Choosing the right charity for Art Giving Back August

I am sure the first time you picked up your camera the people begging you to shoot them started pouring in.  However, not all charity work is the right kind of charity work.  Now don't get me wrong I'm the first to tell you if I actually had the time I would take on every single charity I could find but the reality is we all only have so many hours in a day.  So that means that we have to be selective on what charity work you choose to shoot.  There is nothing wrong with choosing the charity that in some way pays you back. In fact, that is what I'm going to advise you too do.

When looking for a charity here are a few things to consider.

             1. Do I have time to take on the specific job this charity needs?

             2. Is this a charity that I am personally passionate about?

             3. What will I earn by shooting this charity.

I know that number 3 is going to be the one that will be hard to think about at first but you should be earning something from your decision to shoot that specific charity.  It doesn't have to be money.  I'll give you an example of a charity that I have shot for that has paid me back in different ways.

          Future Pro-Skater - Sikes Houlahan exhibits at the AE Art Complex in Canton, OH

If you look at the photograph above it is a bit noisy which I wanted it to be because I was testing out a new camera.   I was pushing it to it's limits to see how much noise it had at over 12,000 ISO. Testing this new equipment to its limits using a F/4.5 lens was part of my payment. Let me explain.

I always look for great charities. As  mentioned, Art giving back is very important to me as is helping our my local artist community.  One of the local band members invited me to a charity event at the AE Industrial Art Complex in Canton. The show was an charity art show where 70 artists had decorated skateboards.  They were featuring skateboarding in the building as well as bands.  This is actually a long event but with 3 special dates during that event with charity auctions, bands, and skaters.

I love extreme sports so they had me at art and skaters. When I talked to the owner of the AE Art Complex to confirm he was OK with me coming down to shoot I realized it was a very dark location. Since I frequently shoot in low light I decided it was the perfect time to test out a new camera I wanted to try.  So I was already getting something besides the chance to get some cool shots I could share back with the charity.

When I got there I fell in love with the interior of the building.  It is an old warehouse but one that has some great bits to it. This great wall behind the skater was painted that day by owner who is also an artist.  They have this funky wooden house they have built inside the building that you can actually go inside but that they hang art work on.  They have a great vintage wooden bar with bar stools and the mirrors behind it.  Plus they also just have some empty spaces.

I immediately thought to myself I want to shoot in here. I want to bring in models and shoot. Not only does it have great spaces but it also has areas where I could build my own sets and it's heated in the wintertime.  Before I left I told the owner Matt that  I   love his building.  I told him I'd love to bring in models and shoot in here. He said well you are welcome to come shoot here anytime you want. He told me they used to have a photographer who came in but she decided she thought it was dirty. I said are you kidding me. I love the grungy feel. I said I want to shoot like ball gowns in here! He laughed and told me it was my space anytime I needed it.

So my second reward from this charity shoot was making a great contact and getting a great space to shoot in.  I can see using his space alone or as a joint venture often. There is always artist there working which I love to shoot too.

The 3rd benefit for both him and I happened last week. This photograph is the only photograph I have shown him so far as I've been very busy shooting football.  He asked me if he could use the photograph in the flyer for their next event.  Now on one hand at this point I could have asked for pay yes, but remember this is a charity event and I've already earned a few things from this.  I said sure if you can toss me a copy of your flyer and give me credit in it, it is all yours.  He said awesome we are putting it in Pulp Culture Magazine which is a Cleveland Magazine.  I of course told him that would be great.

It doesn't hurt the charity I was helping with any of the 3 ways I got paid for helping them with photography.  Other charities I have shot for have included free meals and other magazine credits. I shoot our local Santa Breakfast which is great for exposure in our community even if it doesn't pay as much as I could earn shooting somewhere else.

Art giving back doesn't have to cost you anything but your time and it can pay you back in many rewarding ways!  So I challenge you to each find something amazing that pays you back in some way for our Art giving back August Photo Challenge!

I can't wait to see what you shot when you post your charity photos in September!

