Beginning Guide to HDR with Seven Primary Examples
High Dynamic Range photography is an artistic technique that was developed in the 1930’s by Charles Wyckoff. His unfortunate last name wrecked havoc throughout high school and caused an otherwise healthy young Charles to grow into a very agitated adult, with a very different view of the world. The work he produced in later years was lead by the desire to photograph his surroundings with the intensity and shadowy range of colors that his overactive brain created to suppress the feelings he had for his mother and odd VPS providers
Fast forward seventy years, and almost every camera has some sort of built-in HDR capability, that when mixed with PhotoShop, can create some wickedly cool images much like you see below.
Saint Isaac’s Cathedral
Credit to isik5
Saint Isaac’s Cathedral is largest cathedral in Saint Petersburg, and at one time was the largest church in all of Russia. It was dedicated to Saint Isaac of Dalmatia, a patron saint of Peter the Great who had been born on the feast day of that saint. No pun intended, but this high-resolution HDR image of the cathedral door might give you a better ‘picture’ of just how large this building really is.
Elephant Hall
Credit to zuiun
Founded in 1871, the University of Nebraska State Museum, or ‘Elephant Hall’ houses much more than this grab-ass playing stuffed Elephant. Focus, however, on the above composite image that was developed using four exposures and limited compression.
Vanha Kirkko, Helsinki
Credit to Mark Charter
The organ in this Finnish church, located in Vanha Kirkko, Helsinki is the focal point of this image, and while we’ve never visited the church ourselves, we’re sure it sounds just as good as it looks. It was created by Stockholm resident Per Larsson Åkerman in the late 1800’s. The translated version of his Swedish WikiPedia page informs us that he completed his orgelbyggare before starting work on the incredible organ you see in the above HDR photo.
It’s a long way to the bottom.
Credit to zuiun
No, this vertigo-inducing image isn’t the latest screenshot from vaporware Duke Nukem Forever – it’s actually a parking garage located in Lincoln, Nebraska. It’s purely artistic composite uses at least four different exposures from different perspectives, which gives the illusion that you’re looking down the staircase while peering out the window, which curves below you.
SCA Event
Credit to zuiun
From the same photographer as the above staircase image, we see two anachronists fighting it out in a world where getting to the closest StarBucks involves a horse ride across a deadly battle scene. Notice the detail in the golden and purple-ish suits, and the carefully placed sword behind the first guy’s back.
Curt’s Truck
Credit to zuiun
What do you get when you mix a lazy photographer’s over-saturation and blurred imagery with Bob Ross’ happy accidents? Lomography! Originally we thought ‘lomo’ referred to the physical height of your camera whilst snapping, however WikiPedia faithfully acknowledges that it’s a proprietary method of capturing photographs based on over-saturation and blurred imagery. With that aside, we like this shot.
HayMarket Train
I think I can, I think I can.. I think I can write this description without fearing death by getting run over by the creepiest train on Earth. This multi-exposure train scene takes place southern Nebraska, and relies on the photographers keen skills rather than excessive filtering in PhotoShop™®©™™™.
And so we tip our hats to the above photographers, and kick off our new semi monthly series on HDR photography; how it applies to design and how to pull it off correctly. Subscribe to our mailing list to receive each full post in your inbox right after we post it.
Top 15 Free Magazine Style WordPress Themes
Tons of new WordPress themes pop up every day. Unfortunately, with the high number of total themes that have already been released, it’s hard to separate the good from the bad and almost impossible to sort through the endless repository sites that feature every theme created in the past two years.
After sorting through over 130 magazine style themes here are 15 that emerged as strong leaders in terms of style, usability and functionality – and all are available for free. While some of the premium themes are stunningly well-designed, why pay a high price with great free magazine-style WordPress themes to choose from?
Mimbo
Mimbo is a non-traditional, grid based WordPress theme that many other themes use as a base. Widget-ready and latest posts are featured on the front in a unique wide-thumbnail display.
Options
The generic title is a huge understatement with regard to the number of features and options that are easily changeable on this theme. Included are three different stylesheets, each with a different color scheme, and five ‘sections’ on the main home page which are based on the specific post’s author, tags and categories.
Tag clouds, Flickr streams and video sections make this the most customizable theme in our list.
Hamasaki
The Hamaski theme is our personal favorite, since it’s the only theme that not only uses all the features that we’ve started to love, but makes them easily customizable from within the WP control panel. Strategically placed ad spots, featured post excerpts and menu bar grabs the title for ‘most complete and useful theme from the editors at DesignerTrivia.
Visionary WordPress Theme
The Visionary WordPress theme makes your blog more interactive by allowing you to easily embed YouTube video on the front page. It also comes packaged with a Flash-based video player and a jQuery powered sidebar.
WordPress Premium
The WordPress Premium theme is a free, widget-ready theme that lets you use up to three columns that passes the W3C standards test. It comes with three color combinations: Black, Soft Red and Brown. Featured are easily accessible search and RSS subscription forms, SEO optimized code and strategically placed ad blocks on the sidebar.
The Structure Theme
The Structure Theme is a three-column news and magazine theme that has built-in video and image ‘blocks’ that you can add anywhere on the page. The sidebar features advertising spots, a Flickr RSS display and a jQuery tabbed interface.
Overstand Theme
The Overstand Theme features three columns, and allows custom thumbnails to display on the front page. The blog as both German and English instructions.
Nautica
Nautica WordPress is a direct port of the nautica05 theme that features photo captions, easily controllable content blocks and a concept named ‘banner stories’. The theme may require editing after installation in order to pull your blog posts out of the correct category.
Blubbr
Blubbr is a unique and simple looking WordPress theme that is widget-ready. The latest version offers an Internet Explorer CSS fix as well as a newly implemented pagination feature.
OpenBook
This theme grabs the ‘easiest to install’ title in our list, since unlike most of the other themes we’re covering – the OpenBook theme requires little to no editing and configuration after installing. Simple upload the theme to your blog, and you have a Gravatar-compatiable, widget ready 2 column magazine theme.
The only minus we can find is that the OpenBook author decided to supply an option to crash Internet Explorer 6. We, like many other web designers, find it unprofessional to target a specific group of users based on their browser usage. This option is enabled by default, however it can be disabled from within your WordPress control panel.
Guzel Magazine
The Guzel Magazine WordPress theme is a three column, widget-ready theme with video support, AJAX tabs with Gravitar and custom post thumbnail support. Highly recommended.
NewsWeek
The cleanest and most readable theme in the group, the NewsWeek WordPress theme is designed to showcase featured videos and images, and includes the typical AJAX commodities such as the sidebar tabbed interface. The front page borrows from larger website designs such as CNN.com and Yahoo!, and includes space for a large 300 pixel by 250 pixel advertisement or web video.
Fontella
Most themes use large images to grab the reader’s attention; the Fontella theme uses large fonts which increase readability and structure. This theme is licensed under the Creative Commons.
Blogging Pro
Blogging Pro is a three-column, widget-ready theme that automatically shows your most commented and most recent posts on your front page. Blogging Pro is compatible with WordPress 2.1 and up.
BranfordMagazine
BranfordMagazine was inspired off of Mimbo (see the above theme) and features an AJAX tabbed interface on the front page, inside of a large ‘featured articles’ box (which isn’t included on Minbo). Included are spots for advertising and WordPress widgets.
Introducing DesignerTrivia – Unique Solutions to Tough Design Issues
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