HDR Concert #15: The Working Dead

FOR-POST

 

This month’s Concert was pretty challenging and may have scared away a few (no pun intended)!  The premise was to download the brackets, as usual, but then composite either a Zombie or Zombie Hunter into the composition.  I had a blast with this one and really expected more entries.

This Concert concludes the HDR Concert Series on EverydayHDR.  Have no fear!  I have another option all lined up and will be announcing it tomorrow, November 1st!

The entries, in order of receipt:

01-Johnny-Santiago

Johnny Santiago

Location:  Redondo Beach California

I’ve been a Freelance photographer for about 12 years now shooting mainly coastlines, Sunsets etc. I love shooting long exposure pictures at night. I like HDR photos if they are done right. I’m trying to perfect the photo realistic look. My Cameras of choice are Nikon.

Post Processing Highlights:

  • I brought the photos into Lightroom and then sent to Photomatix for basic tone mapping, Strength, Lighting adjustments, White point and luminosity and sent back to Lightroom.
  • In Lightroom brought down the highlights and increased the shadows.
  • Sent to Photoshop and applied a High Pass Sharpening layer with Linear lite blend mode. Replaced the sky with dark clouds. Then added 4 zombies and one bat from the internet. (I couldn’t find anyone to be my zombie) Added shadows where needed and sent back to Lightroom.
  • Increased the contrast on the whole picture and painted more color saturation on the zombies and the brick wall
  • Applied noise reduction and a bit more sharpening.        
  • Added a vignette and done.

Where can I Find Johnny:  Facebook

02-Stephen-Morley

Stephen Morley

Location:  Southern Ontario, Canada

Longtime amateur photographer who enjoys the journey as much as the destination.

Post Processing Highlights:

  • Blended street scene into 32bit file and selectively dodge and burned
  • Selectively blurred this using a gradiant map
  • Selectly edited and layered photos of  a cat and new sky
  • Selected edited and layered a photo from a recent Toronto Zombie walk
  • Composed these with original scene.
  • Used Topaz Adjust to blend tones
  • Further dodged and burned the result.

 

My-Work-darker-sky-small

Blake Rudis

Location:  Kansas City, MO

I am the one responsible for EverydayHDR, take that as you may!

Check out the Photo shoot for this zombie photo:

How To Photograph a Difficult Subject

and a close representation as to how it was post processed:

Zombie Photo Post Processing

Post Processing Highlights:

  • Mildly tone mapped the brackets in Photomatix.
  • Into Adobe Camera Raw for some highlight and shadow recovery along with noise reduction and a touch of clarity.
  • Brought it into Photoshop and did several Curves adjustments on the highlights, mid tones, and shadows.
  • Blew out the background a bit and dropped in a Zombie pic from the above photo shoot.
  • Post processed the zombie using the techniques in the above tutorial.
  • Stamped the layers and used Topaz Adjust to bring them together and match the color temperatures.  It also gave the photo a nice grungy appearance.