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HDR Real Estate Photography
Published August 28, 2011If you have ever tried to sell a house, especially during this fun economy we are having, creating compelling photographs to show off your house are essential for competing for attention with the thousands of other houses on the market. I was asked to photograph a one-of-a-kind log cabin home located in Pendleton, IN that was built from an old tobacco barn from the NE part of the US (you will see the words tobacco painted on the wall on one of the upstairs photos…this is original stuff!). Since this house had large open spaces and windows, I shot in the late afternoon and after dusk utilizing HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography that takes many photos together and brings out the entire range of shadows and highlights to give you a special feel. Looking at the back of the house and looking into the kitchen, you can feel the warmth of the lighting and the depth of the vaulted ceilings and the large central fireplace. Also check out the photos during the day where the inside of the house is exposed properly as well as the outside not being over-exposed or blown out. This type of photography helps even everything out for a unique look!
This type of photography will help many home sellers to showcase their homes. If you are interested in selling your house, or having trouble selling your home…how about a change of your marketing tactics and get some new photos of your home?
Last Night-Time Space Shuttle Launch
Published February 10, 2011I’m about a year late, but I really wanted to share these photos. I happened to be on vacation with my family and parents to Disney in February of 2010. Well a few months before I decided to take a chance and find out if there was going to be any shuttle launches as there were only to be a few left. Wow!! The second day I’m there there’s going to be a night launch! I had seen one about 10 years ago when I actually worked at Disney for a semester, but this time I actually had a nice camera and lenses, so I wasn’t about to miss it! (I actually flew down but my parents drove, so they had the luxury of brining all of my equipment…just in case!). This was STS-130 for Endeavor’s last shot as well as possibly the last night launch of a shuttle ever!
The first night was a bummer as it was called off about 4 am due to low clouds, which I’m actually glad happened. The second night came and I got there a bit earlier around dark (about 8 hours before launch) and people were already getting the good spots. I hung out along the coast at a site were many people gather off of high way 1. I hung around there for a few hours, but was getting cold and hungry, and couldn’t stay in my car as I would loose my seat. I took a chance and hoped in my parents truck and went down the coastline to see if I could spot a better place. What luck! Behind an office building was a clearing with a few others already parked there. After backing in and securing my spot, I covered up and took a nap for a few hours (in the meantime it was very cold for Florida this week…and didn’t make things very fun at Disney either!). About an hour before I setup shop and used my iPhone to listen to the local radio feeds from NASA to see how things were going. All Clear!
Up to this point I had also done a ton of research from others on the best way to tackle basically going from dark, shooting into the sun! So what I did was set my ISO at 400 at f 8.0 and bracketed the exposure from +-.5 & +-1 to get me 5 shots at the push of the button. This would allow me to make sure I was able to get a correct exposure as it went from dark to very sunny! I was also shooting with a 300mm lens. Below is a few shots that shows what I was able to capture.
Space Shuttle on the Launch Pad – 12 miles away!
Shuttle just a few seconds after launch
Solid Rock Booster separation at 146,000 feet or 27.5 miles
Here is a collage of the first few seconds of the launch
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