Jessi

Submitting Photographs for competitions and Contests.

 Hello everyone. Another good Wednesday morning to you. We just had some heavy thunderstorms roll through our area last night so I hope no matter where you all were that you are all safe.

This morning I am going to be talking about something that I think every photographer should be participating in.

That is online photography completions and contests.  I think it is a great way to get some exposure and see how your work compares to so many of your peers in the marketplace today.

Here are a few links that I think you should really consider. You may be able to find some of my work on them as well.

I recently submitted some of my HDR, Shadows and Macro work to  https://gurushots.com  They cover a wide variety of subjects so you do not feel as if there is no genre for you.

Viewbug is another great site with limited free submissions http://www.viewbug.com

Then if you would like an extensive list of all the current competitions and contests you can find it over here http://www.photocontestinsider.com

Well with all these competitions and contests out there, it is not always just about taking your RAW image and uploading it. I am sure that if you saw any of the photographs on http://500px.com you can see that the photographers spend a great deal of time preparing their work for competition.

Here is a great blog post by Scott Kelby discussing the requirements for preparing your work for competition.  

http://scottkelby.com/2015/preparing-images-for-a-print-competition/

So have fun today. Go through your course photographs and pull out all those great images that your professor raved about and submit them for peer approval. They are the ones that matter most as well as the general public.

Family and friends are very biased so get out there and compete.

Here is one of my Editor favorites from Modern Postcard, which I submitted last year.

Have a great day everyone.

What is Composition?

Composition is the arrangement of elements within a frame, which gives you the most powerful ability to attract the eye and hold it as long as possible. Edward Weston said it best, “Composition is the strongest way of seeing something.”

Basically, composition is all about keeping things simple and excluding what isn’t necessary to make your image appealing to the eye. You want to keep balancing what you get within your frame, when you strive for simpler and simpler, it makes your images stronger and stronger.

The last thing you want is a lot of random “junk” in your images, it makes them more distracting than appealing. Every time you raise your camera to make an image you should be creating your most basic and clean composition possible. Make your you don’t accidentally pick up items in the background or even the foreground. Branches, people, vehicles anything random like that will ruin your images and take away from the subject and story you are trying to say with your work.

If you practice simplicity and exclusion you will get to the point where it will become second nature for you as you shoot. Composition is all about getting the basic, underlying structure of an image to appeal on the most elemental portion of our subconscious mind. Doing this is what generates the “Wow” factor and catches the viewer’s attention. Take the image below, I shot this interior view for the leading lines going to the back of the room. The image is simple but give your eye a sense of depth and I made it black & white as I feel it makes the composition stronger.

Interior of an abandoned building

Composition is the organization of the elements within the frame and leads to the strongest cleanest image possible. Composition is not to be confused with framing, framing is what you do by zooming in and out or moving the camera up and down as you look through your viewfinder. Many photographers don’t realize this, but framing cannot do anything to change the relationship between objects in an image. The framing part is easy and you can usually frame an image after it’s shot by cropping.

The only way to change and optimize the arrangement of the elements in your image is to change your point-of-view and moving your camera to different locations. If you want to find the best composition then you need to move around, change your position, not merely the direction in which you point your camera. Never, ever confuse composition with framing, which is simply zooming in and our or pointing the camera or both.

Think of composition as when your girlfriend comes over and straightens all your magazines, cameras, dirty clothes and other stuff you left laying around the house. To you the mess made sense and you think the same thing about your compositions, which is why men tend to have the toughest time with composition. Most people set up for a shot in the most convenient spot and shoot away, zooming in and out and looking left and right, but that’s it. They figure they can fix it later in Photoshop or Lightroom, just like they’ll clean the house next week. Yes you can clean up your house next week, but once the shutter is closed, you cannot fix composition later. The only way to make a strong composition is to look through your viewfinder and make it as strong as possible before you ever press the shutter.

If you can, move the objects around or have your model move and re-position themselves to make the image as strong and appealing to the eye as possible. Keep your composition in mind at all times and you will make your best work! Now get out there and work on that composition.


