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Guess what I was photographing all day yesterday?
chrisdesign
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I agree with Sam. You had to take photos of a disaster drill.
It is called "Moulage" what they apply to a healthy person to look like injuries. Pretty real looking and stomach turning.
I had to take part of training simulations in the army, always hated it.
It is called "Moulage" what they apply to a healthy person to look like injuries. Pretty real looking and stomach turning.
I had to take part of training simulations in the army, always hated it.
Tom Mann
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Hey, Clare, it's great to hear from you ! ! ! ! Thanks for stopping by this thread !
Although, like you, I thought that some of the people would fit perfectly in a Zombie walk, Chris and Sam were correct -- it was a large mass casualty / disaster drill at Dulles International Airport -- but, those two guys had insider information. Chris, in the army, and, as I recall, Sam was either a FF or a Paramedic for many years.
We had personnel and their equipment responding from within a 40 or 50 mile radius including fire, emergency medical and LEAs. There was somewhat more confusion than I would have liked to have seen, but I guess that's the whole purpose of such drills.
Anyway, here are a few photos ...
1. We had one of the main runways and associated taxiways blocked off for us for the entire day.
2. Engines and other emergency vehicles were staged in a holding area a km or so away from the crash site and called in as needed.
3. The volunteer "victims" were made up and staged near the site of the simulated disaster.
4. The victims were triaged, stabilized, and then transported to any of several nearby hospitals, as well as an on-site simulated hospital.
5. The next ambulance crew in line is ready to transport the next victim(s).
6. My unit was assigned two ambulatory victims. The woman played her part very well.
7. After the drill, we were treated to lunch by our hosts and had a chance to tour some of the large specialized vehicles used by the airport FD.
8. An example of a "black box" from a real crash was available for training purposes.
With respect to technical photographic issues, the main challenges were the very, very deep shadows and the fact that there was absolutely no way to reposition the subjects to try to minimize these. So, to provide fill light, one of my strongest flashes stayed on the camera for essentially the entire day, and I used the tonal adjustment sliders in Lightroom to either further minimize shadows and/or provide a more natural look. I think that the only image in this set that I took into Photoshop was #63, the foam vehicle. The shadows were just about impenetrable, and since I was limited to on-camera flash, I couldn't use fill flash because it would have brightened up the front of the vehicle much more than the rear. So, I turned off the flash for this one. After a first pass at brightening the shadows in LR, I used the much better selection tools available in PS to further brighten the shadow areas.
Everyone learned a lot and a good day was had by all.
T
Although, like you, I thought that some of the people would fit perfectly in a Zombie walk, Chris and Sam were correct -- it was a large mass casualty / disaster drill at Dulles International Airport -- but, those two guys had insider information. Chris, in the army, and, as I recall, Sam was either a FF or a Paramedic for many years.
We had personnel and their equipment responding from within a 40 or 50 mile radius including fire, emergency medical and LEAs. There was somewhat more confusion than I would have liked to have seen, but I guess that's the whole purpose of such drills.
Anyway, here are a few photos ...
1. We had one of the main runways and associated taxiways blocked off for us for the entire day.
2. Engines and other emergency vehicles were staged in a holding area a km or so away from the crash site and called in as needed.
3. The volunteer "victims" were made up and staged near the site of the simulated disaster.
4. The victims were triaged, stabilized, and then transported to any of several nearby hospitals, as well as an on-site simulated hospital.
5. The next ambulance crew in line is ready to transport the next victim(s).
6. My unit was assigned two ambulatory victims. The woman played her part very well.
7. After the drill, we were treated to lunch by our hosts and had a chance to tour some of the large specialized vehicles used by the airport FD.
