Ghost Adventures

What was that? Dude, What was THAT?! OMG, WHAT WAS THAT?!!!  Zak!

OK, I admit I have been watching waaaaaayyy too much of the show Ghost Adventures and I think I may have an EVP replaying in my head and I have a hard time sleeping on Friday nights when every creak of my house turns into sure bet that ghosts are in the house.

For the most part when we do HDRs, we want to make sure that Ghosts are NOT in the house (insert rapper emphasis). I’ve showed you in detail in This Post how to very effectively eliminate ghosting, even the most stubborn. Most HDR software also has some auto de-ghosting features that will eliminate some small random ghosting from within your image.

But there are times when we DO want ghosting to appear. It can add a sense of movement to our scene. When we shoot long exposures of the ocean or a waterfall we actually are using ghosting to our advantage. We don’t want to stop the motion of our subject or an object within our scene. Now those are very obvious examples but sometimes they may be less so.

In this recent image I took in downtown San Diego, I’ve demonstrated that ghosting can be a desired effect and is in fact what made the shot. It was at a busy crosswalk on Market Street where the crosswalks in all direction cross at the same time. If I would have de-ghosted the image, not only would you have thought that the streets were empty Or if I did show the people De-Ghosted they would appear static and not show the hustle bustle of a Friday night out on the town. I only wish I didn’t shoot it the week after labor day when the tourists have all left. I would have liked more people in the scene.

Sometimes de-ghost, sometimes leave them be. So that when people look at your image they might exclaim…OMG WHAT WAS THAT?!!!!

Hope that helps,

PT