Comments/Questions

Giving Back to the Community

A Happy Wednesday morning to everyone.

This morning I want to talk about some interesting things that we will be having in the coming months. Well, why so early you would say? The reason is that normally it takes some organizing and we would like everyone to contribute if possible.

In August to are going to dedicate the entire month to "Giving Back to the Community" series. This is the pre-planning stages and we would like you to think about all the opportunities that you might be able to give back to the community.

Now, it has to be considered in conjunction with running your own business. How would you be able to benefit and sustain a project like this on a yearly basis? How are you going to cover your costs or maybe pick up residual income if you pay for your time and prints by donating your time?

To get you going in the right direction I am going to mention a few things that you may want to consider. There are thousands of businesses around the country that make a living by giving back to the community.

One example is building a package for a Charity Auction. You may give away a portrait package, that may cost you $250. Contact all the charities in your area and find out if you can contribute to their cause.

So how does this work?

1. Get some marketing material. Banner, postcards, flyers and pamphlets that tell people about your business. (You cost should not be more than $150) WHCC
2. At the auction you can have a vendor table and tell people about what you contributed to the auction.
3. Now, make sure to get a signup sheet or even use your IPad or mobile phone to capture Name and Emails. A good way to do this is use Chimpmail. Chimpadeedoo is an app that integrates with your IPad and mobile phone to capture email addresses so that you can build your marketing list. 
4. Remember that the goal of all your charity work is to build a community where people get to know who you are and what you can contribute. 
5. Always make sure that you have some marketing or promotional material that you can give away so that you can get the referral business and you may just be called back the following year or from other businesses that see what contribution you make to the community.

Anther great way to find ways to give back to the community is by joining PPA.com Besides being a great resource for photographers, they also have a yearly plan of charity work and giving back to the community.

One charitable project that I always do each year is the Operation Smile project. You can work directly with the organization or as I did, I went to my local dentist and we discussed how this charity giving opportunity could benefit both of us.

1. We did a family portrait month. 
2. Great smiles for a mini-shoot where 50% of the sitting fee goes to the charity and you get customers to pay for your print.
3. The dentist gets the foot traffic and you may even get to use the dentist mailing list to send out information about the charity event. 

There are so many ways that we can give back to the community. A celebration of smiles mini session in your local hospital or clinic. A shoot your pet session at the local veterinary clinic if you love photographing animals. Giving back to the troops is also a personal favorite of mine.

We would love to know what you have planned? So get out there and start thinking about what impact you are going to be taking on your your community! Send your tweets to @dgephotos or please just leave me a comment on what you have planned. 

We look forward to seeing your projects and now is the time to start planning. 

I know it is early, but my dentist Photographs for smiles took almost 2 months of pre-planning to get a great day organized.

Have a great day and we will speak again next week.

Denzil

Good Monday Morning Everyone,


Summer is here and things can tend to get very busy for most of us.  Between family gatherings, vacations and trying to keep up with our school work we can sometimes get overwhelmed.  It is very important to stay focused on our school work and not be late with our assignments.  A late assignment can take off valuable points and lower your grade substantially.  If you have an emergency come up and you can't hand in your assignment on time, notify your instructor to work it out with them. 


I also know that everyone is busy with work, school and family so sometimes just our school work can be just enough to keep us almost too busy.  That being said, everyone should try to be involved in the PSPN network even for a few minutes a week.  It doesn't take that long to sign in and check out what is going on.  Sometimes it can really help if we are struggling with something or need advice with anything in a certain class.  Also remember not to hesitate to ask questions if you need any assistance with anything. Either the instructors or other students are here to help you. 


Have a great week and don't forget that we are all here to help.




Barbara Ann

How to Use Focal Lock

Have you ever taken an image, say of people at an event and then later when you look at the image on your computer the people that were the subjects are slightly out of focus but someone in the background came out sharp?

