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HDR and Just like the Rudolph cartoon

Posted by Dave Mercer Digital Storm Photography On 10:03 PM 0 comments
Experimenting with HDR (High Dynamic Range) images and came out with the first shot below. This is near Buckeye Furnace and shot on tripod with different exposures. The idea is to expose for both shadows and highlights in this case the trees and the sky and merge them in photoshop. While I don't think this came out too bad and certainly better than trying to correct the shadows or highlights in photoshop I found out however there is a problem with clouds. Clouds move so when taking several shots and merging them together you can have distortions but the beautiful sky was one of the biggest things I wanted to capture so I still ended up spending time working with the healing brush and such. Anybody with suggestions for this issue please let me know.



After HDR try I decided to drive back to my little unknown nature preserve and came across several deer including this guy. He was pretty photogenic as I snapped quite a few photos from jeep then stepped out and walked toward him to get a better angle coming to within about 50 yards before he decided it was too close and leaped to edge of tree line before stopping to let me take several more shots. Then I watched him do something I thought was pretty amazing. See his head turned while he is at the tree line? I thought he was perhaps watching another buck who had perhaps crossed into his territory and as I was looking to see what he was looking at I observed two does coming toward me. At that instant the 1st doe seen me and stopped, peering through a small leafless tree. It is at this time I saw something that was pretty cool, the buck left his safe zone, get away trail and came back out toward me and ushered these two to the wood line. I mean I've been to the woods hunting for many years but this was first time I observed a buck with this nurturing nature without the rut on his mind. He literally knew I was there and came back out to within 40 yards of me to make sure those two other got to the tree line and he made them go quick. Usually you'll see them flag and run but this buck took care of the young.









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Just a quick note

Posted by Dave Mercer Digital Storm Photography On 7:50 PM 0 comments
A yahoo photographer friend had this and I stole it cause I thought it was cool..........

Check out this video: Free Hugs Campaign



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New post processing and trying to catch up

Posted by Dave Mercer Digital Storm Photography On 11:17 PM 0 comments
Ok I know I've not posted lately but I've found myself with more stuff to do with not enough hours in the day to do them. I've been experimenting with some new post processing techniques dealing with contrast and skin retouching. It just so happened to be timed after a shoot with Crystle and her cute daughter pictured below. The photos are sorta in reverse order as the first one is toward the end of the shoot when she was beginning to finally warm up to me so much to the point that she wanted to be inside the camera, as this shot is not cropped at all except to 8x10 aspect ratio. Anyway as you can see I'm working to make those big blue eyes stand out and in the last image with her mom I boosted the yellow contrast range quite a bit.







Next few shots were from today when I decided to see if I could call in a couple of owls that are said to be in these woods. I've never attempted to do this so of course no owl sightings but did see some beautiful colors and a decent little buck. He's hard to spot in the first photo so see if you can find him and in the second he's more visible although still obscured by vegetation. These shots were from a tree stand in which he skirted around me at approximately 75 yards out the whole time. It is now bow season in Ohio and the bucks are starting to make their rub lines and I even seen what appeared to be a couple of scrapes.









Looking over a couple of magazines a fellow photographer lent me I've found some new information and things I'm going to try out. One is a contest in which the prize would be an all expense paid trip to a photography conference in Las Vegas. I'm not sure what the odds are of winning but it would be nice. The other is information on some upcoming conferences in and around Ohio which I hope to be able to attend at least some of them to learn and develop some new ideas.
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