The Big Pictr

Photos from flickr in the style of The Big Picture By Trevor Hartsell

Photos by Apogee Photography

  1. dj sugar
    "dj sugar" Thank you so much for all of your wonderful comments and your favorites. My love of my kitties started me on this wonderful journey of photography. Follow me on Twitter Like my Facebook Page Check out my HDR Tutorial and HDR Walkthrough at my blog (Apogee Photography) +
  2. Lake Austin
    "Lake Austin" Follow me on Twitter Like my Facebook Page Check out my HDR Tutorial and HDR Walkthrough at my blog (Apogee Photography) +
  3. dj angel
    "dj angel" (Apogee Photography) +
  4. The Littlefield House
    "The Littlefield House" Follow me on Twitter Like my Facebook Page Check out my HDR Tutorial and HDR Walkthrough at my blog Best Viewed Large on Black Three Exposures HDR -2/0/+2 EV Photomatix: Strength: 100 Color Saturation: 100 Luminosity: 1 Very High Smoothing White Point: .142 Black Point: .231 Gamma: 1.0 Tempurature: 0 Saturation Highlights: -1 Saturation Shadows: -1 Micro-smoothing: 0 Highlights Smoothing: 0 Shadows Smoothing: 0 Shadows Clipping: 0 Photoshop 1. Topaz Adjust - Exposure Correction 2. Topaz Adjust - Photo Pop 3. Smart Sharpen Amount: 119 Radius: 8.0 Remove: Lens Blur Shadow Fade: 47 Tonal Width: 51 Radius: 1 Hilight Fade: 47 Tonal Width: 45 Radius: 1 4. Surface Blur: Sky As one of my favorite HDR photographers says: You All comments, criticism and tips for improvements are (as always) welcome Explored highest #62! Many thanks!! See where this picture was taken. [?] (Apogee Photography) +
  5. City of Austin Power Plant
    "City of Austin Power Plant" Follow me on Twitter Like my Facebook Page Check out my HDR Tutorial and HDR Walkthrough at my blog Best Viewed Large on Black Three Exposures HDR -2/0/+2 EV Camera Raw Temperature: 6000 Tint: +3 Photomatix: Strength: 100 Color Saturation: 79 Luminosity: 1 Very High Smoothing White Point: .952 Black Point: .363 Gamma: 1.0 Tempurature: 0 Saturation Highlights: -1 Saturation Shadows: -1 Micro-smoothing: 0 Highlights Smoothing: 0 Shadows Smoothing: 0 Shadows Clipping: 0 Photoshop 1. Topaz Adjust - Exposure Correction 2. Topaz Adjust - Photo Pop 3. Smart Sharpen Amount: 119 Radius: 8.0 Remove: Lens Blur Shadow Fade: 47 Tonal Width: 51 Radius: 1 Hilight Fade: 47 Tonal Width: 45 Radius: 1 4. Surface Blur: Sky As one of my favorite HDR photographers says: You All comments, criticism and tips for improvements are (as always) welcome Highest Explore #15! Many Thanks! See where this picture was taken. [?] (Apogee Photography) +
  6. City of Austin Skyline
    "City of Austin Skyline" Follow me on Twitter Like my Facebook Page Check out my HDR Tutorial and HDR Walkthrough at my blog My status is set to traveling I know, but last night my sweet sweet girlfriend decided that I needed a new wide angle lens before we went to San Francisco this weekend. I snapped this photo on the way to pick her up for lunch. This shot is a fond farewell to the city that I love to spend a few days in another city with the woman that I love. See you when we get back!! Best Viewed Large on Black Three Exposures HDR -2/0/+2 EV Photomatix: Strength: 70 Color Saturation: 81 Luminosity: 0 High Smoothing White Point: 0 Black Point: 0 Gamma: 1.0 Tempurature: 0 Saturation Highlights: 0 Saturation Shadows: 0 Micro-smoothing: 0 Highlights Smoothing: 0 Shadows Smoothing: 0 Shadows Clipping: 0 Photoshop 1. Topaz Adjust - Default 2. Topaz Details - Default 3. Levels layer to adjust black and white points As one of my favorite HDR photographers says: You All comments, criticism and tips for improvements are (as always) welcome. Explore Highest 40! Many Thanks! (Apogee Photography) +
  7. North of the Bridge
    "North of the Bridge" Follow me on Twitter Like my Facebook Page Check out my HDR Tutorial and HDR Walkthrough at my blog View of the San Francisco Bay north of the Golden Gate bridge. HDR Techniques and tutorials: I used a technique on this photo which I initially heard about from Trey Ratcliff. Two of my other favorite HDR photographers, Cliff Base and Brandon Watts also use this technique. You will find tutorials online from both Trey and Brandon. Another incredible HDR photographer and one of my heroes on flickr is Artie. In every HDR photo he posts he puts details of how he did it. He also have a really good photomatix details enhancer tonemapping tutorial. A short description of my current technique: I start with three exposures at -2, 0 and +2 since my Nikon d5000 supports three shots with AE bracketing. I would like to do more exposures, but I am worried about bumping the camera to adjust EV to take another set. I then open the RAW format into camera raw and set the white balance of each image. I then save out copies in jpg form. I read in Trey Ratcliff's tutorial that photomatix suggests this method. My settings in Photomatix are usually very close to: Strength: 100 Color Saturation: 40 - 60 Luminosity: 5-10 Microcontrast: zero or higher Smoothing: 0-10 White Point: I look at the histogram usually and try to move the bell curve into the middle. Sometimes I will just