Part 14 - the (close) Encounters Project

Posted by RW Groothuis · November 24, 2019

About the ( close ) Encounters project

This is a ongoing *) project that started about 2009 and is called the ( close ) Encounters.

The HDR ( High Dynamic Range ) portrait panorama’s are made out of 63 pictures (minimal 9 exposures per angle, 7 angles so 63 images are used to make a HDR portrait panorama.

That makes taking the image with some thrill — it could be ruined due to the fact that if the people are moving the portrait could fail. That idea makes it fascinating for me to do it, Its always exiting to shoot. Warn the "customers" *) in advance: “we will see in the final image who moved, so do not dare to move!” Until now ( almost ) everyone has listened very good in the portrait shoots from the last years.

More background about this project please see here.

*) this is a non - commercial project

( close ) Encounters project - Part 14 - Rakker, Cor & Bob

For those who not like to read a lot, lets go first to a tonemapped version of the HDRI Panorama!

HDRI Panorama portrait - Part 14 - the (close) Encounters Project - Cor, Rakker & Bob ( spherical closeup )

HDRI Panorama portrait - Part 14 - the (close) Encounters Project - Cor, Rakker & Bob ( 3D render close )

view 360°/VR

ATTENTION!:

when clicking on view 360°/VR another browser window opens so if nothing happens check the Block Popup window.

Will introduce the creatures on the panorama ( from left to right )

Rakker – Cor's dog
Cor Bal - his public Facebook page about Scheveningen: Scheveningen strand voor dag en dauw
Bob Groothuis - the guy behind this website

How it started

Not sure when met Cor for the first time guess its 1,5 year ago. During a shoot of the Dutch Skies 360° HDRI project saw a man shooting a lot of images. He's easy recognizable from a distance due to his "glowing" red Unox hand gloves.

Cor is shooting every day at Scheveningen and post this beautiful images on his (public) Facebook page: Scheveningen strand voor dag en dauw. Others contributors post also images. Nice thing to mention is that there are people who were born in Scheveningen and now living all over the planet still can see fresh captured images of their home town by visiting his face book page. You can check out his (group) Facebook page here: Scheveningen strand voor dag en dauw.

Right after we met we had a kind off “click” together Wonderfull! We have a lot of fun during the recordings.

We both are annoyed when there are people trespassing our studio.....“%^&%$ off” *) (even more when people refuse to say something back when you say “good morning”). Besides that we not inferring each-other while shooting we both are very focused. When the weather conditions are not ideal we shout “we want the money back from our ticket!”
And nice think to mention is that Cor also goes to sleep very early in the evening and wakeup early hurry to get to the studio.

*) just a joke between the two off us we do not do shout it off course.

Below some photos of Cor busy in his natural habitat.

Cor Bal and Rakker in their natural Habitat

Cor’s gloves

One extra note regarding Cor’s Unox hand gloves.

From a long distance you can see its Cor due to his Unox Hand gloves .

Even now (in May ) it can be pretty cold early in the morning at 05:00, specially when you have to operate a camera.

A few weeks ago Cor’s lost one of his gloves (the right one). After hearing it thought it would be a good idea to contact Unox client service ( Unox is a Unilever Brand) and ask if they could mis a new pair of gloves ( Cor is a interactive walking advertisement for Unox, with that in mind guessed its a easy gesture from Unox to send him a new pair). Originally filled in the customer service fields on a Mac but after pushing the send button nothing happens. A few days later did the same on a Windows computer and now got a conformation. Then about one day later got a mail from Unox:

“Dear Bob, Thank you for sharing your experience with us about Unox Brand We would like to know how you have experienced our services. Would you like to answer some questions for us by clicking on the link below? Thank you! LINK TO SURVEY (removed it)Sincerely Consumer Service Unox”

Well thats weird they never reacted at all to my first question! Anyway filled in the survey a week ago but not got a reaction. Think somethings wrong with their contact page and survey system most likely Unox customer service never got my question.

Guess this is a nogo but hope Unox reads this too and decides to send Cor a new pair off gloves and not send a lawyer to me for demanding to remove this from this website, so please contact me first through the contact form on the bottom of the FAQ page its not my intension to cause troubles )

Day of the shoot.

On a very windy 2 november 2018 went again early the morning to shoot a new Dutch Skies 360° HDRI sky. Off course Cor was also there.

We captured a really beautiful sunrise with a very power full low yellow sun.

Cor was planning to go home suddenly spontaneously came up with the idea of shooting a HDRI Panorama portrait of the 3 off us.

Also shot a extra clean 360° HDRI plate (so without us) and thought it would save me a lot of time in production.......

Technical- used tools

The following tools were used to create this final HDRI Panorama portret

Equipment

Nikon D800 camera
Nikon 16 mm lens
360° precision panorama head

Colorcard

X-Rite ColorChecker Passport

Software

Nikon ViewNX 2
Adobe Lightroom 5
X-Rite ColorChecker Camera Calibration 2
PTGUI Pro 11.13
Photomatix 6
HDR Expose 3
Adobe Photoshop CS4 11.0
Affinity Photo 1.6.7
KRPano 1.19

Technical- workflow notes

To keep this article readable not going to deep into details how it is actually made.

Had to start several times all over. Had big troubles with deghosting source images, mostly caused by the strong wind (we moved too too much). Photomatix was not capable fixing that, but HDRExpose 3 had a very powerful deghosting option.

Like most of the times make combinations of HDR’s from Photomatix & HDRE Expose 3.

Had to retouche a lot too.

Below a before and after version of the 12k HDRI.

Took me about 2 days ***) to finish the HDRI and prepare the tonemapped versions for Peter ( more info please see the Color correction (before & after) below.

HDRI Panorama portrait - Part 14 - the (close) Encounters Project - Cor, Rakker & Bob ( uncorrected HDRI - Final HDRI )

Color correction (before & after)

Now time for finishing it with a very important last part: color correction

Skin colours are way to complicated for me as much other details luckily my friend Peter is a expert in it. For years he helped me out with such art work ( not sure if art work is the correct meaning for me it means it in the context of Peter's work).

It works like this more or less:

Making a base tone mapping what direction the overall look should get (and how it more or less looked like during the original shoot so a kind of color memorising the scene. Then create a extra “beauty pass” render of a middle exposure then Peter can do his magic.

The trouble zone are the skin color and also the Cor’s glove, and my left hand and several other details.

Below you can see the tonemapped version + extra middle exposure render + the final corrected versions as you can see at the top of this page here.

HDRI Panorama portrait - Part 14 - the (close) Encounters Project - Cor, Rakker & Bob ( 16 bit tone mapped | Extra 16 bit middle exposure render | final 16 bit color corrected version )

And a close up of the faces so can see it better.

HDRI Panorama portrait - Part 14 - the (close) Encounters Project - Cor, Rakker & Bob ( before & after close )

We never have to communicate a lot it goes automatically with a few words.

Wow like always fantastic work Peter thanks!

***) well in fact worked on this HDRI portrait for more then 7 days (started all over - 3 times) on the HDRI and the writing of this article, better not mention this in the article above otherwise you might thing “He’s not a professional when he’s working for so long on this project!”

Last update 4 December 2020:

Next HDR panorama portrait adventure is not known yet. For sure there will popup a new one somewhere in the future.

Other Editions ( close ) Encounters

Note:

Not had the time to put all older ( close ) Encounters back online. Below you can see all HDR panorama portrait 's that are currently online. The rest will appear later.

More background about this project please see here.