When I was offered the opportunity to photograph Parker Days, I was a bit taken back by how much it has grown over the years. I remember when I was in high school back in the late 90s, it was a relatively small event which catered mostly to the citizens of Parker and fast forward to today, there are more than 150,000 people that partake in the various festivities that Parker Days has to offer. As a photographer, I knew that I needed to somehow get that quintessential shot that showed how much the festival has grown and more importantly, show that Parker still has that hometown feel.

Now in order to get the photograph I wanted, I needed to get a different perspective and preferably, get access to one of the buildings downtown. After working with the Parker Chamber of Commerce along with 20 Mile Central, I was given access to the rooftop where Vines Bistro is located which gave me the perfect view of O'Brien Park with Parker Days in the background. Once I got on the rooftop, I noticed that the evening sun began to dip below a few clouds which resulted in sun rays casting beautiful shadows across the sky. As the beautiful scene unfolded, I knew that I was going to need to take multiple exposures varying in brightness to ensure that I captured all the available light that was presented to me.

When I got my composition dialed in, I set my camera to take a total of (7) exposures ranging from very dark to very bright and in post processing, I merged all the exposures into one photo and processed it to what you see here. The photographic process that I used is known as HDR and it enables me to capture all the dynamic range of any given scene to truly represent what our eyes can see.

After getting the photograph I wanted, I set out to capture the various events and people throughout the course of the next few days. As a photographer, my job was to document the festival while at the same time, tell a story about it through my photographs. I hope you have enjoyed viewing my photo of Parker Days and if you are in town from June 10-12th, I strongly encourage that you bring out the family and attend the festival. It is a very good time and there is something for everyone regardless of age.

HDR and Moving Elements...

As many of us know, cameras today (at least as of this post) can only capture so much dynamic range per exposure and we use various HDR techniques to get around this limitation to get as close as possible to what the human eye actually sees. HDR is meant for static scenes since the merge process relies heavily on the alignment of multiple exposures at the pixel level to give us the added dynamic range we want.

To that end, what happens when we get movement in between the exposure frames when we merge our files for HDR? We get what is known as "ghosting" in our HDR output and this issue can be eliminated in many different ways. Current HDR software out today such as Photomatix and HDR Efex Pro have "de-ghosting" tools that you can use to eliminate the ghosting in your HDR in the event that there is movement in between your frames. Another approach is to simply grab a frame from your bracketed set and in Photoshop, "mask out" any movement.

In the photo you see here, I decided to experiment a little bit and shoot my (7) bracket set from -3 to +3 since their was an incredible amount of dynamic range in the scene and wanted to ensure that I grabbed the detail from the shadows while preserving the highlights. After I had taken my bracketed set, I sat and waited for people to walk by and when people walked by, I took multiple shots with a shutter speed fast enough to freeze the movement. This was not a busy sidewalk by any means so it took me a bit before I had enough "walking shots".

When I came home and processed my HDR, I simply grabbed the frames that had people in them and just masked them into my HDR. It was a really simple process which in turn, made for an interesting photo.

Parker Days - Through the Eyes of a Photographer

Photo of the Day - Summer Stroll

HDR and Moving Elements...