The concept is pretty easy. Often when we take a picture, we sacrifice something. To get faces to be well exposed, the sky is blown out white. Or to get the pretty blue horizon, other things are in silhouette. Statues are especially difficult to capture.

During my Photography Walking Tour of UT Class on Saturday (what fun students–one of my best classes of all time!), I got a chance to take a few shots myself, specifically over and underexposing my images so that I could test them out with Photomatix, software designed especially to combine your images to get the best exposure from each.

Here are the three shots I took of a statue on the South Mall.

And here is the resulting combined HDR image. What a difference!

Download the software and try it yourself. The trial version is free.

Photography Walking Tour of UT 

Learn about the features of your camera while photographing the architecture of the University of Texas campus. This class is for both digital SLR and point-and-shoot camera owners who would like to practice using intermediate-level settings, including specialty modes and full-manual operation.

We will spend the first hour reviewing the best settings for your shots, then walk through the west 40 Acres, capturing images of the UT Tower, fountains, historic buildings, and the mall. For the last hour we will review student images, discussing cropping and composition.

This class will take a Tower Tour, where we will go to the top of the UT Tower for amazing shots overlooking campus, the Capitol, and Austin.

Wear comfortable clothing and be sure all your equipment can be carried easily. Bags will NOT be allowed on the tower, $1 lockers available or we can lock them up in the classroom. Tripods not necessary. Bring $5 for the Tower Tour entrance fee, your camera, a spare battery and memory card, and your camera manual.

$38 with UT discount
$44 for general public

Dates:
Saturday, May 9 from 1:00-5:00 p.m. (3 spots left)

Saturday, June 13 from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. (newly listed, lots of spots still)

Sign up at www.informalclass.org (do an “Advanced Search” for “walking” to find it quickly.)

To celebrate I bought myself a toy I’ve wanted since last summer–the Canon Elph, a digital camera extraordinaire–7 megapixels, super high quality video capacity, pictures like I only see coming out of my $5K professional setup, and it fits in my back pocket!!! I am so excited. One of the students in my class had one and all the images we took–the window silhouette, an orange rose we pilfered from a horticulture class during the break, and even throwaway shots testing focus range were all breathtaking.

Another professional photographer friend had highly recommended it many months ago–back then it was over $500. Now I picked it up–the newest incarnation no less–for $350.

Oh, the happy camera dance commences!

And the end of this class signals my slowdown in everything. Back to a normal 10-hour work week, a regular schedule, time to play.

Whew. Thanks for all of you out there who were great about listening to me complain.

(more happy new camera dancing!!!)