HDR and Tombstone ...

Arizona ... Arizona ... Arizona? When was I in Arizona? It seems like a lifetime ago so putting photos on from the trip seems odd. But I realize that it is my brain that is malfunctioning, not that it has been all that long ...

Gary flew to Utah to ski yesterday and Jessie is doing her stint in her Pretty Little House - and apparently having a ball and getting all of the staff to fall in love with her - so I need to get my brain around the fact that Jessie will be living in her Pretty Little House - most likely - sometime in the near future.

Switching her to this home feels right ... but there is always that little alarmist inside of me shrieking "But what if it's not?". Sometimes the little voice is louder than other times - and right now it is clamoring to be heard. What if this is not right? What do we do? Have we lost that tether to Richmond State School? I haven't even asked ... This can escalate into panic rather quickly for me and when Gary is gone - my natural Valium - things can get a little ... dicey ...

So - not to Stark Raving Mad as predicted in an earlier post for today, but I might be there in a day or so ...

And what do I do when I am tense and panicked?


Yes.



I open my books. Usually about photoshop - but always about photography. This time I have been studying a photo technique called HDR - High Dynamic Range Imaging. In this technique - you take a series of 'bracketed' photos - at differing exposures - normal exposure one over exposed and one under exposed (or two over and two under for a total of 5) at a specific interval.

This collects more information on light and shadows than does one photo. You then pull all (in my case) three photos into Photoshop using the HDR process and out comes a rather funky looking photo. I have been intrigued by HDR photos for some time - and want to shoot 'in HDR' for a while and see if I can get something that looks good.

Today I just went through the motions so that in a real setting - I would know how to set up my camera, pull it in to photoshop, etc.

I know these are abominable - so for some examples of GOOD HDR photos - Stuck in Customs is a good place to go and see what I am aspiring to do ...

Here are my three shots:

And here is one way to make it into an HDR:

I obviously don't know what I am doing and there are a ton of adjustments you can make and right now I don't know what does what so just getting my feet wet ...

Here are my tulips from Gary (having seen better days) with more of an HDR look to them

Here is the 'normal' exposure for this photo. You can see where the program took the light information for the shrubs behind the tulips from the overexposed photo and pulled it into the HDR photo - showing much more detail ...


So - I thought I would share ...



Tombstone:


I am not all that impressed with my photos of Tombstone and lost all interest in Boot Hill, but would like to make a post on San Xavier and that was AFTER Tombstone - so I have snuck it in here to be rid of it!

I believe this was supposed to be Doc Holliday - he looked sickly and never smiled. I caught him in a half one here:

I asked this nice lady if I could take her photo and she was kind enough to hide her water bottle:

Next stop, San Xavier Mission ...