Photo Blog : Tags : hdr

Alan Einstein, known as Eye of Einstein on Flickr, is one of the photographers featured in this week’s Maui/Big Island issue. As a Hawaiian local, Alan has the envious opportunity to photograph the tropical beauty that surrounds him daily. He shares his photographs with the Flickr community, where he has photos in many different pools reserved exclusively for the best of the best in the Flickr-verse. He was kind enough to also share some insight into his life as a Big Island big shooter.

Eye of Einstein with Miss Kitty

TravelMuse: Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Eye of Einstein: A little about me is that I am now considered a bona-fide senior citizen and therefore have the benefits of leisure time. I am retired from being a working guy. I spent most of my life in the motorcycle industry, now I’m devoting more time to my photography. I have been fortunate enough to have lived in Hawaii for around the last 40 years, but I spent my early formative years growing up in New York City. Living in Hawaii has offered me many opportunities to honor the practice of photography. I have had some of my works published over the years: some in magazines—experimental fashion, rock concert, motor racing—and others in the newspaper. I have evolved into living in a rural, leisurely style. I live in a very rural area of the Big Island near the active volcano and convenient to all natural and wildlife observance.

TM: What made you decide to share your photography through Creative Commons?

EE: Creative Commons seemed to be an opportunity for much more equitable sharing of my work. There are literally millions of practitioners of photography on earth.

TM: I've noticed that you are very active in the Flickr community. What kind of feedback or response have you gotten to your photographs on Flickr?

EE: Activity on Flickr involves interaction just like any social network and only a percentage of that interaction is about the actual photograph. Initially it is all about the perception of uniqueness and style and the quality of image, and it segues smoothly into making new friends worldwide. It is a very complementary society and a great way to learn about the world and the world of photography. It also can be obsessive and take a great deal of time to post and interact.

TM: What is your favorite thing to shoot?

EE: I have been interested in the practice of photography pretty much my whole life. I can remember having a Kodak Brownie camera, and I recall as a child hearing someone say to me, “What are you taking a picture of ‘nothing’ for?” My absolute favorite is to capture grand vistas of landscapes and panorama in the way that my mind’s eye perceives them. Sometimes I like to capture cityscapes if I am traveling.

TM: What is your approach to HDR photography and other post-processing techniques?

EE: I appreciate HDR and other post-processing techniques. Mostly, I think moderation is the key factor in these applications. I use post-processing extensively in a great deal of my works. I see nothing wrong or weird in using the digital darkroom at my disposal.

As a side note to this, I also have been trained in the zone system of black and white photography. In the present-time, I also use my camera phone for taking photos and have been pleasantly surprised at the results.

TM: What advice do you have for aspiring photographers?

EE: Speaking to digital photographers, I would say to take as many pictures as you can each day and to find a simple editing program to get familiar with the possibilities. Also, develop some style of one's own if possible.

TM: What is your favorite photo that you have taken, and why?

EE: This is a difficult choice, as I have several favorites, and they fit into different genres in which I have found myself immersed session by session from time to time. One is called “il bacio” a photo of two pears; another is called "boris the spider" a macro of a jumping spider; still another is a futuristic skyline shot of Honolulu and another taken at Keehi lagoon of sailing craft. The why is the feeling of personal satisfaction, of technical achievement and of mating the art and the science of digital photography.

“il bacio”

“eye on relationships”

Perhaps you would like to see them on my flickr photo stream at eye of einstein?

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If you're a frequent visitor to the TravelMuse site, you may have noticed the unique look of some of our cover images. The covers for Washington, D.C., Beijing and this week's Yellowstone issue are all HDR photographs. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, and describes the balanced exposure the pictures display, with detail in the deepest shadows and brightest highlights.

The technique is meant to replicate the range of tones our eyes are capable of seeing, which is much wider than the range our cameras capture (or our monitors display). Often, digital photographs don't resemble what our eye sees. Have you ever taken a picture of a sunset scene to later discover that the sky was way too bright, or the landscape way too dark? With HDR photography, you take multiple pictures of the same scene, at different exposures, and blend them with specialized software to create an image that’s closer to how the scene looked to you in person.

Here are a few tips for creating HDR photographs:

Use a tripod, because if your images don't line up, the software has a harder time blending them.
Set your camera to aperture priority or manual, so your aperture doesn't change and cause the depth of field to vary between exposures.
Take a minimum of three exposures, with a half to full stop difference between them—but the more exposures you take, the better your final image will look.
Experiment with the difference between your exposures. You want one image that exposes the brightest parts of your images perfectly and another image that exposes the shadows, with at least one image somewhere in between.
Photo editing software, like Adobe Photoshop, is required to merge the images. If you don't have Photoshop, you can download Photomatix and use the free trial it offers.

Here are a few examples of the kinds of effects you can get with HDR photography: