Heath Patterson - Photo Culture

Paris Series / Impressionism

2009-10-02T12:02:00.000-04:00

testimony

aliving

terminal

of these, hope

home

barbes

sunday morning

greenwood

2009-09-28T12:38:00.000-04:00

Welder for "Metal Heads"

2009-09-25T14:17:00.002-04:00

Accidental Picasso - Wrightsville Beach, NC

2009-09-25T14:16:00.000-04:00

fireworks

2009-09-08T15:20:00.001-04:00

Ships in Pacific Ocean harbor waiting for transit across Panama Canal

2009-09-01T12:23:00.002-04:00

elizabethan collar

2009-08-27T12:01:00.002-04:00

firetruck

2009-08-18T14:50:00.003-04:00

retouching by Chris Bodie

dogfight

2009-08-07T17:08:00.002-04:00

cross country

2009-08-04T12:32:00.005-04:00

parking garage deck - new construction

2009-07-22T10:26:00.003-04:00

stairs at the high museum of art

2009-07-20T13:45:00.000-04:00

parking garage construction

2009-07-20T13:42:00.002-04:00

heavy drift - washington coast

2009-07-20T11:49:00.001-04:00

bamboo detail in zen garden

2009-07-20T11:47:00.001-04:00

Oregon rain forrest

2009-07-17T13:05:00.002-04:00

Palm Trees - Los Angeles

2009-07-13T08:50:00.002-04:00

bastimentos

2009-07-08T16:37:00.000-04:00

Palm Springs at night

2009-07-08T16:00:00.000-04:00

b&w study

2009-07-08T15:30:00.000-04:00

David's Pain

2009-07-07T15:46:00.000-04:00

Uncle Jerry

2009-07-07T11:02:00.000-04:00

A few years ago, I photographed the funeral of my Uncle Jerry. Jerry had the mind of a 6 year old all the way to his death at 68. Those who knew him saw him as the uniquely special kid that never knew a stranger and never forgot a name. I just revisited these photos with the closing lines of Charles Bukowski's poem "Death of an Idiot" playing in my mind . . .

and whenever I drive through that neighborhood now
decades later
I still think of his death
while having forgotten all the other deaths
and everything else that happened
then.

It hasn't been decades, but it reminds me of the significance of certain losses, more poignant than others. To me, these are our own ghosts, and I wanted to show Jerry in an etherial manner that transcends time and place. Not so much pursuing the macabre, as a reminder of the man/child that was my uncle.

Elk - Jackson, WY

2009-07-07T10:45:00.000-04:00

I shot this in Feb. as a color image, but it was naturally very stark and devoid of color. I had pushed the native color temperature to a cool winter blue. In sharing these images with the other artists at our Ad-production Co-Op after my return, they really fit in line with a series of paintings Sid had been working on. I gave him the image to experiment with and I really like where he took it, where it transcend the subject matter and becomes a true study in palette, focus, composition, etc. Check out Sid's blogs here . . .

Jackson, WY - Cool Shades of Gray

2009-07-07T10:40:00.000-04:00

Sailboat - Puget Sound WA

2009-07-07T10:35:00.000-04:00

Cape Flattery, WA.

2009-07-07T10:27:00.001-04:00

Water Study

2009-07-01T13:44:00.000-04:00

. . . cont. Kuna Indians - San Blas Archipelago, Panama, April 2009

2009-06-29T14:59:00.006-04:00

Kuna Indians - San Blas Archipelago, Panama, April 2009

2009-06-24T15:08:00.005-04:00

Retouching by Chris Bodie

Production Stills

2009-06-20T12:21:00.000-04:00

Time Lapse HDR

2008-02-07T13:42:00.000-05:00

So It's been a while since my last post - - - but I have begun to experiment in time lapse photography, and have been blending my HDR research into this process. This first example is a little rough, but I am refining my technique with every test. I look forward to more posts on this subject, as I have come up with a solution to allow me to time controlled panning shots along an X and Y axis. After that I will find another solution to add a Z axis to this pan. Thanks for looking - more to come soon !!

I exported this video using MPEG 4 - jpeg low format. Anyone with experience in this ? I would love feedback or links on different compression methods for web and other uses. Just trying to get the best quality results with the quickest load time. The video is way too small and doesn't play smooth enough - is it better to embed "You Tube" video?

Avedon Interviewed by Charlie Rose 10/5/93

2008-01-11T23:58:00.000-05:00

I highly recommend spending an hour watching this remarkable interview and portrait of one of my all time heroes - The late, Great Richard Avedon . . .

More HDR Examples

2008-01-08T15:42:00.001-05:00

This series is from true bracketed HDR's with exposure values of -2, 0, +2. All of them were tone mapped and then blended with portions of the original exposures.

I would probably be inclined to burn in the sky just a bit where it meets the trees as there is just a bit of halo around that area.

This one is fun - Maybe a touch heavy on the "micro-contrast" ? That's what gives it such a surreal feeling. Easy enough to control how heavy that effect is by brushing through parts of the original using layer masks.

The goal of this one was to use HDR to play up the "eerie" quality of the natural environment, so while the effect is heavy, it does not feel unnatural. You can see examples of this raw image in one of my early blogs if you want to compare the effect to the original.

"Cloudscape - 01" - Maupin, OR

"View of Mt. Hood" - Oregon

HDR (High Dynamic Range) Exploration and Practical Application

2007-11-14T21:25:00.001-05:00

Welcome to Heath Patterson Photography, and my Photo Culture blog. In this post I will share some of my explorations, findings, and interpretations of High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography, and more importantly "Tonal Mapping" which is the most essential and interpretive element in the process of working with HDR images. I should begin with a brief, and slightly technical explanation of what HDR Photography is . . .

A typical digital photograph or scanned conventional photograph is 8 bit (Low Dynamic Range - LDR). It is also possible to work with 16 bit images (Medium Dynamic range but still considered LDR), but you won't see the difference on your monitor or in print, as they have a limited range of brightness and color that they can represent. High Dynamic Range images enable the photographer to create a 32 bit image by shooting a wide range of exposures, and blending those captures to show detail in the brightest highlight and the deepest shadows at the same time. Because the process requires at least 2 captures to create this broad range, this process works best with static subject matter, and requires the use of a tripod, or remarkably steady hands to shoot the bracket of exposures (not recommended). It is also best to vary exposure using the shutter rather than the aperture (f-stop), as changing the aperture results in slight image registration problems and make the process far more difficult. There are numerous applications available to create this 32 bit HDR image so I recommend trying any of them.

The fun part of the process is making this 32 bit image an 8 bit image again, that can be viewed and printed. This process is called "Tonal Mapping", which uses varying algorithmic methods to compress the data back into a viewable range. These Methods Include :

Exposure and Gamma, Highlight Compression, Equalize Histogram, Local

Adaptation, Details Enhancer, Tone Compressor, Mantiuk, Fattal, Drago, Durand, Reinhard '02, Reinhard '05, Ashikhmin

Pattanaik

These are only the methods I have worked and experimented with but there may be many more. All of these methods yield different results and vary in difficulty to control, but in my testing, I have found 2 primary goals - 1) to more realistically show a scene that has too much contrast for an ordinary LDR image or 2) to lessen the realism of the photograph resulting in an artistic interpretation of the subject matter. Some of them are easy to learn, and some are very difficult and require more experimentation and research.

So now that we understand the basic fundamentals of what HDR and Tonal Mapping are, I will share some of my results and talk about the pros and cons of the methods I used to achieve these results. I am still learning as well, so I welcome feedback and advice. I look forward to building a portfolio of this work worthy of adding to my commercial web site portfolios. Thanks for looking.