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2001 Wine Odyssey


An astronaut with a day off from space walks, research, and mission tasks might want to take a break from the daily regiment of Tang to enjoy a nice pinot or cab with their protein paste. A quick trip to the wine cellar module on the International Space Station could provide such luxuries to our orbiting scientists. Although currently not available, or scheduled for production, a wine cellar would be a nice addition to the space based bed and breakfast. However, if there were such a thing, I believe this might be the wine cellar they would visit.

As a bit of an impressionist I commonly take creative liberties to realize my vision. Feel free to watch the video below to see how I use Photomatix 3.2 and a couple of NIK filters to build a wine cellar suitable for international space travel.

Capture Notes:
Nikon D300
Nikkor 16-85 VRII
Gitzo Traveler
Markin Q3T ball head

Aperture: f/16.0
Focal Length: 16 mm
ISO Speed: 200

Processing Notes:
Capture (7 images)
NX2 (Raw Conversion)
Photomatix (HDR/Tonemapping)
NIK Define 2.0 (Noise reduction)
Photoshop (Curves adjustment – global contrast/color correction)
Nik Color EFX Pro (Glamour glow – desaturate)
NIK Color EFX Pro (Tonal Contrast)
Photoshop (size for web)
NIK Sharpener (Display adaptive 35% selectively applied to the wine bottles)
LightAsMagic.com

…or, if you have time, you can just watch the video (length: about 10mins).

If you are interested in purchasing any of the NIK Tools, make sure you use the coupon code LIGHTASMAGIC and receive a 15% discount on their products.

http://www.niksoftware.com

To find out more about Photomatix 3.2 visit HDRSoft’s website at:

http://www.hdrsoft.com/

You can use the coupon code LIGHTASMAGIC to receive a 15% discount on Photomatix

Flip Flops Prohibited

Red Rocks Amphitheater is just down the hill from my house, so I visit it quite a bit. It’s my personal Landscape photography training ground. Today the light was barely gracing the tops of the rocks and I wanted to try a couple new techniques in post. I decided to find a reasonably interesting foreground object and go for it.

A couple readers have asked for a quick “101″ lesson regarding HDR images and the tools used to create them. I am still working on more substantial content, but until it is finished, I will outline a basic example here.

Here are three images from the seven bracketed images I captured (+3,+2,+1,0,-1,-2,-3) to create the above photo. Obviously one is exposed for the rock and sky, the other is exposed for the cactus, the middle one is what the camera meter decided was a good average of the light in the scene. However, no one image has an exposure that is adequate for both foreground and background. That is where Photomatix Exposure Fusion comes in. You might be able to achieve a balanced exposure outside of software, but it would require either filters or flash, maybe both. But if you are traveling light, then this might be the way to go for you? You can read more about Photomatix here:
http://www.hdrsoft.com/

YucaLight

Foreground exposure +3 on the meter

YucaMeter

Metered

YucaDark

Background exposure -3 on the meter

Processing: Caputre (7 Images) -> Import -> RAW Conversion to .tiff (applying NX2 landscape picture control) -> Photomatix (Exposure Fusion attenuated) -> NoiseWare -> Photoshop (contrast/saturation boost, sharpened) -> flickr

Tip: Even if the weather is nice, if you are planning on making some image near cactus, make sure you bring something other than your flip flops.