Experimenting with an HDR'd panaroma

I wanted to try something I hadn't done before - a panaramo processed in HDR style. Some people hate HDR processed photos - and yep, they can be over the top, but like anything in photography, it's all subjective.


The Brisbane River, just outside my window, provided an interesting scene for a panarama - now the Rivercat stops at Teneriffe Pier, there are always boats drifting about.


I took 13 sets of bracketed shots on my 5D II, and then set about experimenting in CS5.


First, I created the three panos (the under exposed layer, the correctly exposed layer and the over exposed layer) using Photoshop's Photo Merge feature. I then tried to run those (rather enormous files) through the Merge to HDR Pro feature - it said the file sizes had to be the same....

I tried to re-size the files, but fiddling with pixels all proved a bit time consuming and ultimately didn't work. Finally, I ran the Merge to HDR Pro for each of the 13 bracketed shots, and stitched them all together in PhotoMerge to create this pano.....

I need to work out how to control the colour banding a bit more effectively, but it gave me a feel for the process. I'm keen to try it again - perhaps on a tripod and at night, might make an interesting alternative. In any case, it was great to be out at that time of the day with the camera. 


The large version of the image is available on my Flickr stream.

A new website is born!

It's all a bit exciting! Exciting enough to warrant a couple of exclamation marks!! With a simple post out to Facebook, I launched my photography website, www.melaniesurplice.com this morning. 

I had been wanting to build one for a while, having trialled several of the Australian hosted photography website services. I either found them too slow for uploading photos or just too difficult to set up - and I reckon I'm reasonably tech-savvy.

Then I came across the US hosting service, PhotoShelter, which offers template-based websites for photographers, as well as a pretty impressive searchable library of images. It cost the grand old total of USD$1 (or AUD$0.90) for a two week trial, so I spent a week setting it up.

It was all fairly intuitive - I didn't watch any of the (many) tutorials they have about setting sites up. Throughout the set up process, it's a matter of simply adding written content to the pages where you need that, and uploading photos to create galleries.

There are HEAPS of templates to choose from, or you can customise your own. I went for a crisp, simple white design.

You basically choose a monthly payment plan depending on how much storage space you think you'll need for your galleries. The more you pay, the less commission Photoshelter takes from sales of prints through your site. The sites are packed with all sorts of features such as image ordering, shopping carts and direct integration with Paypal - I had all of that set up in about an hour - and it will charge in Australian dollars even though it's an American hosted service.

I loved that throughout the set up process, anything that affects SEO (search engine optimisation), is highlighted - so the more content you add to these areas, the better the site is likely to rank in the search engines.

You can set specific properties for specific galleries - so for example, I can offer free downloadable postcards and funcards in one in one gallery, and purchasable prints in other galleries, which I'll activate in the near future.

PhotoShelter sites have the all-important social media sharing features built in - so if you're looking at one of my photos and decide you really like it, you can share it via Facebook, Twitter or a raft of other social media platforms. This can be really fiddly to set up yourself - so Photoshelter takes all the hassle out of embedding code and tech speak, tech speak, tech speak.

The site also lets me designate galleries as private, or invitation only - so I can upload client photos from a shoot, send them the link to the private gallery with automatically generated log-in details, and they can view the gallery in their own time. Again, I could make these photos available for them to download for free, or I allow them to order prints from either my own printer or one of PhotoShelter's printing affiliates. There aren't yet any Australian printing affiliates, so the printing is done out of the US or UK. That's all still to be discovered!

Anyway, after a week of testing and playing with my PhotoShelter site, I can say I'm pretty impressed  with it so far. I reckon it's good value and you get a LOT of features that would be very costly to commission to a web designer to build.

So - we'll see how this new mission in my photography career pans out. I've also got a spiffy new Facebook page too. Head on over there and say hi!