Guest Post: ‘Southern Africa in HDR’ by Morkel Erasmus

I must be honest, I was a bit taken aback when Gerry asked me to be write a “guest photographer” blog for Photo-Africa.  After all, I am the one with the newish blog supposed to be asking guys like Gerry to post guest blogs on my page.  Nevertheless, I am honoured to do just that.

I guess my fascination with photography goes back to my school years.  I was always intrigued by that “makes-you-want-to-be-there” shot – you know? The typical, idyllic sunrise/sunset over the Snake River (a la Ansel Adams), or the golden light on a Kalahari Lion in the morning.  Those shots that make you wonder what the heck you are doing sitting in an office…

I had been raised in a family that was constantly looking for a reason to go to the African bush or to the ocean.  Annual trips to Kruger cemented a love for nature deep within me that is hard to explain to people who just don’t get it that you can laughingly slap the dust from your face, sit around a fire and listen to the awakening bush as the night draws near.

I had enjoyed taking photos with my ‘advanced’ point-and-shoot (I still have my trusty Kodak Z612 – it’s now permanently in my wife’s handbag for those rare moments when I don’t have a large camera slung around my neck), but it was not until purchasing my first DSLR camera in January 2009 when it all ‘clicked’ into place for me – pun intended.  Much like my picking up the guitar at age 17, it was a decision I had put off for much too long, I would come to realise.

Not long after starting to hone my skills as a wildlife and avian photographer – two fields which had become my primary focus, I started dabbling in proper landscape photography again – and was amazed by the complexity it entailed.  My constant yearning for growth in my new hobby-cum-obsession had me reading, browsing and posting like wildfire on various internet photography forums.  It wasn’t too long before I stumbled upon HDR photography.  If you don’t know what that is yet – it’s an acronym for High Dynamic Range.

A short synopsis is basically this – HDR is the use of various methods to blend multiple exposures of a single scene or shot in order to better capture the dynamic range of the scene (since your eye can handle much more dynamic range than a camera can with a single exposure).  For a great explanation and tutorial (not to mention some stunning HDR work), have a look at www.stuckincustoms.com.

All of a sudden I knew it – I had found my niche…my ability to make those ‘wow’ photos and to convey more accurately what I was seeing with my eyes, and even push the artistic boundaries a bit.  Since discovering this methodology, I have started to explore a great number of ways and application areas within photography to apply it to. It obviously doesn’t work with EVERY shot, but when it does work, boy does it come together nicely.

I will show you an example posted recently on my blog (www.saffascapes.blogspot.com). We had the privilege to hike the famed Fish River Canyon hiking trail in Namibia. On the morning of our departure, we spent some time at the main lookout point overlooking this majestic piece of earth. It was hazy and even drizzling in parts over the canyon, which made the photos come out dullish. Here is an out-of-camera shot for example.

Now – taking three exposures at different exposure brackets (typically -1; 0; +1 or -2; 0; +2 or a combination of both), and blending them together – you get this:

Amazing difference right??

Now, it’s one thing to apply it to landscapes where you can fairly comfortably take 3 to 7 exposures in quick succession without much changing (given that you’re tripod-mounted and the wind isn’t pelting at 100km/h!)…but my mind eventually started racing…what about applying this to other nature shots, like wildlife shots? Sure – you would get very few instances where the particular subject would stand perfectly still through multiple exposures…but that’s where the beauty of RAW comes in. By carefully playing around with the settings in your RAW converter, you will be able to ‘generate’ 3 exposures or more of the same wildlife scene, which would be good enough to use in generating your HDR image.

Let’s do this by way of an example…

Here is the out-of-camera shot of a cheetah we found walking along the Auob riverbed in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park.

The sun was behind some clouds, hence the dull appearance in lighting. No problem! I quickly generate one shot over-exposed and another which is under-exposed by 1 stop.

Now comes the tricky part, I pull all 3 images into a clever piece of software called Photomatix. There are various ways to skin this cat (pun once again, intended). A favourite among landscape photographers is to blend the exposures in Photoshop using layers and gradient masks. I like using that method as well, but for most shots I just like the ‘punch’ that Photomatix delivers as it renders your HDR for you.

Within Photomatix there are quite a lot of tweaks with which you have to experiment a lot since they have different effects on various photos. Once I’m happy with the result, I generate my HDR image. This, however, often looks very ‘plastic’, flat or oversaturated, depending on which tweaks I applied. I bring this image back into Photoshop for some more post-processing. I typically use a lot of curves, selective colour and selective noise reduction (Photomatix loves that noise!) to get the final image. I might even layer it upon the original exposures and punch back some detail as needed.

The end-result? A cheetah image that really pops, having an almost 3D look and feel to it.

Well, there you have it…a not-so-brief quick overview of how I get to my images – some of them.  As I said, I don’t apply HDR to every shot I take…that would be plain ignorant.  I do apply it to shots that have the potential to be “wow” shots, but just need to have the “oomf” brought to the fore. I am far from mastering it – but I do believe I’ve found something which sits nicely with what I want to achieve as a photographer, and I enjoy doing it.

I have plenty that turned out disastrous, but here are some of my other HDR results that have worked.  

I hope that these images inspire you to push the boundaries in your area of photographic interest. I will keep pushing mine!

Morkel Erasmus

Morkel’s Links

• Blog: SAFFASCAPES
• Facebook Group: Morkel Erasmus Photography