This has happened to many new photographers but many of them do not know why. If it has happened to you don’t feel bad, because in this article I will explain how to correct for this issue. You can see an example in the image below. The couple are the subject but the old woman in the background is the one that is tack sharp.

What is happening is your camera has auto focus, yes but it does not always get the right subject with it’s focus lock. The best way to resolve this is point your camera at one of them subjects and press your shutter down halfway and hold it. This will cause the camera to focus lock on that person. Now, while holding the shutter button halfway down, re-frame your shot to include all your subjects. Once you have it frame the way you want the shot, press the shutter the rest of the way down to make the image.

Sample focus issue, notice the woman in the background is tack sharp.

Using this technique, you will see that you have successfully made your subjects focus tack sharp. This same technique can be use for other types of photography as well. If shooting Macro and you have a bee on a flower and you want to frame using the ‘Rule of Thirds’, you would use this same method. Shooting a landscape with a farmhouse in the distance, use this same method.

Most all professional photographers are familiar with this method to keep auto focus in the camera from ruining their shots. This is something ALL photographers should master early on so that you are properly prepared for shooting people at events especially.

Now get out there and make some great images!

Comments/Questions

Internship Week 4 - Game 1 - Renting if you don't own

Game 1 - Jackson Silverhawks lose to Lima 78 - 0.

Well the above photograph shows how our first game of the 2015 season went.  The  team has had a struggle having to start over with new team members when almost half the team left before the season officially started.  This game's score reflects the team trying to get to know new players and the task of struggling to learn to play as a unit.

So rather then talk about anything regarding the game I wanted to touch base on what to do if your internship requires equipment you don't have.  In some situations your employer may elect to rent or purchase equipment for you to use while you are in their employment.  Often times your equipment will be your responsibility.

Coming into this week's game I knew that as good as my Nikon D7000 is, it can't really handle a night shoot.  Now I could have just gone with my standard equipment to the game and shot as long as I could shoot.  I could rent a lower light lens like the 70 - 200 F/2.8 Nikkor lens that is a typical low light favorite.   Or I could rent a new camera.

The decision on what you need to do if you run into a situation like this is your decision however, it can be one that your employer can help you decide.  In my case, I knew that I'm about to be at a point to upgrade several lens and get another camera.  So for me renting equipment is serving a double purpose. It is helping me to make a decision on what to pick up first another camera or a lens.

Since I knew that I am going to be upgrading my camera in the next two months I decided to start with a camera rental.  I only rent from Lumoid because I love their customer service.  I can't ask Zachary in the buying department any question and he will give me an honest answer on what is best. He has honestly told me not to buy a camera that he could have sold to me for about $3500 vs. the camera I rented which I could buy for about $2000 from him. I told him that my two favorite things to shoot are bands and sports. I had already done my research to realize the Nikon D750 was an excellent low light fast camera. When I told Zachary what I shot he agreed the D750 is best with only the Nikon D4 (Which will cost me about $5000) being the very best.

I elected to follow his advice and I rented the D750 to shoot the game.  I am going to give you 3 different types of photographs to show you what this camera can do. I really pushed it to the limits shooting 3 different situations. With each situation I used the same lens a Nikkor film lens 70 - 300 mm F/3.5.  I purposely did not use a low light lens.  I have some future test I want to do with my D7000 and low light lens.

First the Art Skateboarding show. This gallery is where the skaters are actually skating. The gallery is in a large and very dark warehouse. I wanted to check the low light capabilities and also the cut off point where I would start to see noise when I do not use a low light lens.  You will see noise in the shot but it can easily be cleaned up in Lightroom. By the way the ISO..it is at 12,500.  Up to an ISO of 10,000 with a standard lens had almost no digital noise.

                                                         A skater at the Nosegrinders Skateboard Charity Art Show Opening.

Now there are many things I could have done to make it so there was less noise in this photograph. However, the point is if you are renting something for your internship make sure you get your money's worth. So this was 100% about testing how the camera could do before the shot was noisy.

