This photo has now become "the most interesting" photo on Flickr when you seach for "Kobe Bryant."  Amazing.  Volume up especially as Kobe recently reached the 20,000 point milestone (before age 30). I heard on SportsCenter this morning that Wilt reached this point in five fewer seasons…

VitalStatistics.info politely asked to use this photo on their site for an article on Kobe. A first for me. Very cool.

Here’s the original photo:

I use LucisArt, www.lucisart.com, the "exposure" filter, on a background copy layer (usually) to get the effect. I also play with HDR, but only when I can get proper multiple exposures, for the reasons you rightly cite.

The Kobe photo is a lot more complicated (and not very well executed, as I look back on it now a few weeks later). In the original, you couldn’t see Kobe without really looking hard — he was lost against the background. (http://flickr.com/photos/ddwise/2058844301/in/photostream/)

So I created a selection of Perkins, Kobe, and Ray Allen — and the Parquet Floor — and reduced the brightness on everything else. It kind of looks like a strobe shot (it wasn’t — all available light and there was plenty of it) — but you can at least see Kobe.

Jules and I brought Ian and Eric to the Celtics game last night. I cranked up the 70-200mm at ISO 800, and got a couple of decent shots. Here’s one of the dreaded Kobe — who, it has to be said, can create a shot.

This one actually got a fair amount of processing time.  I went through the painstaking process of making Perk, Kobe, and Ray Allen a selection — which required substantial work.  But I wanted them to pop out from the background, which while detailed is distracting.

LucisArt provided the usual chewy texture and contrast, without, IMHO, becoming too "CGI."