Category Archives: Before & After
Touchdown Jesus Before/After
Hi all,
Here’s another quick before/after of a shot I took this last weekend on the campus of Notre Dame University. My wife was kind enough to let me escape our colicky two month old and get out to take some evening shots.
This shot is of the library on campus that is more famously know as “Touchdown Jesus”. It received the name from the mosaicked wall that looms over the nearby football stadium mirroring the raised arms of a referee signifying a touchdown. Please forgive me for not getting the before/after shots to line up. I did some cropping to the original image and wasn’t able to get them exact.
I actually used 9 different images to create this HDR shot. After aligning them using Photomatix I opened it up in Photoshop to enhance the image some more. I probably pushed it a little too far but kind of liked the contrast of colors between the warm glow of the sunset and the cool blue sky on the other end of the horizon. For those interested here are some of the plugin’s and steps I took for this image.
Nik color efex: Tonal contrast, Pro contrast
OnOne Phototools: Color boost (Cranked it way up) and then masked out the building since it was over saturated, sharpen
Photoshop: Level corrections. New layer with screen blend mode on building to lighten it a little. New layer with multiply blend mode to create a vignette.
Once again here is the final image.. for now. 
It was a beautiful spring evening on campus and I’ll probably post more images from this outing later. A spring storm had just gone though a couple hours earlier which gave everything a nice refreshing feel and look to it. Here is one other shot from the outing of the Basilica on campus.
Morning Grazing Before/After
Hi all,
It has been a while since I did a before/after of one of my pictures so I though I’d throw one up that I was working on last night. The image was taken last June but I stumbled across it this week when I was looking for some images to enter into a photo contest that had the theme “horses”. During a visit to Utah last summer we stayed in Park City. I woke up early one morning to get some sunrise pictures of Deer Creek Reservoir with Mount Timpanogos in the background. On the way back to Park City I drove though some of the farm lands of Heber Valley. I pulled off the side of the road as I saw these horses grazing in a field as the sun first was breaking though the clouds. The mist/fog was still pretty heavy as it was a cooler morning and had even been raining the night before. It looked so peaceful so I took the shot.
So here it is. A before/after of the morning grazing.
Here is just the final image
This shot is a HDR image which is comprised of 3 different shots that are then overlayed on each other to bring the exposures of each different image into a single shot. This more accurately displays the range of light in a scene then the camera is able to do on it’s own. The before picture is the image exposed to the setting the camera said would be the correct exposure. I then took two more pictures with exposures too bright and too dark to capture the full range of light. Below are the underexposed and over exposed images I took along with the correctly exposed shot.
Two stops overexposed:
And two stops underexposed:
After combining the images using a program called Photomatix I did further retouching work in Photoshop CS5.
Indiana Sunset Before/After
Hi again,
It’s been too long since I have posted a blog entry so I wanted to throw another before/after shot out there. I personally don’t think the picture is that great but it does help show what HDR photography can do for you.
This is another shot I took on my drive home from work when I was driving 2 1/2 hours to work and home. The drive gave me a lot of time to find different spots to shoot along the way. This was taken shortly after a fast moving rain storm had gone through the area and the sun was starting to peek back though the clouds. The warm ground was creating a nice mist over the rolling corn fields.
One thing I particularly like about this image is the white fence going down a side road. Well, at least from this spot it look like a nice fence. After I took this image I went down the road to get a better look at it and hopefully to get some other shots. Turned out to be a very ugly tin/sheet metal fence that had been crudely put together. Guess sometimes it’s better to capture things from a distance.
*sorry for the alignment being slightly off.
Day’s End Before/After
Hey everyone,
Here is another before/after shot.
(Best viewed in Firefox. Other browsers might not render correctly)
For a little over a year I working in Carmel, Indiana which is about 2 1/2 hour drive from my home. I spent a lot of time on the same stretch of road driving to and from work. I’ll just say I utilized our public library quite often for their books on cds.
I would always take my camera gear with me on this drive since you never know when a photo opportunity might arise. I’d also find time to take stops throughout the drive when I came across anything I thought would make a good photo. Sometimes I’d vary my commute a little and take the smaller roads to find some of the hidden gems of Indiana.
This image was taken during one of those diversions from my normal commute. It was taken just outside of a small Indiana town called Lakeville. As I was driving home it had been storming and raining and was just breaking up as the sun set. The main part of the storm is just to the left of the image. As I passed the small lake in Lakeville I took some of the smaller roads around the back side of the lake. This was taken just off the road over the river that flows into the lake.
This image is also a HDR image where the final image is composed of three other images, each with a different exposure, to better capture the elements of the scene. One exposure will capture the colors in the sky but the foreground might be too dark to have any detail. But the next exposure will have the foreground detail but the sky will over exposed and too bright to get the colors. When you combine the images you can get a full range of exposures needed to render the scene.
I hope you like the before/after shots. Let me know if you have a image you would like to see done this way.
Thanks for visiting!
Before/After Oregon Coast
Hey all,
For this weeks post I’d like to show you a little before/after shot of one of the pictures I took while on the Oregon coast in August. You can use the slider bar in the middle of the photo to view the before and after versions of the photo.
(Best viewed in Firefox. Other browsers might not render correctly)
I’ll be the first to admit that my photos don’t always look the best and almost always need some further help in the post processing process. The final version of this image is actually made up from three different shots taken one after the other. The three images taken only differ in exposure which allows me to capture a larger range of light and detail than you could achieve with a single shot. The three images are then merged together to create a High Dynamic Range image also known as HDR. (I plan on creating a HDR tutorial at a future date)
After the images are merged together I open it up in Photoshop to make the final adjustments to blend and adjust it as needed.
The Photo itself was taken just outside of Pacific City. This Haystack rock is just outside of Cape Kiwanda as is sometimes referred to as “the other Haystack Rock”. (As opposed to the popular tourist destination on Cannon Beach.) This Haystack rock is one of the largest standing at 327 feet tall and is the world’s fourth largest sea stack or off-shore sea monolith in the world. (taken from Wikipedia)
The picture was taken on a overcast and gloomy morning after I had gotten up very early in hopes to capture a sunrise that never happened. It’s always hard to get Mother Nature to cooperate so you’ve got to take what you can get.
I plan to do more of these before/after type of post in the future with some of my other shots as well. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this and if your interested in more posts like this.