The Generator Room

Here’s a shot from one of my explores to an awesomely dilapidated old generator building at an abandoned sanitarium near Berlin, Germany. It’s the kind of place just screaming out for High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography. For this shot, I used the new Aurora HDR 2018 to bring the eight brackets together, before finishing things off in Luminar. I suppose I could have done most of the edits in Aurora, but I’ve gotten so used to Luminar for my final touches. I began recording a screencast tutorial for this one, but then ended up spending more time on the edit and thought you all might be bored with a longer video. So, I suppose that begs the question: how long a video tutorial is best for folks? Five minutes? Ten? More? Less? Let me know your thoughts. Oh, and what software is the best for such screencast tutorials? Screenflow? Something else?

A little bit of this…

… and a little bit of that. Â That’s basically how I approach my post-processessing work (the editing of the images) when it comes to my photography. Â For example, I talked about the new Aurora HDR 2018 software the last couple of days, but for me to be truly finished with one of my photographs, in this case, I typically employ more than just one pieces of software. Â Today’s shot is a great example: I used the beta version of the new Aurora HDR 2o18 the merge the five separate images (which capture the various levels of light I encountered at the location) into one base file, made a few slider adjustments to spice it up just a tiny bit, and then exported the file into Luminar (another Macphun product). Â In Luminar, I used a few filters, selectively brushing the effect into the parts of the photograph where I wanted them. Â And that was it. By the way, I’ll discuss both Aurora HDR 2018 and Luminar in greater detail here on the blog, as well as in upcoming video tutorials on my YouTube Channel.

Desk Job

I don’t know about you, but this is one desk in the abandoned asylum to which I would not want to be chained. Â I wonder what happens in this room when midnight rolls around? Â I have the sense that the sound ‘thwack’ of a ghostly wooden ruler across the knuckles would be the least of my worries. Â Perhaps I should do an overnight URBEX visit here one night to see what happens. Anyone want to join me?

You know the Drill

It’s been a dog’s age since I had a good URBEX explore, but I finally got fairly good does recently. Â I’d been hankering to visit this old abandoned asylum in the woods for a really long time, but had not taken the time to research specific location and infil/exfil routes. Â Had a little time after work recently, so I whipped out the smartphone to do a quick recon (google maps and such), leaving me plenty of time for an initial patrol to see what was there. Â I was NOT disappointed, even though I only explored the ground floor of the asylum’s main building (it has three levels, including the basement), and none of the several other buildings on the compound. Â More to come from this rockin’ location, and I’m certain I’l be hitting this location a few times over the next few months. Â BTW, next time you come down hereÂ +Bob LussierÂ we’ll hit this one!

The Wooden Stairs to Nowhere

I’m not entirely sure why this is the case, but I find myself, more often than not, failing to post-process my HDR brackets as promptly and as quickly as I should. Â Typically, I’ll end up only working on a few sets of many hundred sets I may have harvested on a particular trip. Â It’s always a treat for me to go back to my archives to dig up some long forgotten brackets to work them up, finally, and to share them with all of you. Â This is one of those shots that almost did not see the light of day because I had forgotten them on one of the hard-drives I had unceremoniously tossed into a corner. Â This happen to any of you out there? Â I imagine I’m not alone on this.