The second thing I shot was our game.  At the game I used my normal camera until it got dark and then switched to this one. What I wanted to play with in this situation was the ISO Isolation that this camera can achieve.  It can pinpoint one person and make that person crystal clear and the other people or background around it blur.

                              The Lima Warriors were single minded in their pursuit to win against the Jackson Silverhawks.

The ISO Isolation is really cool...when it works. It is something that will take a bit of playing with to always get it to work the way you want it to. When you try it and it doesn't work you blur the entire picture. It will be the reason this camera is one of my next purchases.

Finally I took my kids to the park.  It was daylight so I wanted to see what it could do in average sunlight.  

The only way to use a teeter todder - Brother power.

In the end the important thing to remember is an internship is a job. Just like you should have the tools you need for your own business you need to make sure you have the tool your internship needs.  If you do elect to rent something have a plan to make sure you really get your use out of that rental! 

Game 2 is against the one top team of the PAFL the Ohio Golden Knights.  Can the Silverhawks with a much smaller team come back from their 78 - 0 loss? Only time will tell.

Jessi

Photographing Headshots

Good morning everyone.

In this morning's blog post I am going to keep everything simple. It is something that everyone can do and it can help when you have no white background to work with even when it may be required.

One of the first things I had to photograph when I got started with my degree was take a self portrait. Well as I found out it is not a easy as it sounds.

My chin was to high, the angle of my face was wrong, the exposure had to be changed often. I could take a light meter reading, which is why I always recommend a light meter. I have a Sekonic  but any light meter is suitable. It sorts out your exposures and gets out from in front of the camera a little less than you would think.

Well, over the past week I had to photograph a company and some head shots. They had some cream walls and it was just not what I was looking for. They wanted to add them to there web site for some advertising and I just wanted a clean crisp head and some shoulders. I had two soft boxes with me and that would be just great to get some good exposure and keep the shadow off the wall, correct.

So a typical setup would look like this right?

Lighting schematics by Lightingdiagram.com

You can get some good lighting and you can also take care of the shadow cast by your subject. This is a great setup. It is easy to carry to strobes and you could always use an office wall or flat surface for your background.

However, what if the background is uneven, full or artwork or even need additional editing later in Photoshop. However can you deliver a quick easy yet very clean background to your client with little or no additional editing.

Well all you have to do is reposition the soft boxes that you already have. In the following scenario I took my large Octa soft box. You can use your largest soft box so that it covers the entire back of the head and shoulders of your client. Then you position your other soft box over your shoulder behind you and the camera. 45 degrees to your right or left and high enough so that if your client is wearing glasses you do not get the reflection of the soft box in their lenses.

Take your light meter reading from the strobe over your shoulder and set your exposure accordingly.

Now you have a setup that you can use anywhere. No background is required and the photographs are going to be clear and crisp. 

Here are the final results from that shoot. 

I love this type of head shots. They are so clean and crisp. All I did in post-processing was apply a plugin mask. I used Perfectly Clear V2 by Athentech and I also tried out Portraiture by Imagenomic. They are both great products so give them a try and see what works for you.

It is a great way to add some additional business to your portfolio. I got most of my training from Lynda.com which is accessible from the Online Library. (I mentioned this in one of my previous posts) or check out the website of Peter Hurley  for some really great inspiration.

I hope you liked this post. If you would like to see more of this or even if you have a few suggestions then please send me an email at denzilern@stu.aii.edu or leave a comment on the site.

Happy shooting, have a great week and I will speak to you again next week.

Denzil

Hi All,


I hope everyone had a great weekend.  Today I want to talk about a class that I chose as an elective that I am really enjoying.  Introduction to Psychology.  Although this class is not directly related to my photography major, I think it is important for your average person to know a little about how the mind works.  We should all make an effort to understand human behavior and mental processes.  It will help us to simply communicate with each other on a daily basis. 


