Photorealistic" preset, then processed in Nik Dfine, Vivenza and Color Efex Pro.


Using the color shot as the starting image, I used Nik Silver Efex Pro to make the monochrome, then added a sepia/blue split tone in Lightroom.


Silver Efex Pro has a preset called "Antique Plate II" that emulates an albumen print from a damaged wet plate, which I find intriguing.  The results always look to flat to me, but the HDR image looks pretty good.


Titanium toner is was an interesting process that replaced silver with titanium, giving images a distinct metallic patina.  Nik Silver Efex Pro has an excellent preset that simulates the process.


The colors in the HDR are so rich, I started looking for a good way to mute them using the "bleach bypass" type processing.  It is quite a bit more effort with the 5 bracket images. This is the first result that I'm reasonably happy with.


Finally, a sepia/blue split toned monochrome solarized version.


Camera: Nikon D700 
Lens: AF Micro-Nikkor 105mm f2.8 D
Exposure: ISO 200, five brackets around f/22 @ 3s, Auto WB, tripod w/Acratech GP ball head
Lighting: Fluorescent Photo Daylight
Location: Home studio GPS
Processing: Lightroom 3, Photoshop CS5 HDR Pro, Nik Dfine, Vivenza, Color Efex Pro and Silver Efex Pro

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