My contribution to Daily Shoot 493.
Daily Shoot #493
All posts by fractalthoughts
More HDR Fun
HDR Experiments
This morning I’m idly reading through Facebook when one of my facebook friends describes his first forays into HDR. For those of you who are not photo-geeks, HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. It means taking several photos in quick succession of the same scene, at different exposure settings, then merging them into a single picture. My ageing Canon EOS 300D is perfectly capable of doing Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) — taking three photos at normal, -x and +x exposure (the value of x is up to you). It also turns out that Photoshop Elements 9, of which I am a proud owner, contains Photomerge, a plug-in that does the hard work of merging the different exposures. So, no real excuse for not giving it a try.
Doing the camera work was easy: Take a mini-tripod, use the menu to set up AEB, take a shot of a landscape photograph. (For a close-up subject, there are other – easier – ways to achieve a similar effect, such as using a fill-in flash.) The views from Mount Coot-tha were rather perfect for this purpose. Once downloaded, however, it takes absolutely ages to merge the pictures, even longer if you then mess around with manual settings. So I only did it for two sets of three, to give the general idea. For best results, click on the thumbnails to see a full-size version.
The first pair shows standard exposure, then the automatic Photomerge result. The second pair shows standard exposure, then the result of Photomerge augmented by me playing with extra layers, clipping masks etc to create a new picture. My very first exposure (ha, ha, pun intended) to HDR.
Daily Shoot #480
Glass House Mountains
We are trying to go somewhere new every weekend. Today we drove to the Glass House Mountains, about an hour’s drive North. The idea was to do some mountain biking, and some photography.
Turns out we did rather more of the latter than the former. We just cannot resist a sign that says “Mountain lookout —>”. So we followed. And followed. And more. At no point did the signs indicate how far the lookout was. Eventually we ran out of paved road. Some more up. We should have guessed that “mountain lookouts” are generally situated up. Finally, a tiny car park, mostly full, and a fantastic panorama greeted us.
Another sign we are suckers for: “Circular lookout path, 800m”. Naturally, we followed it. A lovely, winding path through dense forest, steeply falling away at one side. Not a guard rail in sight, obviously. Then, thumping noises to our left. Kangaroos! The first bit of wildlife we’ve seen in Queensland in the wild. They looked at us curiously, and eventually hopped off when some children squealed “Kangaroos!”. Hint: If you want to see wildlife, don’t yell.
Thus the day was a success already, but, we hadn’t done any mountain biking yet. We found a likely-looking (i.e. empty) car park a bit further down the mountain, with trails going off it, marked variously with “no trail bikes”, “no mountain bikes”, “no horse riding” etc. The Obsessive Cyclist located one that didn’t say “no mountain bikes” and went off to explore. I curled up with a book on a convenient tree stump. After a while, the noise of sharp braking alerted me to the return of the explorer. And couldn’t believe my eyes. He was covered in mud. Bike. Shoes. Shorts. T-Shirt. And had a huge grin on his face. It has been raining a lot recently, and apparently it was a tiny bit muddy. You don’t say…?
Somebody has to be sensible here, and we have a car with nice, comfy leather seats. I insisted he change his clothes (yes, we had carried a change of clothes — experience etc), then wash the bike with some water before putting it back in the car. From somewhere, a rooster turned up, eyeing up the muddy bike.
Anyway, here are some piccies of a successful day.
Platypus!
This photo fitted the topic of today’s Daily Shoot #472 perfectly. Extra points for the cuteness factor.
Cycle Safari
A very small cycle safari today because it was insanely hot, even in the morning, and despite the overnight torrential rain.
The ride took me past several City Cycle stations. Brisbane runs a scheme where you can pick up a bike like this, cycle to where you want to go and drop it at a similar station at your destination. The Intrepid Cyclist uses the scheme to cycle back from work every day. This contributed my Daily Shoot picture for the day:
Turtle!
Wildlife photography has been the main feature of the day. I spent a couple of hours at the Mount Coot-tha Botanical Gardens while the Indefatigable Cyclist decided to actually climb the mountain. Not for me, thank you very much. I was in luck and found what I had been looking to get on camera for a while: A turtle!
It was surrounded by ibises, and very best friends with them all.
Then, to complete the day, a young kookaburra decided to visit.
All in all, a perfect day!
Lizards and Moorhens
Today I found some very cooperative lizards at the Brisbane City Botanic Gardens. Also, some moorhen chicks. I had hoped for a turtle but can’t have everything.
