Samyang 14mm f2.8

  1. Top of the Yutoku Inari Shrine

    Those photo was a tricky one to process. Took me a couple attempts. At first I went to crazy with the colors. I wanted really dark heavy contrasted colors. But then it lost a lot of it's rich saturation. So I took one of the more vibrant processed images of a totally different look, layered it on top and adjusted the opacity. It's a cool trick I've learned with HDR when you push it to far. I'll process the photos with two extremes then blend them in Photoshop to meet in the middle.

    For the texture look, I used some free textures by Sirius-sdz on DeviantART. I love that sight. I believe I set the blending mode to Hard Light and adjusted the opacity until it looked right. 

    For the final coloring I did it all in Lightroom 4 using my Retro Collection to get a base look, then tweaked from there. That's usually how I get that sort of old look that I love with my HDR photos. 

    Here is my DeviantART profile: http://alikgriffin.deviantart.com/

    Today's HDR Photo -Top Of The Yutoku Inari Shrine

    Top Of The Yutoku Inari Shrine Once you travel up the structure of the Yuoku Inari Shrine you come to this spot. I was lucky and the shrine was nearly empty the day I was there. It allowed me to get all sorts of fun photography of this awesome place in Southern Japan.Read more about the Yutoku Inari Shrine at AlikGriffin.com

  2. Low Tide at Miyajima Japan

    I like shooting HDR. You can pull so much more color and shadows out of a scene. A lot of my photos I shoot HDR but I try to avoid that 'HDR Look' since that's not really my thing. I do encourage people to shoot HDR though so they can get deep and rich colors out of the scene.

    This HDR photo is from Miyajima Japan. I've taken several photos at this location on two different trips to Japan. And this place is awesome. The weather this time around wasn't that great though. While taking this shot it was very windy and pretty cold. I had to make sure my stuff didn't blow into the water. Or the wind didn't actually push me over into the water. It was that windy. 

    Today's HDR Photo - Low Tide at Miyajima Japan

    Low Tide at Miyajima Japan. Miyajima Japan is one of the greatest beauties in all of Japan in my opinion. It's an island of culture and tradition that makes you realize how awesome people can be.

  3. Jungle Rice Fields of Bali

    While touring a temple deep in the jungles of Bali, we immerged to this awesome sight. Some rice fields in the clearing. It seems that in Bali Indonesia, where there are no trees you can almost always count on there being rice fields. 

    You can actually see my wife in the picture way in the back. In this temple we had to wear a covering over our legs so they were not exposed. 

    Today's HDR Photo - Jungle Rice Fields of Bali

    Jungle Rice Fields of Bali. While in Bali, we went to this awesome temple deep in the jungle. On our way out we found this awesome sight. In the clearing between the trees they were managing to grow rice.

  4. Miyajima Market

    This photo is of a traditional Japanese Market on the small island of Miyajima. It's where I also got these shots:

    Japan Temple in the Trees, Double Rainbow All the Way, Itsakushima Shrine, Japan Edo Era Architecture, Miyajima Temple Japan

    Needless to say, it's a very photogenic place. This photo is of the small traditional Japanese Market that's close to where the boat is that drops you off. It's an awesome little spot to get some nice photos that have that Traditional Japanese feel.

    Now I'm calling this an HDR photo even though it's a single shot Raw. But I tonemapped it which pulls up the shadows and brings down the highlights. Since this is what people are referring to as HDR. When HDR really should only be applied to images that truly have a massive range of dynamic light. Most do not and the term HDR gets pinned on images that are tonemapped. 

    Today's HDR Photo

    Miyajima MarketMiyajima is a smile island off the coast of Hiroshima. The island is almost entirely a spiritual place where you see a mix of Buddhist and Shinto Temples and Shrines. But the island also has a small market place filled with cool authentic traditional Japanese shops.See more at http://alikgriffin.com

  5. Torii of the Yutoku Inari Shrine

    The Yutoku Inari Shrine is built up on the side of a mountain with a trail leading to the top. On the way up you'll pass through many of these Torii as they are called in Japan. It's quite the hike and getting to the top gives you such an amazing view. It was really an awesome experience, but kind of a long hike. Well not too long. Maybe a little over a few hundred yards up a mountain. 

    Licensing & Prints

    Something I don't really promote on my site but do get people asking me about is if they can buy or license my photos. I'd thought I would mention it finally since I do get a lot of request. How it works is all my photos are under a Creative Commons License. You can read about how you can use these photos in certain cases for free. All the details are found in my Licensing section.

    And even more recently I've gotten a few requests on people looking to purchase prints for their house office or where ever suites their fetish. Almost all the photos found on this site are available for sale as prints on my smugmug account. The prints range from less expensive glossy which will you have to mount or frame yourself, to the more expensive stretched canvas or metal prints which come ready to hang. If you're wondering, the pricing on those goes up quickly because of the labor involved. Often times you can just click the photos to be sent directly to that photo on my smugmug account, or even to the direct buy page. For example, you can click the photo below to see all the options. 

