Dinosaur – © John Neel

When luck comes your way…recognize the opportunity and seize it. It is called a decisive moment.

You should try to prepare for it in advance. You never really know when it will happen, but you can anticipate it if you are paying attention to the details and thinking ahead.

During the making of the image above, I realized that one of the bikers was about ready to leave. I started the HDR sequence just before he started the bike, which turned on the headlight.

The image required a sequence of five bracketed exposures. The middle exposures allowed the headlight to expose as a bright source. After a minute or so, I realized that the exposure might be a pinch too much; I walked in front of the camera to block the light from the motorcycle for the final portion of the last shot in the bracket while letting the rest of the scene expose as intended. During that time, I moved enough to insure that I would not be recorded as a ghosted silhouette or shadow.

The HDR was produced with Photomatix Pro and the image was finished in Photoshop.

This is a type of light painting, but in reverse. The idea is to subtract the light from portions of the scene as you shoot. It can be accomplished in many ways when making long exposures.

I cover HDR and Photomatix Pro in my book – Great Photography Gift Idea for the Holiday.

Please have a look at some of my other posts here.

NOTICE of Copyright: THIS POSTING AS WELL AS ALL PHOTOGRAPHS, GALLERY IMAGES, AND ILLUSTRATIONS ARE COPYRIGHT © JOHN NEEL AND ARE NOT TO BE USED FOR ANY PURPOSE WITHOUT WRITTEN CONSENT FROM THE WRITER, THE PHOTOGRAPHER AND/OR lensgarden.com. THE IDEAS EXPRESSED ARE THE PROPERTY OF THE PHOTOGRAPHER AND THE AUTHOR.