The reason I took this class was because I always took an interest in why people behave the way they do and I wanted to study more about it.  I am very happy so far in my 4th week in this class with the course of study and the topics we are covering.  If you still need to take an elective, I would definitely recommend this class.  It is very interesting and you will learn so much about different ways that the brain works and why our body reacts the way it does. 


Even if you think that this class has nothing to do with your degree major, I can assure you that it will benefit you to obtain the knowledge you will in this class.  Every one of us could profit from understanding more about human behavior and different disorders people have. 


If you are intrigued by the way the human mind works and you would like to learn more about why we behave the way we do, you should take this class as an elective.  Also, if writing papers comes easy to you and you enjoy the process this is the class for you. 

Black & White Photography

I have had questions from students about the best way to do B&W photography. Is it better to do it in camera or using post processing software such as Photoshop, Lightroom or another similar program?

Different people will give different answers to this question, and there is no “right” answer to this question. Anytime you can do things in camera, it is considered the “ideal” way to do it but you have more flexibility using editing software.

Your camera can make fantastic B&W images but there is a catch, you have to shoot in JPEG only, because if you shoot RAW, the images will appear B&W when viewing them in the camera but once downloaded to your computer they will revert back to full color because RAW format records ALL details and pixels. I’ve had students ask, “what if I don’t have or cannot afford editing software?” Well, first of all, if you are a student at AI, you should have editing software as part of your degree program.

Shot in JPG using Monochrome Picture Style on my Canon 6D

Shooting B&W in camera will give you beautiful B&W images but since you are shooting JPEG, ALL extra data for your image will be discarded and gone forever, you cannot get that back. I, and most professional photographers will tell you it’s best to ALWAYS shoot in RAW for the very best image quality and then convert them to B&W. This gives you the most creativity and best detail in your final image. By editing to B&W in say Lightroom, there are a couple ways you can do it. You can use the Black & White option under the development module, or I prefer to use the Saturation tool and de-saturate the colors from the image, then tweak the contrast to create a more dramatic effect.

Shot in RAW on my Canon 6D and de-saturated in Lightroom

There are also nice third party apps and plug-ins you can use and I personally use quite a few of them to get my images just the way I want them. The NIK Collection is one of my favorites and comes with a great B&W plug-in called Silver Efex Pro 2. This software has a nice set of “recipes” for making different types of B&W images with varying looks, from High Key to Low Key and heavy contrast just to name a few.

Shot in RAW with Canon 6D and then converted using "Antique Plate 1" using NIK Collection

For any friends you have that are into photography and cannot afford Lightroom or Photoshop, there is a free, Open Source photo editor called GIMP, which is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. http://www.gimp.org GIMP is nice as it has ALL of the capabilities of Photoshop with no cost.
Now that you have more information on how to make great B&W images, get out there and make some great ones!

Comments/Questions

Internship - Week # 3 - Community Involvement

                      One of the "future" Silverhawks at the football camp hosted by the team.

Since the official season doesn't start for my team until June 6th, I thought I'd share with you what we did to give back to the community.  Last Saturday we hosted a football camp for one of the local youth football organizations.  Several of our players and the owner of our team all started in this organization so hosting this camp is a great way to give back to the community.

I did not have to shoot this event at all.  It wasn't required and I didn't need to get the hours in for my internship as my time shooting during the season will equal more than the 110 hours required for my internship.  However, I very much believe that art is supposed to give back.  So I volunteered to come out and shoot the youth camp for the team.

There are so many opportunities that can come up just by giving back to your community with your craft.  For instance this camp gives these boys a chance to see that if they love football they can still play even later on in life. They can coach. They could play semi-pro.  They could help out eventually with the same youth football league that helped them become the players they will be one day.

The players who came out to assist really enjoyed sharing this camp with the boys. While it was hard work with lots of drills it was also fun!  Even as a photographer the expressions and honesty that the boys get on their faces when they play were great to see and shoot.  Sometimes at the Semi-Pro level the guys keep more of a poker face so you can't see the determination, the frustration and or sheer happiness that happens when you shoot children.

