Robert's Ramblings

The evening's getting on and the party almost over.

Thank you Tim and Dee for your wonderful hospitality tonight. Such a beautiful home demanded an image to match. Perhaps I should have captured this scene earlier in the evening when there was more action but I like the subdued 'had a good nigh' feel.

I tried a few ideas in capturing this image. I took two bracketed sets of 3, one at ISO160 and the other at ISO1600. The idea of the high ISO was to try and minimise ghosting in the individual frames. I was not happy with any of the high ISO images in terms of people and movement so I then explored the low ISO images. The middle exposure was very good but I really could not make the image transition beyond something you'd find in a 'House & Garden' magazine.

The final composition was a HDR composite of the low ISO images with no ghosting management at all. I really liked the sense of movement this created to liven an otherwise static image. This HDR image nearly didn't make though. I'd already rendered my final 'House & Garden' version and was in the middle of this post when I remembered the words of U.S photographer Joel Grimes when he said, "We can't take a photo and have it look like something that was taken 10 years ago. Were tired of it. You have to create new imagery." So with that thought I started again.


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 350 - Good Times Good Friends'. 4s f/5.6 ISO160 15mm