Getting going...

So here goes nothing... I'm venturing into the world of blogging. I have a few reasons behind this. Firstly, I want to share my photography knowledge, and as I learn new things I will post them here. Second, This is a way for me to get my photography out to the masses. And third, from what I've heard, this is an excellent way to network and gather friends.

A little about myself. My name is Brian Hill, and I'm a semi-professional photographer. I officially have 6 years of photography education between Highschool and College. A lot of the techniques, save the basic principals, I have self-taught myself. I shoot mostly landscape and nature photos, but I'm making a move into portraits. I would like to eventually offer my services as an event photographer. Weddings, engagement parties, birthday's, anniversary's, baby shower's, these are just a few of the events I'm interested in photographing.

My gear consists of the following:

• Canon EOS Rebel XT (350D) 8.1MP DSLR
• Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6
• Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 USM IS
• Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 MKII
• Canon EF 100mm Macro f/2.8 USM

I am in the process of building a studio in my office at home so I can do portrait and item photography under controlled lighting conditions. In the new year I will be going back to school part-time. I will be studying Digital Photography at Focal Point in Vancouver. There are 4 courses I am going to take ranging from basic photography to intermediate, and two advanced level courses. It should take me approximately 1 year to complete all the courses I want to take and when completed I will have 4 certificates from Focal Point in Digital Photography.

Right now my current study in photography is working with HDR images. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. A single image from even the best camera cannot capture the full tonal range of light and colour visible to the human eye. So a process of taking a minimum of 3 individual pictures of a scene, at varying exposures and then blending the images together and applying some tone mapping results in a final image with detail that is unavailable in a single image. I will start off my blog with this study. I will examine the differences between using JPEG or RAW images as the sources images for an HDR photo. I will investigate the concequences of using a single RAW image to produce an HDR image. I will also highlight some of the software and techniques I use for generating my HDR images. I am by no means a professional at HDR photography. I'm just learning, so the things I attempt may just end up back firing in my face. Either way I'll share the results of my research with you. For now, I'll share with you one of my favorite HDR shots.

So stay tuned, and I hope you enjoy. Please post comments, questions, or suggestions. I'm always willing to listen and help.