The Olmsteads: A sibling success story

Avery baby blessing

I posted about Avery (my niece) just a couple days ago. She got a baby blessing today and this was her disinterested face afterward. She’s laying on grandma’s shoulder.

Manti Utah Temple

This gallery contains 6 photos.

I went to Manti for a friends wedding and I had to bring my camera along with me. Beautiful day. Perfect for pictures.

This is my new niece

This was taken when she was just a week or two old. She’s about a month old now.

Workflow using Lightroom

When I first started doing HDR editing (I say that like it was long ago. It was really around two weeks ago) I would drag and drop my bracketed photos into Photomatix Pro. I made some adjustments to the HDR image in Photomatix and exported it to receive some final touches in Aperture. The problem was I went overboard with most of my HDR editing and my images always came out noisier than I wanted them to. Here’s an example:

Compared to:

I like how they both look, but the first one has way too much contrast and the shadows are noisier than I’d like. Here’s a closer look:

Noisy

Not as noisy

I got this tip off of a Google+ comment someone made on one of my images and I’m grateful he did. I now import my bracketed images into Lightroom first. Then I export using the HDR Soft plug-in. Make a few adjustments to the newly-merged image in Lightroom and if I want to make a few more touch-ups then I export it to Aperture and add those finishing touches. Works like a charm.