P#18: A Fantastic Photograph of Justine's Ice Cream Shop

Capturing Movement in a Single Image

Tony Sweet: I call this photograph Justine's Final. This is an interesting picture because I shot this image with this final image in mind, believe it or not, because there's movement here. People are moving. I was waiting for the guy to walk out of the ice cream shop and when he did, I took the picture. (click the image for a larger version)

It's about a quarter second exposure so I got the motion blur and that kind of thing. This is a single image. You can't shoot five of these because it's going to look crazy. You'll have five shots of the person in a different spot.

You also get that with moving clouds. It's kind of a good idea to shoot these things as fast as you can if you're doing multiple shots.

Double Processing a Single Shot in HDR

But with this photograph, it was a single shot. It's possible to process a single image in Photomatix. It will give you sort of a quasi HDR look. It's pretty close. You don't have the entire dynamic range, but you do get the effect. This is a single shot which is a double process.

I'm sorry it's getting technical. What this means is that I processed it once and got the final image up. Rather than saving it, I processed it again which doubled the effect.

Audri Lanford: Oh, okay.

Tony Sweet: Does that make sense?

Audri Lanford: Yeah, now it does. I was trying to figure out what the original might look like compared to, you know, if you hadn't done anything versus what you did here. I think I get that with double processing it.

Tony Sweet: The first thing you want to do in a double process is turn your saturation down immediately because it will look really strange most of the time and you'll think it is garbage. But then when you turn that saturation down, probably about three quarters, it will look like something. Then you'll be able to start working on it.

That's the first thing you do with double process -- pull the saturation back and then get in there and make it look like something. I like this shot. This worked out very well.

Audri Lanford: It really did.

Tony Sweet: I was surprised, but double processing is what sold that. I didn't do that with double processing in mind, but it just seemed to be the thing to do. When I did it on that image, that was the key.

Audri Lanford: Is that something that you do frequently when you're working with one shot in HDR?

Tony Sweet: That's kind of what I do. They don't all work out, but that's always my first option with a single image because you're missing the other four images to go along with it to give it that depth. You know what I mean?

Audri Lanford: Sure.

Tony Sweet: I think double processing is kind of a quick way to look at it in different ways. More times than not, it works. You can also double process multi-image HDR. You can double process anything, but I found that single shots give it a little bit more depth. Double processing is a fun way to go.

To Sum Up

If you thought a single photograph wasn't something you could use with HDR, you might want to think twice. Tony Sweet explained that single shots can indeed work with HDR photography, as long as you use double processing. That's exactly what he did with this unique photograph of Justine's.