3 Custom Car Photos – Verp or Cool?
Custom Car Photography – HDR
Special Ed’s 1956 Buick Special shot at the Mesa Cruise – 10/24/2010 (click on shot to zoom!)
What’s HDR? In case you forgot, my friend Alan wrote a great story about “High Dynamic Range” or HDR. What it is, how he does it and a few resulting shots. Alan’s Car Photography HDR. Since Alan introduced me to HDR, I’ve always wanted to try it. I have a Nikon D90 that makes bracketing photographs easy so it was finally time to try it.
How’d I do?
For me, HDR either makes a WOW effect where I can’t imagine seeing something so beautiful, (just so you know, I have a soft-spot for sunsets) or the photo looks too digital, faked and generally induce a three-quarter verp. There’s certain amount of funky-artsy-cool in the shot in both cases, but obviously, I’m shooting for the WOW. Right now, I think I’m still over digitized, pretty noisy (in film it was “grainy”) and showing I’ve never done this before. Gonna work on it…
In my defense, I used the first free HDR software set I could find. It’s called “Luminance HDR” Download it here. I’d say the software was fairly easy to use and I was able to combine it with “The Gimp” (the free photo editing software I use cause I don’t own and haven’t taken the time to learn Photoshop) with the help of a tutorial. Here’s that tutorial. There are several options and selections to try (none with explanations about what they are!) and I was running through those trying to figure it out… then Luminance kept crashing. Crap. If I stick with this, I’ll buy one of the more well know HDR softwares out there.
(I love how you can see the lower control arms sitting on the ground!)
Here are a couple other shots I took. These are both of my buddy Erock’s newly painted 1964 Chevy Pickup. Both of these are made with Luminance, but you can see the effects can vary quite a bit. If you dig it… let me know!
MyRideisMe.com is always looking for photographers! If you’d like to share your work, please get in touch. Send email to moc.emsiedirymnull@nimdA
I’d love to hear your comments!
Tags
Related Posts
Share This
I think they look great!
Those look pretty good Pike! I really dig that SixPho Chebby truck. Love the scallops. Those photos came out cool!
Those turned out pretty cool Pikester!
Not bad my friend, just remember not to overkill all your pics w/ HDR. It can be addictive just like the old fisheye….trust me. I’m hoping to come out of my hiatus here soon.
Thanks Nick. I know… don’t over do it. These were done in haste with software I probably couldn’t live with due to the crashing. There were so many HDR options with no explanation of what each did too. I experimented, then BOOM.. crash, start over. We’ll keep trying!
Hey how’s it going I really like the paint job on your buddys Truck !!! I have a 64 c10 And ima start doing to body work and have to start think about the paint job I’m for sure going with a two tone paint Job. I was think from the windows down use the color your buddy used and the top a white base cot with gold Pearl or gold transparent cot . I was wondering if your buddy can let my know any info about his paint job ??? Thanks
Emanuel. You can contact Eric yourself. Join MyRideisMe.com, then send a note to Eric here: http://www.myrideisme.com/Garage/erock805/1535 He sold the truck, but I’m sure he’d help you out. Good luck with your project! -pikesan