Ebony man from Kenya
There’s at least one piece of artwork that followed me all the way from Munich to Amsterdam to California to Santa Fe. That’s the Ebony man I bought a long time ago on trip to Kenya. He’s standing in one of the nichos here in Tesuque and holds his beard and … uhm … private parts. I still remember the guy who sold the piece to me and how he said after modifying the first version of the sculpture to include an enlarged middle-section and how sales suddenly increased. That must be close to 20 years ago.
For our open houses (there was another on today) we have all the lights switched on and I could not help it and had to take a picture of him.
PS: I tried another HDR on this one, but for some reason the registration was off between exposures and I got this strange halo around the sculpture. That’s what you get for picking a cheap tripod …
Even an expensive Gitzo doesn’t guarantee registration, unfortunately. Mine is older, which may be part of the problem, but unless I really ‘honk’ on the leg locks (my Gitzo is the old friction style), any weight on the head can potentially shift the tripod. You should hear me swear when I inadvertently kick a tripod leg after five carefully planned shots, with one left to go …
My technique for interior HDRs: I set manual focus (AF can and does seek highest contrast areas each time you press the shutter, and arbitrarily shifts focus, which can really screw up registration and overall image quality), and I use the self-timer. For the finest quality, use a USB tether to a laptop. There’s simply no good way to switch exposure levels without shifting the camera a smidge … but you can do so with remote software and a laptop.