HDR Portrait

HDR Portrait of a friend and her niece below. I have done a couple dozen portraits like this the last few years, but don’t advertise it per se.  Prior to the shoot she asked if it would be possible to “photoshop” the image to look more like a painting than a photo.  Enter HDR.

Knowing that’s what she wanted, HDR was going to make creating that look quite easy.  I could have toned down the colors or not tried to crush so much dynamic range into an 8 bit range, but I ramped it in there because she LOVES color. If you saw her home you’d be a believer.

Could I instead just have blasted them with flash from the front to try and balance the blazing sunset? Yes, but if you’ve shot directly into the sun like this yourself then you know I would have had to have HAMMERED them with flash and the shot ends up having an entirely different feel to it.

Here is a larger version linked below (hosted on my photography website):
http://www.digitalcoastimage.com/hdr_portrait.html

The technique is a bit tricky.  This is what I do.  There may be a better way, but without a tri-pod and because I’m dealing with humans not a static subject, this is what I’ve managed to piece together.

It’s hand held, I’m shooting with a heavily back lit subject directly into a blazing sun.  I say tricky because I am firing off flash on the first image of the bracketed sequence.  The D3 allows you to choose the order of an automated exposure bracketed series and I chose to have it shoot from under exposed to over exposed. The D3 shoots at 9 frames per second and the SB-800 can’t recycle fast enough so the flash only has true power on the first blast so when the second frame fires the speedlite is spent momentarily so the camera is rapidly ripping through the under to over exposed shots before the flash can fully recycle.

Now depending on your camera, and the speed at which it shoots (FPS) + the type of speedlite you are using + the settings you have the speedlite set to, etc…. your results may vary. The camera is set to shoot on continuous shutter release for this automatic exposure bracket.  I normally shoot a 5aeb with 1EV steps between and will often not need the fifth frame which is the most over exposed and the longest shutter speed (sometimes movement by then).

Post production for these shots can be handled in a ton of different ways, such as either beginning in LightRoom and using the Enfuse plugin to fuse images, alternatively one could take individual frames into Photoshop and layer them and mask in pieces needed, or one could merge to HDR and tonemap the image which will be the background and again mask in the flash image.  Regardless, the editing ends in photoshop brining in the first frame with the flash fired to mask over the properly exposed background (and your subject will be underexposed in that non-flash image).

The biggest issue is whether you were steady when you fired off the burst because the quality of either fusing the image or merging to HDR will depend largely on that.  Even though images can be “aligned” in post, that process does compromise the image quality to some degree.  Movement  also complicates masking in the single/flash frame in post, although you’d be surprised how much wiggle room you actually have if you are pretty good at dealing with layers and masking in photoshop.

I probably would not attempt this technique with a camera that shoots slower than 5fps, but I have not attempted this with a camera that shoots 3fps so I can’t say for certain.  The margin for error with the longer time between frames means either you or your subject is more prone to movement.  I’ve occasional had difficulty holding still even at 5fps on a 40D (some time ago), but I have never attempted this at 3fps and probably would have a higher failure rate with those longer moments between frames.

Additionally, your subjects need to understand how critical it is to remain still.  Good communication and/or with a countdown helps.  Blinking is not as big of a deal after the first shot fires because you’ll mask in that first shot anyway.  However, if they drift at all during the capture, then that movement can be problematic aligning images in post and obviously both you and your suj

I always shoot these sequences in RAW because obviously the white balance of the flash hitting your subject may be an issue with the other shots that follow not synching with whatever ambient lighting exists.  You’ll definitely suffer more if shooting JPEG when dealing with exposure adjustments and color balance issues this technique requires.

If you choose to attempt this in a more normal lighting environment, then obviously using flash might not be needed at all and you would just treat the shot like any hand held HDR capture.