HDR Portraits

If you had a chance to read my previous post, then you'll no doubt recognize the subject of this photo as Capt. Jim Yergin who was featured in my shoot with The Nature Conservancy earlier this week. As soon as I had the pleasure of meeting Jim, I just knew that he would make a great subject for a duo-tone portrait. This afternoon, I happened to come across an article in the November issue of Black & White Photography Magazine on HDR Portraits. The image above is an HDR composite of three different exposures of the same photo (one 2 over, one 2 under and one properly exposed) , which were then merged in Photomatix. I then converted the image into a duo-tone in Photoshop. This technique is a very effective way to create gritty portraits if that is the sort of thing you're into. In fact, I could have pushed the contrast of this image even further if I so desired. Although I'm not a big fan of a lot of the HDR work that is currently in vogue, I really love this technique and will probably find a lot of use for it.

Just Passing Through

Several months ago I wrote about an image (see below) that I created using an under-exposed image of a deer in dappled sunlight. At the time, I had only begun to experiment with my 'tapestry' technique and wasn't sure where I wanted to take it. Just recently, I've begun to revisit the concept and have been encouraged by the direction and the results that are materializing.
This technique relies on the soft forms and native noise that develops within an image when it is underexposed at a very high ISO. Of course, you can add noise to an image in Photoshop –which I've done with the image of the goose– but to my eye it looks somewhat less organic. Once the image is converted to a duo-tone, the high RGB noise blends together and adds quality to an image, rather than subtracting from it.
I'm compelled by imagery where the details of the subject matter are almost irrelevant, which allows the viewer to focus more on the emotion of a scene or moment. I am also interested in photographically exploring the idea of the Living’s transience within nature and time.

The self-portrait was made in an area of our field where I've found several Civil-War era bullets. I've often stood on that spot and wondered about who fired the shots and what (who!) they might have been firing at. I also think about the Native Americans who would've walked the land well before that. In the great span of time I'll become someone else's ghost one day as well. It is a humbling thought that I hope will be conveyed in this body of work.