Other Charleston Residential Styles...

[rpcrowe]

Charleston residential styles have evolved throughout the centuries resulting in a Historic District that is beautiful. The one consistent is the many homes with porches to take advantage of the sea breezes and to shade the living areas...
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[Chrisclick]

While photographing houses is not exactly my 'cup of tea', I can appreciate the care you have taken with these shots.

I think you have captured the handsome nature of the buildings very well and the exposure/treatment of the skies is also nicely done. Did you bracket these shots? If so, it certainly has resulted in 4 very fine images.

Not real keen on framing (borders), although, it does seem to work well here.

[rpcrowe]

Thanks Chris...

When shooting areas that have extremes of bright and dark areas, I will usually bracket my exposures but, I don't usually combine them in an HDR type of image. I simply choose the exposure which I think will be the easiest to post process.

Canon DSLR cameras make it so easy to bracket exposures, that I don't see any reason not to shoot that way. After selecting AEB and deciding upon the amount of bracketing (most often one stop - over and under the meter reading) placing the camera in burst mode will shoot three bracketed exposures and then stop shooting until the next time I press the shutter button. The high speed burst mode takes only slightly more time to shoot than do single exposures.

The only problem can be if you have not set up the camera to continuous bracketing after it is shut down and turned on again. I did that the first time I ever shot bracketed exposures and ended up with the bracketing being cancelled after I changed camera batteries. This left me with three IDENTICALLY EXPOSED images for each shot. Now, that was a waste. It was also in Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico. I wanted to do HDR images down there....

Sure it takes a bit more memory to shoot bracketed exposures but, I have plenty of memory.

I wish that I had brought my 12-24mm Tokina on this trip. The 17mm side of my 17-55mm f/2.8 IS was a bit long in many instances. After correcting the tilt of the buildings, the composition was a bit tight. Charleston is not an easy place to shoot because it is a bit cramped...

Borders are a personal taste. Some photographers like them (Obviously I am in that group) while others detest them. I use this type of border on most of my shots. I think this border looks good in a black montage...

[Chrisclick]

Thanks Richard,

You're preaching to the converted regarding bracketing. I also shoot with Canon (7D Mkii), like (one of) yours, and am more than familiar with AEB settings (now), though, have also fallen into the trap of not setting the 'Bracketing Auto Cancel' setting to 'OFF'!

So glad you have plenty of storage, thanks for mentioning that.

[rpcrowe]

As far as the sky in most of the images. I use NIK Viveza control points to select the sky and tone down the brightness and then pump up the blue a bit.

[Shadowman]

Very nice series, you really made the most of your focal range in filling the frame.