iPhonography :: The HDR Really Works!

I was demonstrating what HDR processing can do for an image during a class I was teaching yesterday at Saints Volodymyr & Olha Church in Chicago.  I was delighted to see that the HDR development setting on an iPhone 4S camera does actually improve the image in the way High Dynamic Range image processing software is supposed to.

These images were taken inside the church, hand-held, no image enhancements other than the HDR setting on the iPhone. Usually if you expose for the inside of the church, the windows go all white.  If you expose for the windows, the church interior goes all black.  With the HDR setting, you see detail in both the church interior and the windows.

Here’s the image without HDR.  See the white windows?

No HDR – White Windows

Here’s the image with HDR.  Ahh!  The windows have color and detail again!

With HDR – Colorful Windows

Thanks, Apple!!

I’ll be posting more insights into the magical iPhone camera soon.  Let me know if there’s a particular App or topic you’re curious about!

~~ Keep focusing on the beautiful!

Harry Hitzeman

Chicago Architecture :: Chicago Cultural Center

Chicago Cultural Center Tiffany Dome through Arches III

The Chicago Cultural Center has two spectacular stained glass domes, two  beautiful mosaic and marble staircases, glass-block flooring that emits light UP, and the huge Grand Army of the Republic Memorial Room.  Here’s a description of the building from the website:

Designed by the Boston firm of Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge as the first home of the Chicago Public Library, the Chicago Cultural Center was completed in 1897. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 31, 1972, and was designated a Chicago Landmark by the City Council on November 15, 1976.

The Beaux Arts style was influenced by the buildings of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. The building’s interior features rooms modeled on the Doge’s Palace in Venice, the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, and the Acropolis in Athens. Its lush ornamentation includes two stained-glass domes, rare marbles inlaid with sparkling mosaics, and intricate, coffered ceilings.

What inspires me are the curves, the arches, the twinkling glass and gold leaf pieces in the mosaic inlays.  And the lights in the floor are an unusual and dramatic sight.  The glass block in the floor was originally there to allow light from the second floor domed rotunda to illuminate the first floor. Now the light direction is reversed!

Chicago Cultural Center Grand Army of the Republic Memorial Hall Doorway

What specific photo skills could you develop at the Cultural Center?

First, the skill of composition.  Get high, get low, get left, get right, get tilted, get in the corner, get in the middle.  Moving your viewpoint around until you see something dramatic or symmetric or diagonal or colorful.  Playing with the bottom lighting.  Getting Escher-like with the staircases.

Secondly, setting exposure to handle available light.  This is primarily an indoor photo venue, and the existing lighting is set up for people, not necessarily for photography.  It is far from uniform.  On-camera flash is too harsh, so the key is using the available light with a vision to what you are creating in the frame.  This means longer shutter speeds on a tripod, and that brings in the light hidden in the shadows.

I think you’ll be amazed at the beauty of the place, and delighted with the compositions to be created there.

See more photos from the Chicago Cultural Center here.

Chicago Architecture :: Saints Volodymyr and Olha Church

SVOC Colors & Curves

There are three churches in my gallery now, and this one in Chicago is spectacular!

Saints Volodymyr and Olha Church is a beautiful church in Chicago’s Ukranian Village.  I was allowed to photograph from the choir loft.  I wanted to create a composition that would capture the dramatic curve of the choir loft railing and still include the beautiful view of the church windows, arches, and a huge radiant chandelier.

This image was developed using HDR software in order to balance the bright light of the stained glass windows and the darker church interior.

This is an example of the type of creative composition I will be teaching during a workshop on Composition in the Field at this church on March 3 from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM.  Read more about this workshop online at Digital Photo Academy.

You can view more photos of this impressive church in this gallery — Saints Volodymyr and Olha Church.

Chicago Botanic Garden :: Hosta Cuddle

“Hosta Cuddle”

I was running out of inspiration in my photography.  My last “photography trip” was way back in early March 2011, and the next one would not be for a year or more.  No one was buying my photos, and no one was enrolling in my workshops.  I was getting very few “Likes” on my posts.  I was thinking why do this at all.  Who cares about these images anyway?  There are trillions of them on the internet, and why bother?

Yesterday when I was walking up my driveway after a day at the office, I heard the singing of a Cardinal up in the sky somewhere.  I stopped and listened and looked until I saw him, sitting way up on my TV antenna.  Then I smiled and whistled back.  Was he singing for me?

Last Saturday I was at the Chicago Botanic Garden, to shoot some pictures of the flowers and plants there.  Initially, I was walking around in the grip of the mind’s chatter — “Find pretty flowers … in soft light  … with uncluttered backgrounds … and get their names  … and won’t everybody just love it  … and blah blah blah blah blah.”

But then, by walking around, by myself, just being still and letting the plants attract me (letting my heart attract them?), by just walking around and noticing my feelings, my mind’s focus was directed to a group of hostas perched quietly along a stairway under a canvas tent.  Their stillness and apparent contentment with their position, leaf curling against leaf, created in me a feeling of appreciation that these flowing, unspectacularly green ripply plants had accepted their destiny to put on a display –  today — now  — just for me, because everyone else had passed them by.

So what is the purpose of a plant growing or a bird singing or a Harry making a picture?  Is it to win awards, recognition, appreciation from other people? I think not.

I think, when we are still, we are all inspired to do what feels good to us, and I should not forget that for me it feels good to pour some of my life into creating a thing of beauty.  Like the Cardinal singing his song.  Like the hosta leaf growing and cuddling with her sisters.

I will remember to focus my mind on these things, before focusing my camera.