Aurora HDR Pro First Impressions

I have been using Aurora HDR Pro since it became available. You can purchase it at https://store.stuckincustoms.com/aurora-hdr-pro-holiday-bundle . Trey Ratcliff and the McPhun team have a winner here. This software is easy to use, has some awesome presets and with Trey's tutorials you can do your own style with ease. I like HDR but I am not a fan of the extreme HDR where photogs do the sky to dark and there are halos along the tree lines and way too much noise in their images. I am more of a perfectionist, I hate noise and I hate when images look too fake. This is all subjective and really just a matter of taste in what you prefer, so this is just my prefererences. This program converts RAW images seamlessly to the point I really don't need to convert with Adobe Camera Raw first. The bottom line is I may never use my old trusty standby, Photomatix to make an HDR image again. This new software is that good, buy it now and never look back. The only draw back is it's only for Mac users. One really cool feature is you can add a glow to highlights in your images without making the whole image ghostly looking. Here's a sample below of the glow look.

More of Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree

Here are a few more pictures I took of the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center in New York, New York. As we maneuvered around the tree through the crowds of people I looked for flat areas to set my gorilla pod on or clap it to. There was no way anyone would want to try to get a tripod through this mob of people. Settings were ISO 80 f 5.6 at 1/8 sec. And just for fun I added snow to an animated GIF. on the last image.

The Most Famous Christmas Tree in the World

New York City, Rockefeller Center, Giant Christmas Tree...its doesn't get any better than this. I fought my way through thousands of people to get this shot. Anyone wanting to shoot this famous tree will need to travel light and quick. I used my trusty Canon powershot SX50 hs because it's a great travel camera. I mounted the camera on a gorilla pod and shot this at ISO 80, f-5.6 at 1/8 sec using the self timer to get a sharp picture. The image was then finished in Aurora HDR pro and Photoshop CC.

Holiday Season

It's been awhile since I posted here. I have been dealing with some issues, but I think I am over the hump now and I can begin to blog on a regular bases. Thanks to all for your patience and support during this brief period. To kick off the holiday season I thought I'd post a picture of our Christmas tree. I used a Canon powershot SX50hs on a tripod for this shot. With the tree lights on, I took 3 shots and highlighted the top, bottom and background with a Nikon 910 speedlight. I merged the 3 images with Aurora HDR pro. I then added falling snow with Photoshop CC and made the image in to an animated GIF.

Strobe It

Canon powershot sx50 hs with two sb600's & sunlight back lighting.

Portraits with Speedlights

Many people don't realize this but I threw away all my studio lights about seven years ago. I started using speedlights when Nikon introduced CLS and never looked back. I can easily set up portrait type lighting anytime, anywhere. The pictures above were shot in a basement with low ceilings against a white wall. I used four speedlights to make this portrait. One as a main 1/4 power with shoot thru umbrella, one in a strip box at 1/16 power from underneath in front of the camera, one from above pointed straight up into the rafters at 1/2 power, and one in a strip box off to the right pointed back at my subjects at 1/8 power. This system is easy to use and set up quickly and allows you great mobility.

Last Light

Beautiful lighting on the battlefields of Gettysburg.