About two weeks ago I was poking around HDRspotting and found a local HDRtist with a very similar artistic vision, Keith Moyer.  You will love this guys work, check out his blog, Time To Take Pictures!  He is a a great HDR Photographer that takes his work to the level of what he saw through the viewfinder and then slightly tweaks it to visual perfection.  Keith and I met up at the Kauffman Center last Friday and tore up the scene.  Well tore up the scene as much as two HDRtists with children possibly could, which really isn’t much but it sounded good!

The Kauffman Center in Kansas City is a monumental piece of architectural art.  It is monstrous and very difficult to shoot.  Sure there are some vantage points that are good, but everyone has taken those shots.  Keith and I tried to find more creative ways to capture this gargantuan structure through the Gold and Blue Hour.

I am not a fan of putting the term Gold hour and Blue hour on proper times to shoot.  Who cares what hour it is.  Is the gold or blue hour any more magical than any other?  Not really, you just get a different sky color.  There are many photogs that are quite snobbish about the proper times to shoot, who cares!  Just grab your camera, call a fellow Photog, and go.  Keith and I just so happened to be there through the gold hour and the blue hour and things worked out well.

Tip For The Week:

   You can make people disappear in a night time long exposure really easily with a nifty little trick.  This Pano was shot just before an event at the Kauffman Center, I would say that about 15 or so people walked through the middle of my 25 exposure pano.  How did they disappear?

• Set your camera on a tripod.
• Set the camera to Aperture Priority Mode
• Select a very small aperture, f/16 – f/22
• Now snap the picture.
• During the long exposure the camera will be capturing all of the movement in the image, in most cases people walk fast enough to not be recorded due to the nature of the long exposure.
• As an added bonus, since the shutter is so small all of the lights in the image will get a star effect, it can be pretty neat in Christmas light pictures.  To get an idea of this, look at an led light on your computer or gadget with your eyes squinted tight, see those star effects?

Blake Rudis

f.64 Academy and f.64 Elite are the brainchildren of Blake Rudis. While he is a landscape photographer, he is most passionate about post-processing images in Photoshop and mentoring others.

For Blake, it's all about the art and process synergy. He dives deep into complex topics and makes them easy to understand through his outside-the-box thinking so that you can use these tricks in your workflow today!