go with what looks best. Black Point: Same as white point, but after I adjust Black Point, I might go back and adjust White Point and repeat until the bell curve of the histogram is in the middle or it just looks right. Gamma: 1.0 I usually don't mess with anything else because I will end up doing adjustments in Photoshop. Sometimes I will tonemap two or three versions of the image depending on if I like the way the sky turned out or the details. I will group up all the tonemapped versions and the original shots into a group in Bridge. I will then use the Bridge command to open up all of the shots as layers in Photoshop. Once in photoshop, I will usually decide which of the tonemapped versions is the best overall. Then I will mask in the parts of the other tonemapped images that I like. Then I will mask in anything from the original images that I like. Along the way, I might have to apply a curve adjustment layer to individual layers that I masked in. I do this to match the overall brightness or darkness of the image. Once I have masked everything in, I usually do a unsharp mask on the details, and a denoise on the sky. The HDR process creates a lot of noise and especially creates noise when using just three images. This is one of the reasons I would like to use more exposures. I use masks to control where the denoise and sharpening happen in the photo. Once I am happy with the entire composition, I will try a few Topaz Adjust filers in Photoshop. Usually I just use exposure correction on the default setting. The other settings are a bit too much for my tastes. If I don't like what it comes up with, I usually will do a curves adjustment layer with the "S" curve in order to add a bit of contrast. I might add a hue/saturation layer to take out unwanted yellows or reds. I might also bump up the vibrance a little bit if needed. In this photo Specifically: I had a really hard time with this shot until I realized that Photoshop actually did a pretty good job of auto aligning images. This was a handheld shot and it was pretty windy up there at the time. I apparently moved around quite a bit. Once I found auto align was working, I had to settle for manually aligning just a bit because I had swayed so much that the even Photoshop couldn't align it perfectly. I chose the center of the image to align and let the edges be a bit out of alignment. I masked in the 0 EV shot for the foreground to keep the details high. (Apogee Photography) +
  8. Town Lake
    "Town Lake" Follow me on Twitter Like my Facebook Page Check out my HDR Tutorial and HDR Walkthrough at my blog Town Lake is what Austinites call the river that runs through Austin. I can't for the life of me remember what the river's real name is... HDR Techniques and tutorials: I used a technique on this photo which I initially heard about from Trey Ratcliff. Two of my other favorite HDR photographers, Cliff Base and Brandon Watts also use this technique. You will find tutorials online from both Trey and Brandon. Another incredible HDR photographer and one of my heroes on flickr is Artie. In every HDR photo he posts he puts details of how he did it. He also have a really good photomatix details enhancer tonemapping tutorial. A short description of my current technique: I start with three exposures at -2, 0 and +2 since my Nikon d5000 supports three shots with AE bracketing. I would like to do more exposures, but I am worried about bumping the camera to adjust EV to take another set. I then open the RAW format into camera raw and set the white balance of each image. I then save out copies in jpg form. I read in Trey Ratcliff's tutorial that photomatix suggests this method. My settings in Photomatix are usually very close to: Strength: 100 Color Saturation: 40 - 60 Luminosity: 5-10 Microcontrast: zero or higher Smoothing: 0-10 White Point: I look at the histogram usually and try to move the bell curve into the middle. Sometimes I will just go with what looks best. Black Point: Same as white point, but after I adjust Black Point, I might go back and adjust White Point and repeat until the bell curve of the histogram is in the middle or it just looks right. Gamma: 1.0 I usually don't mess with anything else because I will end up doing adjustments in Photoshop. Sometimes I will tonemap two or three versions of the image depending on if I like the way the sky turned out or the details. I will group up all the tonemapped versions and the original shots into a group in Bridge. I will then use the Bridge command to open up all of the shots as layers in Photoshop. Once in photoshop, I will usually decide which of the tonemapped versions is the best overall. Then I will mask in the parts of the other tonemapped images that I like. Then I will mask in anything from the original images that I like. Along the way, I might have to apply a curve adjustment layer to individual layers that I masked in. I do this to match the overall brightness or darkness of the image. Once I have masked everything in, I usually do a unsharp mask on the details, and a denoise on the sky. The HDR process creates a lot of noise and