New Theme
I’ve decided to restart HDR Images by Mike Hardisty for several reasons;
- my renewed interest in HDR Photography
- finding a great little plugin for Windows Live Writer, called Flickr4Writer
- a new theme to display the photographs
Point and Shoot
Now this is not the best of HDR photographs but as it was taken with a little Point and Shoot camera it seems fitting to use it. I’ve just picked up a new camera, the Pentax K30. I was going to take it with me to the Olympics but as DSLR camera ended up on the list of banned items I didn’t want to take the chance. As it so happens, I could have taken the new camera. There were plenty of people attending with DSLR’s and large telephoto lenses.
On the way home I got on the wrong tube train out of London so had to jump out at St. Paul’s to catch the right one. The station was almost deserted so all I did was lay the camera down and press the shutter. The little Samsung P+S did the rest, taking a bracket of three which I processed with Machinery HDR Effects. It was a bit noisy, so I used Topaz De-Noise to clean the image up.
To Photoshop, Or Not
Nowadays I don’t use Photoshop CS, instead I prefer Photoshop Essentials to do any post-processing. Part of the reason was cost. CS in any of it’s variants is just getting too expensive to upgrade. I’d rather spend the money on gear. Besides I found Essentials has all the tools I need for post-processing. Combined with my favourite Topaz plug-ins and I’m quid’s in….literally.