Heading Up The Mountain ::

I went up to Grant, Alabama yesterday morning to see our family vet and shot this on the way up.

An Old Store ::

And it's still in business even though there is not a great deal of stock inside.

Another Cemetery Photograph ;:

I photographed this almost exactly a year ago in a small cemetery in Lacey's Spring, Alabama:



I generally visit a couple of times each year and I'm always struck by just how many grave sites there are for babies and young children. Most of them date from early in the 20th century, but this one seems to be much more recent and obviously the family must be of very modest means! Scenes like this always sadden me!

A New HDR Photograph ::

I've driven by this old country store in Lacey's Spring, Alabama several times over the years and I've always wanted to take a photograph of it, but I just never had the opportunity until recently when I drove down specifically to check out the old store. Oddly, I had never noticed the flag painted on the side of the building, so, after asking permission, I shot 5 frames for a HDR composite.



I'm fairly happy with this rendition, but I'm planning to go back down when there is a better sky. This was a dreary, overcast January day which was not terribly inspiring.

Running Late ::

I didn't realize that it had been so long since I posted here, but we're gradually recovering from Christmas and the New Year. I picked up a few goodies over the holidays. From Best Buy I bought myself a little Panasonic FH24 point and shoot camera for those times I don't want to carry around one of the big cameras. The Panasonic is a 16 megapixel camera with an 8x optical zoom and Best Buy had it on sale for $129. I'd been looking for a point and shoot for quite a while and thought this would fit the bill nicely. A couple of weeks after I got it the price was dropped to $99, but I didn't feel bad about paying more for it than that. I thought that it was a true bargain at $129 and I checked yesterday and it's back up to $179.

I also picked up a Kindle Fire for myself. I have resisted buying an e-book reader for a long time simply because I felt that I would sorely miss holding a book in my hand and turning the pages. Well, guess what? I don't miss the physical books at all and I absolutely love the Kindle! I'm still feeling my way around it, but, for the price, I don't see how it can be beat.

Hoping everyone had a very Merry Christmas and I hoping for a very Happy New Year for everyone! I'll be dropping off a roll of Holga film tomorrow so maybe I'll have some new photographs to post soon.

Another Photograph From Fort Payne, Alabama ::

Road Tripping ::

I did a road trip up to Fort Payne, Alabama searching for scenes to photograph and came across several that were of interest.



This is another HDR photo utilizing 7 different exposures. The photograph was processed in Photomatix which is my program of choice for tone mapping HDR images. I've used the Photoshop HDR processor, but I've never been satisfied with the results.

Toilet Paper In The Tree ::

Although this is not a HDR image I have been shooting more of them lately as well as using my tripods and monopod more. At times I will shoot 3 to 5 HDR shots hand held outside on a sunny day, but I've decided that this is not the optimum way to approach the situation and I've really come to appreciate the monopod.

So, what I wanted to say about this image is that I drove by the scene the day before I took this photograph and decided it was worthy of a HDR try, but, unfortunately, the day was pretty windy as well as sunny and when I processed the photographs there was far too much ghosting in the toilet paper on the tree. I should also add that there was much more toilet paper on the tree when I tried the HDR photograph! I was in the same area the next day which was overcast I decided to just make a normal exposure. I think it turned out ok. At least the quarter horse farm sign is not in heavy shadow!

A New Holga Photograph

Posted near a local convenience store although I can't imagine why anyone would trespass at this location!

The Hebron Volunteer Fire Department ::

HDR photographs taken on 09/11/11. I've begun to experiment more with HDR photography and I've decided that the use of a tripod, which I extremely dislike, will be mandatory although these photographs were taken with the use of a monopod. These were a bracket of 3 images, each 1 stop apart. I've since decided to try 5 shots at .7 stop apart. Hopefully I'll have the opportunity to try this spread out this weekend.

I've had pretty good success with a 3 shot spread, hand-held, but the tripod should yield more consistent results.

Snatching Victory From Defeat ::

I shot this several years ago when I had my Nikon D50. I ran across this scene and shot it with the 18-55mm lens with a polarizing filter as well as a lens hood so I got some pretty significant vignetting. For some reason I saved the image to the computer without really giving it much thought although I did look at it once in a while. This morning I was looking for something different to post and decided to play around with this in OnOne Software's PhotoTools. Here is the final result:



And here is the untouched original:



Quite a bit of difference!

Dot's Dairy Den ::

New Hope, Alabama.

Another Holga Photograph ::

Earlier this evening I added another 4 gigs of ram to my computer so I've been doing a bit of speed testing so I worked a bit on this Holga image. The original negative was scanned to a 16 bit digital file of around 220 megs and then converted to black and white in Photoshop. I'm pretty happy with the speed gain from the extra ram.

A Holga Image ::

From a few weeks ago:



I don't know where the rest of the house is gone to, but it was cleaned up pretty well.

Still Working Through Some Computer Issues ::

But I'm getting close to being through with them. In the meantime here is something from a couple of weeks ago: