Did you have a great week? I’m glad we’re going into the weekend, and I can get some things done around the house.
Today’s photo is from the abandoned Jupiter Factory in Pripyat Ukraine, which sits a few miles from Chernobyl and is within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The Russians claimed the factory made cassette recorders, but in reality it made semiconductor components for their military. We spent a couple hours exploring this site during our 2018 Chernobyl trip.
I took this photo these Soviet Statues under the People’s Friendship Arch in Kiev back in 2018. The Arch, you can see a portion of it on the right side, and these Hero’s Statues were constructed in 1982. They are supposed to depict friendship between Russian and Ukrainian peoples (soldiers - left statue and workers - right statue).
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian government announced plans to dismantle the arch as part of their 2016 decommunization laws.
I found these old Soviet propaganda signs at the back of the Pripyat Cultural Center. Pripyat had over 49,000 people before it was abandoned after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The Cultural Center building was a great explore.
To view a larger version, click HERE
I’m not sure why I didn’t share this photo in the past. Regardless, here it is!! I captured this in Pripyat, Ukraine a few miles from Chernobyl nuclear reactor number 4. The entire region is abandoned and will be for decades to come. There was a carnival setup for a village celebration, which of course never happened, with the nuclear reactor meltdown. The carnival rides are some of the most popular tourist attractions within the Exclusion Zone.
To view a larger version, click HERE
I finally got around to editing some of my Chernobyl videos…… some of them. I probably have dozens left that I haven’t even looked at yet since our trip last year. I put this video together with drone video and photos I took during our time at DUGA which is an abandoned Russian early warning ballistic missile system.
During our time inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, we got to explore this DUGA site. DUGA was a Soviet over-the-horizon radar system used as an Soviet Union missile defense warning radar network. They used this to watch for and track potential NATO missiles. They had two of these in Ukraine (Chernobyl & Chernihiv) and one in eastern Siberia.
It earned the nickname of Russian Woodpecker because it would make sharp, repetitive tapping noises across shortwaves. So amateur radio operators would have to deal with the tapping noise.
This thing is huge. I couldn’t find a size via the Internet but trust me with I say it is very big…. It has two sections. I think the taller section was maybe 200 ft tall and the entire thing was maybe half a mile long….. give or take a little. If anyone knows the actual size, please let me know.
Anyway, as you can tell, we finished our day here and I captured it at sunset.
To view a larger version, click HERE
This massive statue sits on top of the National Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945)…we know it as World War II. This stainless-steel statue is 203 feet tall. Counting the museum building it sit on, the entire structure is 335 feet tall and it weighs 560 tons. The sword in her right hand is 52 feet long by itself and weighs 9 tons. That’s a huge statue by any comparison!! The State Emblem of the Soviet Union is on the shield. Even though this war ended in 1945, they didn’t start the construction of this statue until 1979 and it was completed in 1981.
In Kiev, Ukraine where this is located, the statue is controversial due to Ukraine’s complicated and currently rough relationship with Russia. Blair and I spent a few hours walking around this national park photographing the war monuments, tanks, etc…. If you’re wondering, the blue and yellow tank in the foreground is painted the Ukrainian colors.
To view a larger version, click HERE
I took this detail photo of a column base which is part of Erechteion during our last Europe trip. This structure is an ancient Greek temple on the north side of the Acropolis in Athens Greece. This temple was built between 421 and 406 BC by Phidias (sculptor and mason) and Mnesicles (architect). The entire Acropolis is wonderful as an archaeology site with lots of small details. It’s worth the hike up the hill to this spot.
To view a larger version, click HERE
Don’t forget to check out my photo galleries. I update and add to them often. PLUS….don’t forget you can get a free gift and 10% off great Think Tank camera gear by using this link: http://bit.ly/2FVW0eg
Ok, here is the long awaited (by no one probably but me) final installment of the Common HDR Photography Questions Part 3 segment. I have already posted the answers to the first two questions:
* Why do I like HDR Photography?
* What is HDR Photography?
So it is now time for the last remaining question: How is an HDR Photograph created?
This is a difficult question only because it can get very technical quick and there are lots of HDR tutorials on line by about a thousand sources. My good friend Brad Truxell has a good one at his site http://www.somethinghdr.com/hdr-tutorial/. I don’t think you want me to repeat those and I really don’t want to do that either. That being the case, I think I’ll be fairly general and give you an overview of the process and not the technical steps (which would be boring). Let’s begin:
1. Find a subject you think will make a great photo (a person, subject, landscape, building, etc…). Whatever you like, but it should be a stable, non-moving object.
2. Set your camera up on a tripod (you can try getting HDR images without, but it won’t turn out very good).
3. Take your images (remember you’ll be taking multiple images of the same subject at different exposures) in Aperture mode at whatever f-stop is appropriate for your subject / environment. You can take the photos in manual mode, but there is no reason to do so.
4. If your camera has it, shoot a bracketed set of images. My camera allows me to pick brackets in sets of 3, 5, 7, or 9 images. This is important and I explained why in Part 2 earlier in my blog. If your camera doesn’t do bracketed photos, you can change the setting manually, but it won’t be as easy. I select fewer numbers of bracketed images in good lighting and more in harder (harsh) lighting environments.
5. Download all the RAW (JPG images don’t work as well) images onto your computer.
6. Open the bracketed image sets in Photomatix Pro to create your HDR Tonemapped photo. There are other software packages to make HDR images that you can also use. I just happen to use Photomatix Pro. In Photomatix Pro, there are all kinds of settings, presets, filters, etc…. Again there are a ton of tutorials you can read or watch on line if you want this level of detail. But that can be boring stuff, unless you are actually trying to do this. If you want that level of detail, we can talk specifics one on one.
7. Once the HDR Tonemapped image is done, I save it to my desktop.
8. You could stop here if you wanted, but I usually open the new image in Photoshop CS6 along with all the original RAW source pictures I got when I took the bracketed pictures.
9. I stack them all and pick portions of some to “Layer” into my HDR tonomapped picture. This just allows me to pick the best areas of these photos and merge them into my final product.
10. After the Layering process, I’ll sometimes adjust the color, contrast, crop, etc… just a little. I don’t go over board with the processing. My final step is to improve the image quality by reducing image noise and increasing sharpness.
11. Then re-save the image and enjoy it.
I’ve tried to keep this simple and short. There are a bunch of steps, keystrokes, and little tricks, but as I’ve mentioned you can get all that from YouTube.com and many other sites. I usually spend about 20 to 30 minutes processing each photo using the general process above. It is a major time commitment that isn’t for everyone. But I love how the pictures turn out at the end and am willing to spend my time doing it. I hope this is somewhat helpful in explaining How an HDR Photograph is created.
Remember to you can see Part 1 and Part 2 of this series by scrolling down the blog to those post.
I posted another picture of this great building on December 18th. In that post, I covered the history of this building and what it is used for today. This is the vehicle drop off area at the front door. Can you imagine this being the front door to your home???? What can I say, they just don’t make buildings like they used to. Great facility with a great history.
I have a few great photos from that mini-trip to share with you.
