This vacation better rock...OR ELSE!

            My little guys can be good sports most of the time.  Here is a quick stop to the hotel on vacation in NH.  I don't care for normal portraits ;)

Someone asked me how I did this, here is what I told them:

Nothing I do is a secret and I am more than happy to share. First off, I like the surreal effect of these little guys. I also wanted to keep the killer clouds in the shot and HDR is the best way to achieve the surreal and the detailed sky. This is a heavily tone mapped set of 5 brackets -4, -2, 0, +2, +4)...yes, 5 brackets and I had Photomatix auto-detect the movement and I was surprised at the great job it did at removing the movement (my kids cannot stay still for a second).

After tone mapping I loaded it into PS and did some selective coloring, brightened the faces, darkened the sunglasses (they were a purple color in the tone mapped product), applied some targeted contrast to the ground and brought up that color as well.

I then loaded that image into the Imagenomic's Portraiture plugin and smoothed the heck out of the skin tones to remove the dirty/grungy texture on their skin from the HDR. This softened the skin. I like this effect as well, very surreal. I also used this plugin to warm the skin tones. 

To complete it, I added a liberal amount of vignette to highlight the little dudes.  Some of the vignette was added via the burn tool and some using lens correction in PS.  Nothing like using a lens correction to add vignette, hehehe.

Oh, and to take the shots. I was laying down on my side with a Sigma 10-20mm set to 10mm at probably around 2 inches from their sneakers...pleading with them to stay perfectly still ;) All hand held.  You should have seen the looks of the people waiting to look at the scenic view.  I am sure they were wondering why I would be lying down on the cement trying to photograph my kids in such a way.

Taken in: United States / New Hampshire / North Conway (show map)

Taken on: August 20, 2011

Tags:

hdr

kids

surreal

tone mapped

extreme

twins

pentax

k-5

new hamshire

scenic view

photomatix

wide angle

distortion

smooth

vacation

people

Art

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Groups appears in: • Artistic Photography • HDR more » • Sigma 10-20mm • Photomatix • HDR NO HOLDS BARRED • HDR Surreal • HDR Unlimited • Cool HDR, dude! • HDR Extremes • HDR - Portraits • Hardcore High Dynamic Rangers >STRONGLY TONEMAPPED + LUCISART • HDR ADDICTED • You Think this is Art • PENTAX Art (please tag "Pentax Art") • HDR - From The Real Masters • HDR Portraits (Post 'em all!) • Surreal Side (HDR/Tone Mapping) • ALL HDR PHOTOS(OVER THE TOPTHE BETTER) • ***SCREAM OF THE PHOTOGRAPHER*** • HDR - PASSION • HDR:Striving Toward Excellence: POST 1/ AWARD 2 • Handheld HDR • HDR Creative Shots • !*Flickr Award Group*! (GIVE 5 AWARDS) • **HDR Terrorist (Post 1, Comment 2)** • Team PentaxLife • How Did You Do That • The HDR Emporium • Post-Processing Anonymous ( P.P.A ) • Ultra Wide Angle • Pentax HDR • Pentax K-5 / K-5 II / K-5 IIs Photographers • Pentax K-5 Fan Club • HDR! (P1/C3) • Family HDR « less

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