Old San Juan

Old San Juan, Puerto Rico

I can almost hear the tick-tock

Alligators at the Big Cypress National Preserve: H.P. Williams Wildlife Viewing Area

Virgin River and the Sentinel

This is the Virgin river of Zion National park with the Sentinel in the background catching the last rays of setting sun.

This is HDR image that is made up of 6 differently exposed images. It's not terribly photo-realistic, but I love the painterly feel.

Be sure to stop by Scenic Sundays.

Blue Morning

Early morning at Avalanche lake in Glacier National Park. This was the last, and only morning that I got up early for photo. The next morning I work up with the flu. There went my motivation for the next few days.

This is another HDR made up of a set of 6 images. The parameters were chosen to push the image towards the more surreal end of the spectrum.

Be sure to visit Scenic Sundays.

Avalanche Creek

This is Avalanche Creek in Glacier National park somewhere along the Trail of the Cedars. I was surprised at how wet Glacier National park is. Apparently, it's considered to be western most extreme of the Pacific Northwest's temperate rain forest.

A couple of days before this shot, we hiked up to Avalanche Lake (in the dark) to grab some sunrise shots. On the way back down, I saw this creek and knew that I had to return when there was more light. It looked like a perfect opportunity to use HDR, or High Dynamic Range, techniques. I took 6 different shots from EV -3 to EV 2 (i.e. very underexposed to very overexposed). At home, software is used to combine the images into this.

I'm still very much a novice using the software. It has lots of controls to tweak in order to adjust the image. To be truthful, I'm not sure that I like this result. I hope to have time to go back an play with other versions and see if I can get something better.

Be sure to visit Water Wednesday.

Dawn of a New Age

Old mine structure near Leadville, Co.

I've been playing with Photomatix (software for creating HDR images) for awhile. This is one of my better attempts. There are a rather complicated and bewildering assortment of adjustments used to control the effect.  I still learning which types of images and situations that I think work well with HDR and how best to process them.

This shot was made up of 3 images taken at -1, 0, and 1 EV.  One interesting side effect is that the clouds are very soft due to the movement between shots.  I find the sharpness of the building against the softness of the clouds rather pleasing.

Be sure to visit Skywatch Fridays.

Playing around

When I was at the Paint Mines, I took a number of shoots that I planned to use while experimenting with Photomatix. Photomatix is software that can be used to blend photos of various exposures in to a single high dynamic range (HDR) photo. I have a trial copy of the software, so please excuse the watermarks. Here's the slightly edited results.