8. An example of a "black box" from a real crash was available for training purposes.
With respect to technical photographic issues, the main challenges were the very, very deep shadows and the fact that there was absolutely no way to reposition the subjects to try to minimize these. So, to provide fill light, one of my strongest flashes stayed on the camera for essentially the entire day, and I used the tonal adjustment sliders in Lightroom to either further minimize shadows and/or provide a more natural look. I think that the only image in this set that I took into Photoshop was #63, the foam vehicle. The shadows were just about impenetrable, and since I was limited to on-camera flash, I couldn't use fill flash because it would have brightened up the front of the vehicle much more than the rear. So, I turned off the flash for this one. After a first pass at brightening the shadows in LR, I used the much better selection tools available in PS to further brighten the shadow areas.
Everyone learned a lot and a good day was had by all.
T
chrisdesign
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Very interesting thread with excellent Fotos Tom.
Tom Mann
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Hi Clare - Wow, I forgot that's what you did, as well! Hummm... the medical professions certainly seem to be well-represented in this crowd. Maybe we just can't get helping people out of our blood, so that's why we so freely answer questions on this forum. 
T
T
agentmoeller
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Tom, was there any post-filtering done on the emer vehicle with the Oshkosh attachment on front? That photo looks awesome! Almost looks like it was HDR'd a little bit.
Tom Mann
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Hi Agent -
A lot of the post processing that I did to this photo was, in fact, to do exactly what HDR techniques / software try to accomplish. Unfortunately, none of these conventional HDR techniques / software work as well as I would like in a situation like this, mostly because HDR software tries to guess which areas need brightening, but the selection of these areas by even the best HDR software is typically much too soft-edged even though the shadowed areas are hard-edged. HDR software also allows only relatively crude, overall adjustments of the color balance in the shadows.
Specifically, the shadows cast by the truck were absolutely horrible - they were many stops down from the highlights, and typically, had a blue cast because they were being illuminated only from the northern (blue) sky, not from the sun. The view through the windshield, as well as the undersides of the clouds had similar problems.
The proper way to fix these problems would have been to set up multiple, large, off-camera lights, or move the vehicle so that all of it was in the shade of a large building, and thereby reduce the contrast. Since I was working alone and fast for this shoot, I didn't have these options, but I still could see the potential of the scene, so I generated a bunch of selections for the various areas mentioned above, and treated each of them with separate adjustments. I started with two separate renderings of the RAW file from my camera in ACR, one in the ballpark for the highlight areas, and the other in the ballpark for the shadow areas, and then put them on separate layers in PS and tweaked from these two starting points.
I process a lot of photos this way, and, believe it or not, it goes much faster than one might expect. I think the end results warrant the additional effort. In fact, almost all of the photos I posted in this thread were processed more or less like this, but most of the others weren't as bad, nor as complicated to process as this one.
Tom M
A lot of the post processing that I did to this photo was, in fact, to do exactly what HDR techniques / software try to accomplish. Unfortunately, none of these conventional HDR techniques / software work as well as I would like in a situation like this, mostly because HDR software tries to guess which areas need brightening, but the selection of these areas by even the best HDR software is typically much too soft-edged even though the shadowed areas are hard-edged. HDR software also allows only relatively crude, overall adjustments of the color balance in the shadows.
Specifically, the shadows cast by the truck were absolutely horrible - they were many stops down from the highlights, and typically, had a blue cast because they were being illuminated only from the northern (blue) sky, not from the sun. The view through the windshield, as well as the undersides of the clouds had similar problems.
The proper way to fix these problems would have been to set up multiple, large, off-camera lights, or move the vehicle so that all of it was in the shade of a large building, and thereby reduce the contrast. Since I was working alone and fast for this shoot, I didn't have these options, but I still could see the potential of the scene, so I generated a bunch of selections for the various areas mentioned above, and treated each of them with separate adjustments. I started with two separate renderings of the RAW file from my camera in ACR, one in the ballpark for the highlight areas, and the other in the ballpark for the shadow areas, and then put them on separate layers in PS and tweaked from these two starting points.
I process a lot of photos this way, and, believe it or not, it goes much faster than one might expect. I think the end results warrant the additional effort. In fact, almost all of the photos I posted in this thread were processed more or less like this, but most of the others weren't as bad, nor as complicated to process as this one.
Tom M
agentmoeller
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Thanks for the explanation. The photo looks awesome.