    Today's HDR Photo

    Yutoku Inari ShrineIf you ever Visit the Yutoku Inari Shrine in Japan you can hike up the mountain it's built up. You pass through many of these structures on the way to the top where you'll find an incredible view. See more about my photography at http://alikgriffin.com

  6. Sunset at Miyajima

    After spending all day at Miyajima we headed back to the boat to get back to the mainland before it got too dark. Surprisingly after doing a little shopping at the little tourist street there was still a sunset. It was a dark one so I had to do a rather longer exposure than usual. It always amazes me what kind of colors and light the camera can still pick up when set to a long exposure.

    Today's HDR Photo

    Sunset at Miyajima Japan One of my final shots of the day. I snapped the last of my photos by the shrine and on the way back to the car I saw this. There was still enough light to get something nice.

  7. Walt Disney Concert Hall

    The Walt Disney Concert Hall

    Designed by Frank Gehry the Walt Disney Concert hall was built in 1999 in downtown Los Angeles. I actually never knew this was downtown, I always assumed it was by Disneyland. So last night during Christmas my wife and I drove over there and got a few photos. You don't want to typically go downtown during a regular work day. Especially if you live on the westside. Traffic sucks and parking is expensive.

    The fun part was we accidently drove through the outer edges of Skid Row on our way to LA live which is where we went next. I haven't done that in awhile. It's sad how many homeless people live in Los Angeles now days.

    The HDR Method

    For this photo I used an HDR method tuned down to a modest level. I've really started taking more time on my photos to get them them right. Meaning, it's really best to use third party programs like Topaz Denoise before tonemapping your image. This takes an extra ten minutes or so and adds an extra 300MB of files to my drive, but gives you amazing results. Then I'll send those three shots to photomatix and do my usually workflow. 

    For the Walt Disney Concert Hall I actually went in and processed a few photos to see which one I liked the best, then once chosen, I went in and did the method mentioned above to give it that really sharp noise free look. That's sort of been my method lately and it works great for eliminating noise from your HDR photos. 

    Today's HDR Photo

    The Walt Disney Concert HallThis is probably the coolest building in Los Angeles. It was designed by the famous architect Frank Gehry in 1991 and construction began in 1999.I went out to shoot this location in HDR. I was really hoping it would rain to get nice slick reflections on the ground but the opposite happened. The weather cleared up giving me nice skies which I'm also happy with.

  8. The Game Taito Station in Japan

    This one was in Hiroshima City on Hondori Street. A fun little shopping archade with lots of other great stuff. 

    I always love poking around the little game stations in Japan. It's so different than anything in America. I'm not even really sure what they are for and they always seem empty, but walking into one of these is like taking a syringe of the Japanese culture of entertainment and jamming it into your eyeballs. It's pretty fun seeing all their Japanese styled toys and games that you never get to see in the US.

  9. Kawabata Street in Fukuoka Japan

    This photo was taken down at Kawabata Street in the downtown city part of Fukuoka Japan. It's near Canal City and the Kushida Shrine where they were having the Shichi-Go-San ceremony. This is a celebration of the growth and well-being of young children. So what happens is parents will dress their three, five and seven year old kids up in little traditional Japanese outfits and take their pictures near the shrines. It was cool. 

    The Kawabata Street itself is a strip of all different kinds of shops under this dome roof. If you're into checking out some Japanese stores and culture this is the place to go.

    Taking a photo of this place was pretty straight forward. After looking at photography so much you start to realize right away that there is often really only a couple good ways to take a photo of a location. With this one it just meant standing in the middle with my wide angle lens pointing up and shooting. I shot this HDR handheld then combined the photos in Photomatix to align the separate shots and create a tonemapping between the different exposures. And then I did all the rest in Lightroom and Photoshop. 

  10. HDR Photo of The Pasadena City Hall

    The other day I drove through Pasadena on the 110 on my way to Mount Baldy. We randomly passed by this really cool looking building that I had no idea existed. It was the Pasadena City Hall. So on our way back we went looking for it to take some photos. (We being my wife and I). It was night by the time I got there so I had to do some Night HDR which I find to be a bit more difficult than shooting regular HDR. Getting the colors to be right is really challenging. I had to take some creative libraties to make it look as cool as it was when I was there. To create this photo I had to do quite a bit.

    My work flow went something like this:

    First off I shot with my Canon 5dmkii and the Samyang 14mm f2.8. Which is a great lens for this type of shoot. I shot three shot bracket, two stops apart.

    I first did the lens distortion correction and proper color balancing before sending them to Photomatix.

    Then I did a very mild HDR effect to bring it all together. Brought it back into Lightroom where I did a whole ton of coloring, gradients and exposure adjustments. 

    Then sent it to Color Efex Pro to give it a split tone look to give it a little style. Then Back to Lightroom for final spot removal, cropping and sharpening.

    Today's Photo

    The Night HDR photo of the Pasadena City Hall's court yard. A pretty awesome place.

    Night HDR Phot of the Pasadena City Hall

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