Armadillo Loc: Ventura, CA

Mary,

Excellent use of HDR Merge technology.

At your next photo session try a modification of what you have shown here. Make a set of exposures just as you have for these images, then make your exposure reading through the glass doors/windows and lock the exposure. With exposure lock recompose your image and make your 3 exposures with +2, 0, -2, Ev. Check the overall exposures on your LCD panel on the back of the camera to make sure you have the full range of exposures.

The object here is to capture a correctly exposed door/window outside scene, and over-exposed interior to capture the shadowed areas, and an under-exposed interior and outside areas to capture the brighter blown out areas.
During PP when you merge the three exposures you will have more control over the normally blown out outside door/window elements, while at the same time capture the fine detail of the interior.

Michael G

conkerwood

Hi Mary great kitchen!!
I echo Armadillo's comment re the windows as they are quite blown as is the tabletop in the first pic. There has also been something strange happening with the processing in the window of the far room in pic 2, it looks like ghosting of some sort. But these are minor detractions from what is otherwise a very competent use of HDR, which shows off your work to great effect. My main suggestion, though, concerns the rather marked distortions, particularly in pic 1. If you look at the large size you see that the hanging lamps are perfectly vertical but the wall on the left and right are sloping out, ie perspective distortion. You will also notice that the table surface and indeed most of the horizontal lines slope down to the right. I spent a little time working on it and a mixture of the skew, warp and puppet warp commands in PS can correct all of these but there is some resulting loss of part of what I presume is the serving area on the left. In the second pic the right hand wall is vertical but the lights are hanging out of alignment and the window frames on the left are clearly sloping to the left. The skew command will fix these.The third pic again has perspective distortion with both the right and left sides sloping out and some lens distortion in that the bottom of the sink unit is curved. Lens correction and perspective correction will fix these. Now you may think I am being negative pointing out these areas but as someone with obvious designing skill and a clear skill in the use of HDR I presume you want to show your work to other clients, and so you should, your work is worth it. But I think it is absolutely essential for a professional finish, that there are no obvious distortions to detract from your work. This is particularly the case with interiors which tend to be based on rectilinear designs, because any distortions end up being very obvious. As it is your work is clearly getting towards a professional standard, but its just a few details that need attending to so so that you can give your pics that little bit extra.

Hope this helps

Peter

Armadillo Loc: Ventura, CA

Peter,

All very good observations and points to consider. There is one more before she performs prospective correction, or any lens distortion correction.

Perform these corrections before making a final crop for production. This will give the correction tool the maximum amount of image data to work with before making its own crop.

Michael G

maryp Loc: Boston

Thank you Peter and Michael for your keen obseravtions! I used a wide angle lens on these and I find sometimes this sets me up for the distotion. I put them through PS and used the skew and perspective tools but did not notice the sloping, especially on number 1, until they were posted here.
I have not quite figured out how to expose for one area but the good news is, I found a local camera shop that gives 1 hour, one on one instruction on your own camera. You tell them what you want to know and they will help you to learn it. I am making a list!! Might end up at 5 or 6 hours!! :)