especially creates noise when using just three images. This is one of the reasons I would like to use more exposures. I use masks to control where the denoise and sharpening happen in the photo. Once I am happy with the entire composition, I will try a few Topaz Adjust filers in Photoshop. Usually I just use exposure correction on the default setting. The other settings are a bit too much for my tastes. If I don't like what it comes up with, I usually will do a curves adjustment layer with the "S" curve in order to add a bit of contrast. I might add a hue/saturation layer to take out unwanted yellows or reds. I might also bump up the vibrance a little bit if needed. In this photo Specifically: I had taken a few shots of this scene as the sun was setting. I liked the water and the boats from a different set of exposures and masked them in. (Apogee Photography) +
  9. The Golden Gate
    "The Golden Gate" Follow me on Twitter Like my Facebook Page Check out my HDR Tutorial and HDR Walkthrough at my blog View from the north looking south of the Golden Gate Bridge. HDR Techniques and tutorials: I used a technique on this photo which I initially heard about from Trey Ratcliff. Two of my other favorite HDR photographers, Cliff Base and Brandon Watts also use this technique. You will find tutorials online from both Trey and Brandon. Another incredible HDR photographer and one of my heroes on flickr is Artie. In every HDR photo he posts he puts details of how he did it. He also have a really good photomatix details enhancer tonemapping tutorial. A short description of my current technique: I start with three exposures at -2, 0 and +2 since my Nikon d5000 supports three shots with AE bracketing. I would like to do more exposures, but I am worried about bumping the camera to adjust EV to take another set. I then open the RAW format into camera raw and set the white balance of each image. I then save out copies in jpg form. I read in Trey Ratcliff's tutorial that photomatix suggests this method. My settings in Photomatix are usually very close to: Strength: 100 Color Saturation: 40 - 60 Luminosity: 5-10 Microcontrast: zero or higher Smoothing: 0-10 White Point: I look at the histogram usually and try to move the bell curve into the middle. Sometimes I will just go with what looks best. Black Point: Same as white point, but after I adjust Black Point, I might go back and adjust White Point and repeat until the bell curve of the histogram is in the middle or it just looks right. Gamma: 1.0 I usually don't mess with anything else because I will end up doing adjustments in Photoshop. Sometimes I will tonemap two or three versions of the image depending on if I like the way the sky turned out or the details. I will group up all the tonemapped versions and the original shots into a group in Bridge. I will then use the Bridge command to open up all of the shots as layers in Photoshop. Once in photoshop, I will usually decide which of the tonemapped versions is the best overall. Then I will mask in the parts of the other tonemapped images that I like. Then I will mask in anything from the original images that I like. Along the way, I might have to apply a curve adjustment layer to individual layers that I masked in. I do this to match the overall brightness or darkness of the image. Once I have masked everything in, I usually do a unsharp mask on the details, and a denoise on the sky. The HDR process creates a lot of noise and especially creates noise when using just three images. This is one of the reasons I would like to use more exposures. I use masks to control where the denoise and sharpening happen in the photo. Once I am happy with the entire composition, I will try a few Topaz Adjust filers in Photoshop. Usually I just use exposure correction on the default setting. The other settings are a bit too much for my tastes. If I don't like what it comes up with, I usually will do a curves adjustment layer with the "S" curve in order to add a bit of contrast. I might add a hue/saturation layer to take out unwanted yellows or reds. I might also bump up the vibrance a little bit if needed. In this photo Specifically: I masked in the 0 EV shot for the foreground. It was really windy and the details of the grasses were too fuzzy after the tonemapping. (Apogee Photography) +
  10. The Capitol at Dusk
    "The Capitol at Dusk" Follow me on Twitter Like my Facebook Page Check out my HDR Tutorial and HDR Walkthrough at my blog Best Viewed Large on Black Three Exposures HDR -2/0/+2 EV Photomatix: Strength: 86 Color Saturation: 75 Luminosity: 0 High Smoothing White Point: .224 Black Point: .075 Gamma: 1.0 Tempurature: 0 Saturation Highlights: 0 Saturation Shadows: 0 Micro-smoothing: 5 Highlights Smoothing: 2 Shadows Smoothing: 0 Shadows Clipping: 0 Photoshop 1. Topaz Adjust - Default 2. Topaz Details - Default 3. Topaz Denoise 3 - Default mask on sky 4. Levels layer to adjust black and white points As one of my favorite HDR photographers says: You All comments, criticism and tips for improvements are (as always) welcome. Explore highest 107! Many thanks!! (Apogee Photography) +