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This is a first for me and something, frankly, I originally said I would never do – I’m posting an image taken by someone else on my photoblog.

Why would I do such a thing? You may or may not be aware that a group of HDR photographers have an occasional competition called ”HDR Tennis” over on Facebook. Every 2 or 3 weeks, the winner of the previous competition posts a set of brackets and everyone produces their version of an image from those brackets. Readers then get to vote on the results. We also make the brackets available to other readers who can process them, post their version and get comments. It’s a lot of fun and I would encourage you to take a look and even take part if you are interested.

This particular image was supplied by Bob Lussier for Game 6 of HDR Tennis. Bob’s love of stairs is well know (Brian Matiash christened him ”The Stair Whisperer” and he even has a PhotoTools preset named after him) so it’s fitting that this image should include stairs. If you don’t know Bob’s work, I strongly encourage you to take a look at his blog and follow his HDR exploits.

So what did I do to my version of Bob’s brackets? Merging and tonemapping followed my usual method with the tonemapping settings based on my usual set. After saving the Photomatix output, I imported the picture into Lightroom and applied a few changes. I cropped an annoying highlight from the right side then added a couple of diagonal graduated filters on each side to darken the areas above each banister. I then slightly lightened the stair itself and the door at the top to draw the attention to what I see as the center of interest. I finished the image off with a vignette to darken the corners further.

Many of the HDR Tennis admins will be posting their version of this image today so please check out the blogs of Brian Matiash, Bob Lussier, David Nightingale, Mike Olbinski, Scott Wyden, Pete Talke and Jacob Lucas and see what they came up with.

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