Don Valley Brick work... an effort to give its glory back

 

Don Valley Brick Works [Ever Green Brick work]

At my work place The Home Depot Toronto, we have a ongoing program called Giving back to the Community. As a part of this one Friday we visited this place Ever Green Brick Work to plant some 1000 plants..At first I thought I was a regular community charity activity. But the place is photographer's  dream place for photo shooting . Unfortunately I was not prepared for it as I was not carrying my gear. I went around the place, it was amazing place.

I went back again the next day for photo shoot with my gear. Enjoy the HDR images of the brick Works

History of Don Valley Brick Works

The Don Valley Brick Works were created in 1889 by the Taylor brothers. They use to make bricks 100,000 units a day . in 1946 there was a major fire accident and everything  got destroyed. more details can be found in the below link

http://ebw.evergreen.ca/

Now let's talk about the Photography technique

HDR Photography

High Dynamic Range (HDR) - Is taking  multiple photographs at varying exposure levels and  Merge the photos into an HDR image that reveals highlight and shadow details.

HDR images accurately represent the range of intensity levels found in real scenes, ranging from direct sunlight to faint light.

This multiple images at different exposures can be taken using a feature called Bracketing in the DSLR camera. Many cameras offer one or more bracketing functions. The most common is auto exposure bracketing (AEB), which involves taking a series of pictures of the subject while changing the exposure level. The normal practice is to take three shots, one under-exposing by 1/3EV, the second at the metered exposure and the third over-exposing by 1/3EV. That being said lets talk about the File format.

Most of the DSLR  cameras are often take pictures in  RAW(not yet processed - uncompressed file)  image format and  JPEG [8 bit compressed )It is always advisable  to take pictures in RAW format, though they will occupy lot of space on the memory card as compared to JPEG,is uncompressed. Most of the cameras have the options of shooting in RAW and JPEG.

 I always shoot both in RAW and JPEG fine. You do not want to miss any moment .Regarding the memory card capacity. Instead of carrying a higher capacity one card , it always advisable to carry 3 to 4 smaller capacity cards.

There are various software in the market for that can be used for generating HDR images , some can be purchased and some are for free.

Here are some of the most popular software's available in the market. Luminance HDR and Picturenaut are free software's available

 Artizen HDR

DynamicPhoto HDR

easyHDR

Essential HDR

HDR Darkroom

HDR Photo Studio

Luminance HDR

Photomatix Pro

Photoshop CS5 HDR Pro

Picturenaut

Finally the Usual Metadata  for these captures

Mode:  Aperture priority

Aperture:  f 9 –f11

Bracketing: 3F

Shutter Speed:  0.5 sec to 1/250 sec, depending on the ISO and the exposure

ISO:100

WB( White Balance) : Auto

Camera : Nikon D90

Lens:  18mm – 200mm VR II  f 3.5  Lens