This, my friends, is a 32 bit image as it looks on my monitor. You see, my monitor can’t handle all the information that a 32-bit photo contains. As a matter of fact, your monitor couldn’t handle it either. No monitor can that’s build for consumers today.

Another thing: In order for an image to be HDR it must be 32-bit. You might be thinking, “well, what are all those HDR images on the Internet? They certainly aren’t HDR because they’re not 32-bit. They only use the colors current monitors interpret from the 32-bit to simulate an HDR.

Does this mean HDR is a hoax? In a way, yes. But it’s still pretty cool.

Carbonite takes a long time to perform a complete back-up, but it's worth the time and the money.

Your computer must be on and connected to the Internet. If you put your computer to sleep or it goes to sleep automatically, Carbonite is still working.

So, you might be wondering how long it takes to upload a couple of hundred gigs, as I was before I did it. Well…it takes a long time…many weeks. They warn you that if you’re backing up more than 50 gigs, it gets slow, but after doing it I didn’t notice much difference after it backed-up that much.

I had over 200 gigs to back-up (see picture). It took 10 weeks–that’s 2 1/2 months. To be sure that is a very long time, but it’s done now.

I can’t lose. For $59 I backed-up a heap of images, full-size Raw images at that. Since my last external hard drive crashed and I lost 40,0000 images, I am so relieved to have all my new images backed up online.

This is no advertisement for Carbonite. I just finished writing about my experiences with photography in the cloud. This book is incredible (if I don’t say so myself : ) If you are thinking about putting your data “up there,” I’ve tried them all (Mozy, Dropbox, etc…) and have given step-by-step directions for using each.

In the book, you’ll also find out which online image editor does not resize your image (and many more cloud secrets). There is one (and only one) that keeps a 10 MB Jpeg file 10 MB. No resizing.

Check out Photography Applications for Cloud Computing.

Celebrity photography at events can be tricky. You have to think way ahead of time in order to get good photographs.

I pondered how I would photograph James Franco at the Palm Springs International Film Festival screening of Sal, a movie he directed. This post is specifically for event photography. I was surprised that I had no problem bringing my camera and flash unit to the Palm Springs International Film Festival. Here are some tips:

1. Buy tickets for event well ahead of time. I bought my tickets for the screening two weeks before the event.
2. The night before put new batteries in your external flash unit and charge your camera’s battery.
3. Test your camera and flash unit at different settings at home.
4. Set your camera to Manual Mode.
5. Set out everything you are going to take with you before you leave for the event.
6. Sit in the first row of seats at the event.
7. Don’t feel intimidated when other photographers have far better equipment than you do.
8. Test flash unit and adjust as necessary. I found that 1/16 power in Manual Mode worked for me in a movie theater.
9. Shoot both horizontally and vertically and at different focal lengths.
10. Stay after the event to get some close-up shots.

The building’s curves hugged the ground, much of it tucked underground. The landmark structure, designed by Kendrick Kellogg in 1978, was identified by architectural buffs as “modern organic.”

I shot the building awhile back before it caught on fire today. Image is creative commons, please link back to this website if you use it.

Canon Rebel T3i

Before I got my Canon 5D, I had a Canon Rebel XT sometimes called the D 350.

That camera was incredible in that it took great images, even at high ISO speeds. It does much better than the 5D in terms of eliminating noise at high ISO speeds.

For this reason I can recommend the newer version of that model, T3i

A cheaper alternative to the T3i is the Canon Rebel T3, which is several hundred dollars less than the T3i. The T3i has 18MP while the T3 has 12MP. Both cameras, however, can be used for just about everything from shooting stock photos to selling the at Fine Art America.

Many of my stock photos were taken with the Rebel XT so they, too, are perfectly good. The Canon Rebel XT is the cheapest Rebel at $277 (used). A new one is over $1000!

If you have the camera already, pick up David Busch’s Rebel T3i book (he’s good; I wrote a book with him).

When you go to sharpen your image, change the resolution to 300 percent so you can clearly see what you are doing.

Then sharpen the photo (Filter>Sharpen>Smart Sharpen).

Choose less than 2 for the Radius and then play with the Amount until you see some improvement.

All we can hope for is that the people at Adobe really work hard to get this working better.

The sharpest image you’ll get at full resolution (100%) is still blurred and noisy.

Painterly HDR selection in Photomatrix

I have to say my favorite HDR tone mapping choice in Photomatrix Pro is the painterly effect. If my image set is well-exposed, all I have to do in Photomatrix is select Painterly and I’m done.

This brings to mind Photoshop HDR Pro. I think the two are very different. HDR Pro ends up being more labor-intensive with not all that great results.

I favor Photomatrix because it’s easy navigation and platform, not to mention the number of choices you have for tone mapping.

Either program isn’t perfect, and I still find myself tweaking ACR (Adobe Camera Raw). Anyone out there have a favorite HDR processing program. Let me know which you like best by commenting below.

Getty Villa in HDR

HDR photography can range from making an image have more detail to a fascinating (well, to some people) array of color and light.

I shot this image at the Getty Villa in Malibu. Great place to visit if you haven’t ever been there–filled with antiquities and paintings from centuries past.

This shot was handheld using AEB (Auto Exposure Bracketing), a mode that you set in the menu of most dSLR cameras to make the camera takes three images of different exposures in rapid succession. When I took the images I had to keep my finger pressed on the shutter release until the camera finished taking the three pictures.

This image was processed in Photomatrix Pro. After I finished correcting ghosting in the program by circling the moving figures, which turn from unidentifiable blurs to real people (see image), the image processed the photos by merging them with a complex algorithm.

When the photo finished processing in the program, it appeared to not be all that extraordinary. I really didn’t like it so I decided to go all the way and overprocess.

While I try to work with the details when making HDR photography more realistic, I went with the Grunge selection by clicking a thumbnail at the bottom of the window from a selection of thumbnail choices.

Grunge is the selection that makes the most changes when merging the photos. It’s probably also the type of photo that many people criticize as being overprocessed, thinking that all HDR photos are like this.

HDR photos can vary from having enhanced details to looking like a painting. You can choose what you like and then tweak it using sliders or a curve.

Do you think there is any artistry to this? Write your comment here.

Now through Dec 24th.

I’m having a sale at Fine Art America. Get a 20% discount at http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/matthew-bamberg.html

Use the following discount code DETRPB to buy retro signage photographs. A blast from the past!

The images were taken 5-10 years ago when they were in better shape. Many don’t exist anymore.

If you need more information, you can contact me at matthewbam@aol.com

Courtesy of John Maloof

Big news tonight about Vivian Maier. Maier, who was a nanny with a passion for street photography, photographed the streets of twentieth century Chicago. The new postmortem book edited by John Maloof, the founder of the now-great photographer’s work, is on its way to being a collector’s item.
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Maloof discovered the photographs at a garage sale and snapped them up for $400. Currently they are being shown at at the Howard Greenberg Gallery, 41 East 57th Street, NYC.

More at Digital Traveler.