Bermondsey Tank

There is a WWII Soviet T-34 tank near my place which I always wanted to shoot some photos. Finally brought my gears there after I watched a clip on Youtube recently about its story.



The privately owned tank is located at the junction of Page Walk and Mandela Way, near Old Kent Road, a highly unlikely place to find such thing.

The story behind: originally the land owner submitted a building plan but it was disapproved by the authority. He was pissed and submitted another plan for a tank to be placed there. The authority thought it was a septic tank and approved it... and next thing you see is a real tank there.

On the wall is "we all fall down" by graffiti artist Mantis.

I'd stayed there for quite a long time taking multiple shots of myself around the tank, for another 'self-cloning project', until...

two policemen came and questioned what was I doing there. I was not surprised as this is not the first time. Two years ago when I was shooting at Canary Wharf for buildings and kids playing I was stopped and demanded to delete the kids photos. This is not a very photographers friendly country. If you take photos of high profile buildings you are a suspect terrorist, if you take photos of kids you are a suspect pedophile.

Anyway, they are both very friendly and just took my details and asked me to be careful of the area. And now I regretted not to ask them to pose with me to include them in my self-cloning project!

HDR: 1 London Bridge

A lot of people have often mistakenly referring Tower Bridge as London Bridge, simply because to many people's surprises, London Bridge looks too ordinary than its name.

It's easier to recognize London Bridge by one special building sits right at the south end of the bridge - known as 1 London Bridge.

Taken this picture beneath the building on Thames Festival 2 weeks ago, with an idea ready in my mind.

Picture shot in RAW, at 18mm, ISO 100, F10 and hand held 1/25 secs. It's difficult to get a perfect picture in situation where a lot of details are shadowed beneath the roof and the side of the building will often becoming over exposed.

Picture processed in Photomatix merging 3 pictures at 0, +2 and -2 exposures. The details of the reflection stands out more and it looks much balanced at all area.

Project HDR 03

I'm very impressed with the HDR processed picture and playing with it more often than Photoshop these days. Another experiment on this shot taken some time end of July viewing of The Gherkin behind a church building.

The original version - a bit under exposed on the tree leaves, a bit over exposed on the left of The Gherkin.

The HDR version - I think I still tends to adjust the 'strength' on the strong side in tone mapping.

Project HDR 02

Ever since I joined the gym end of July, I have got lesser time to play with the pictures. Whenever I switched on my laptop after a long day work and gym after work, I'll fall asleep within short time.

Thanks to RaD!c4L from Lowyat forum who passed me his 'godly package' which now there's no more watermark on the my pictures modified in Photomatix!

Whenever I go to my client's office at Paternoster Square, there's a view of the St Paul Cathedral from a small lane which I have an idea composing the image long ago. Finally last week I grabbed my camera and headed to the spot to take the shot.

The original image taken in RAW format at 18mm from my kit lens. I used the spot metering to get the correct exposure on the Cathedral, but then the foreground appeared to be under exposed and the sky became over exposed. This is a situation where High Dynamic Range (HDR) technique becomes useful.

2 more images were created in JPEG format at +2 and -2 EV respectively. An HDR image was generated from all 3 images in Photomatix. Tone mapping done to adjust the strength, saturation, contrast etc.

A quick 30 mins job. The foreground appeared much improved especially on the bricks texture and the signboards. Anyway it can be improved for sure in particular to the sky which looks a bit error to me.

HDR High Dynamic Range Image

I have seen some excellent HDR (High Dynamic Range) pictures on some forums and decided to learn the technique. It's a technique to create images with a more detail in the highlights and shadows, blending of same photo at different exposures.

Found this excellent tutorial and had my first attempt on creating an HDR image.

I downloaded the trial version of Photomatix. There is a HDR function in Photoshop but I had problem with it that it says there's not enough details for the image I used, even though I saved it in TIFF 32bits.

2 methods to get the same image at different exposures, first is to use a tripod and take few pictures at different EV exposures, I don't have any in my HD that's why I use the second method - use a RAW file and create few images at different exposures.

The original photo, taken at Pantheon, Paris, you can see Eiffel Tower at far sight. I like the mood but there is not enough details on highlight of the sky.

Adjust the EV to -2 in RAW, for the details of the sky.

Third picture at EV+2, all these are saved in TIFF format for more details.

Open the 3 files in the programme and click 'generate HDR'.

Not done yet, proceed with the key tool of the programme - Tone Mapping to adjust the luminosity, saturation, micro-contrast, strength etc.

Here's the final product and my first attempt on creating a HDR image. Too bad it comes with Photomatix watermark on the trial version... USD$99 for the license... let me think about it...

Some people made it way too different from the original photo, looks more like piece of pure graphic artwork, which I think that's not the original purpose of HDR. Anyway I quite like the effect and certainly will try more.

Another useful tutorial on HDR using Photoshop can be found here, here and there's a HDR group on flickr.