Parlor at the Garber House

[Don Chesnut]

Last June, I did a photo shoot of the Garber House at the Garber Nature Center just north of Lewisburg, Ohio. I made a photo book with these HDR images. This one is my favorite of all that I captured that day. Comments appreciated.

[Mark von Kanel]

Don, another stunner, well done can you tell me how it was done please?

mark

[Cakey]

thats amazing

[conkerwood]

Hi Don
Like this better than your previous HDR. Love the way the wallpaper ties the whole pic together. Again perfect subject for HDR, no movement, big contrast in light. Big plus is the control of DOF, other than the curtain in the back room everything is in good to acceptable focus but the curtain works because its ok for it to be soft its a curtain after all! Composition is very strong, I particularly like the leading lines of the the floor edges leading to the black stool, creates a nice balance. But, strong as the picture is I would offer some suggestions.
There are some chromatic problems with the chair in front of the window in the back room, would suggest you select it and reduce saturation of cyan, this will turn colour grey which is more acceptable to the human eye. The piece of furniture that just peeks in on the left is distraction as is the inward slope of the verticals. Dead easy to fix both with perspective adjust in PS. Main problem is the blow out from the window on the right hand door and the halo effect it has created on the doorframe. Again an easy fix if you use your lowest exposed pic, adjust it in PS to be as close to the look and feel of the HDR shot and then layer it in. Only other suggestion is that the usual HDR problem i.e., it is a little soft because of the processing. A touch of unsharp mask and perhaps a tad more contrast and you are there. As always these are only suggestions and only my opinion.

Peter

[Don Chesnut]

In each room of the house I tried to get the best area to get most of the room and set the tripod there and did 5 shots from -2 to +2 in 1 shot increments. Merged and tone-mapped in Photomatix Pro. At this time I did not have the Nik Viveza or Color Efex Pro so I used Topaz Adjust and Detail. Because I was going to make a photobook I spent a lot of time on details on each capture. First I did the floors. I would click OK and bring the photo back and work on the next area. Since then I have Nik's Viveza and Color Efex Pro and this process would be a lot faster with their U-point technology. I'm very pleased with the photobook and everyone that has seen it love all the detail in each photo of each room. I used the natural light from the windows in each room. It is a house that was built in the 1800's and there are lots of windows in each room so lighting was not too much of a problem. The lens I used in these captures was a Sigma 18-200mm 3.5. I since purchased a Sigma 10-20mm
3.5. It would have been easier to use the Sigma 10-20mm lens for this project but you use what you have at the time. I use Photoshop Elements and after each process I get a layer mask and hide all the details and paint the details back in at low opacity until I get the effect I'm looking for in each photo. It seems like a lot of work but I enjoy the process from beginning to end so I don't mind taking a lot of time on post-processing.

[conkerwood]

Eerrr Ok...

[FrankMi]

Hi Don, thank you for the detail on your workflow.

I can see that the front of the camera was tilted down when this shot was taken. When I do real estate photography with my wide angle lens, I try to get the camera height set, within reason, so that I can capture the image with the camera level, front to back to avoid the leaning angles. Where I can't accomplish that, it is usually due to some close-in detail on the ceiling or floor. If needed, I use Edit/Transform/Skew in CS5 to straighten the angles. The closer to level I can take the shot, the less I lose in the frame if I have to use skew.

[Mark von Kanel]

Don,

Thanks for the detailed description, im just sorting out my software im getting CS5.5 master collection and was going to get the niksoft package mainly for the B&W conversion but it includes an HDR package as well is this any good or will i need the photo matrix plug in?

regards

Mark

[Don Chesnut]

I'm not sure. I use Photoshop Elements. I've heard that Nik's HDR Efex is one of the best to use but it does not work with Photoshop Elements, so I use Photomatix Pro. Hope this helps.

[Mark von Kanel]

Thanks Don ill give it a go and let you know how i get on

[JPS]

Hi Don,
I appreciate all the comments above; but find I keep looking back at your picture, there is something extremely compelling about your work and I like it just as it is; Well done.