              While this was just one of the drills you can see that both boys took it very seriously!

In a matter of 2 hours I shot over 1200 shots and I could easily have shot more.  I know that when we finally share these images with the players, their parents, and coaches they will appreciate them in a different way than my older players do.  It opens up a new market for me to shoot in shooting youth sports as well as Semi-Pro  I honestly wouldn't have tried to shoot youth sports before doing this camp.

It also shows the players who came to help out at camp another future. One where they are the coaches and not the players.  So some of the photographs I took highlighted them in coaching or mentoring roles too.

Not everything that you during an internship has to be expected or the bare minimum that you can do as I have said before.  The more that you take what is given to you in your internship and make it your own the more you will get from your internship!

Next up! Tomorrow.  We travel 3 hours away to play the Lima Warriors Football team.  I'll save what I did to make sure I was ready for this first game that starts at 7 PM for next week!

Any questions please let me know!

Jessi

Shooting HDR

Hello everyone

A belated Wednesday hello to everyone. It is almost Thursday so I do apologize for the late post here. I have been extremely busy with some night photography so I missed an early morning deadline because I was away from technology for a day or two.

Today I am going to discuss some HDR effects and what you can do when you are working with mixed light situations. Now I know many of you do not like shooting HDR because of the grungy look. You may not have even considered it before. Why should you even consider doing something like this?

Do you know what I am referring too?

Yes, it looks something like this...

In this image I used a plug-in to make some adjustments. The adjustments that I made were done using Nik Software from Google. I used HDR Efex Pro 2. The image is bordering on cartoony (if that is really a word), so it is not what I was looking for. The lights are close to been solarized and the tone compression has been crunched down to much.

Now, why should you continue reading? Well sooner or later you will be required to shoot some HDR photographs for some of your classes. Yes, you will not be getting away from it so easily. So you need to practice.

Now you don't need to buy any new plugins for this effect because it already comes built into Lightroom CC. If you do not have a subscription you will have to export the images to Photoshop and do the HDR there. It is found under Edit in... at the bottom of the list.

Well, if you don't like the HDR effect that you get when you use this method then that option may not be the best one to work for you. Well there is another way that you can get a realistic looking photograph without using the HDR effect process. 

As you can see in the image above you can export the bracketed files to Photoshop, but this time use the "Open as layers in Photoshop" option.

What you do this it opens  your bracketed images as layers into Photoshop and you now have the option to apply a mask to the photographs to help pull out the highlights or add shadows to your baseline photograph, i.e.: 0EV and build your "HDR" photograph.

In this photograph I have added my three bracketed photographs -2EV, 0EV and +2Ev photographs as layers to Photoshop. It is interesting to note that I have moved my 0EV photograph to the bottom of the stack. This becomes my baseline image.

Now add a black layer mask to your other two exposures. You have your under-exposed image and your over-exposed image. Using a medium to small soft brush you can now paint in your highlights and shadows and adjust your photograph to get a more realistic photograph for your final submission. Remember to adjust your opacity if you find the brush strokes are to bright for your highlights or to dark for your shadows. Once you have made your adjustments merge your layers, "CMD + E" on a MAC and "ALT + E" on a PC.

It is a great technique for future classes so I suggest you practice now. When working with mixed light in photograph it can help to even out your exposures for both outside and inside without getting the grungy look and feel to your photographs.

Here is the final result of to my merged photographs while using the Photoshop layers method.

There are so many ways that you can do HDR to manipulate your photographs so make sure to try as many of them while you can. 

One last point before I leave you and say goodbye. You all have access to Lynda.com training from the library module on your dashboard under the Online Library link . Get in there and learn something new each day. That is the best way to learn Photoshop and so many other applications.

It is located under the Photography icon

under the Industry information section.

Here's to having another great week and as always, please let me know if you would like to learn something new. Send me an email at denzilern@stu.aii.edu or just leave a comment for me under this post.

I would love to hear from you.

Have a great week and I will speak to you again next week.

Bye for now. 

Denzil